It is sort of a strange situation, to me, really, if the battery had discharged down to whatever 11.43V equates to - though that 11.43V was measured at maybe a battery temperature of -3C (locally temperatures had been down to below -6C), then maybe it had not really discharged much from its "last used" maybe 12.32V but at a battery temperature of +10C (I've forgotten what the temperature was roughly 14 days ago!).
Were you not tempted to run a "re-con" program then charge it on the "cold" setting?
In this weather, as we are only using a car, mainly the Polo once a week, I either connect it to the CTEK the morning after last using it, or today, a few hours after last using it (from being on the CTEK for the past 10 days prior to starting it this morning), I did not disable top/start today and it did not switch off at either of the 2 sets of roadworks traffic lights, I had driven 3.5 miles before the temperature gauge get up to 90C with no cabin fan running, then I switched on the cabin fan and that dragged the coolant temperature down quite a bit, initial temperature from being stored in the garage was -3.5C at 10:00 today according to the car's temperature probe.
So we had driven 5 miles to go food shopping, after maybe 60 minutes shopping we drove back home and it switched off the cabin fan as we drove down the driveway, the idle speed was higher than normal which to me indicated that the battery was being charged. Maybe 5 minutes after switching on the CTEK, the TB performed a self cal run, I've noticed that before with this car, ie if I fit a battery charger, within a shortish time, the TB can be heard cycling once.
The need to connect the battery charger to the earth post and not the battery -VE, to me, is only good practice - ie to keep the final connect/disconnect point away from any gases - though these batteries have sealed tops and probably a single vent hose, which maybe ironically is now closer to the "safe" final connect/disconnect point than the battery's own -VE post.
I've seen a lot written in these forums about the complete "battery management system" including a "coulomb counter" which logs every "bit" of charge current and battery supplied current and that MUST know every "bit" of current going both ways, but I'd doubt if that system is logging much when the ignition is off and probably and not required systems have been forced into a sleep mode - but when I've suggested this I tend to get a lot of standard statements handed out supporting this "coulomb counting" theory under all/any conditions absolutely. Now, if I or anyone else was stupid enough to "
help" a battery get back to its fully charged state quickly by connecting an external charger while also having the car's own charging system running, then yes, confusion could reign within the Battery Management System if one system was using the battery -VE and the other system was using the earth bond.