Dogs, Diesel, & Disaster: 2025 in a Nutshell!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We’re just evacuating ‘the brick’ – the farmhouse in southern France, where we enjoyed 3 months’ down time from travelling, after a hectic and disaster-prone year.

We started 2025 with our usual ski break in beautiful Monte Rosa – break being the operative word. The disasters started happening when our friend’s friend broke her leg – then our friend slipped on some ice and broke his elbow. Then, at the beginning of February, on my birthday, no less, Mark skied off a mountain and was airlifted to hospital. I thought it was a bit rich that he got the helicopter ride on MY birthday – and felt it was an extreme way of getting out of buying me a birthday dinner.

Considering the severity of the incident, Mark was very fortunate to come away with only a badly broken tibia, and his recovery dictated the next few months of our life. It certainly brought into relief disaster preparedness, and prompted my blog Are You Ready if Disaster Strikes? 12 Tips on Handling an Emergency Abroad.

We’re still dealing with the aftermath – our 32-page insurance complaint is still with the ombudsman! Suffice to say, our expensive, specialist ski insurance with Ski Club of Great Britain failed at every level. We had to fund more than £14,000 in out of pocket medical expenses, £12,000 of which they initially refused to pay back after assuring us both verbally and in writing that it was covered. They eventually agreed to pay it back, but it took a withdrawal from Mark’s pension for us to remain solvent at what was already a very trying time – not least because Mark also suffered a thrombosis.

Subsequently, they failed miserably to arrange anything from Mark’s operation to emergency accommodation, and even a taxi for Mark from the hospital. I had to organise absolutely everything myself in a foreign language, so I won’t be recommending them to any of my skiing friends!

I’m pleased to say Mark’s op was a success, and he was back on his feet remarkably quickly. He was driving again within a couple of months, and once we were back in the UK, where he was supposed to be resting and recovering, I had to admonish him for climbing up on to The Beast’s cab roof with his crutches to carry out tree surgery…

We had a quiet summer in the UK, and visited a few shows. As rookie truckers at our first ever Adventure Overland Show in 2021, I remember being in awe of the speakers who hosted the seminars. This year, I was gobsmacked to be asked to deliver talks at two shows! At the Campervan Campout, my talk Log: Blog: Vlog – Mastering Travel Storytelling gave Top Tips for Digital Creators. I also took part in a self-build campervan panel discussing Big Builds. At the National 4×4 and Camper Festival – the rebranded Adventure Overland show, I presented Building The Beast – how we created our overland camper, and hosted a panel entitled Never Mind the Baltics – Let’s Talk Full-Time Travel and Dogs. Bring a Beer and Ask Me Anything. It seemed to go down well – I continued the talk back at The Beast when the cleaners chucked us out of the lecture theatre!

From being as green as our truck, we’ve certainly learned a lot from nearly 10 years full-time touring, and almost half a decade in The Beast!

If you want to start planning some SUMMER FUN – there is a full calendar of festivals in 2026. Check out my 2026 UK Van Life Festivals, RV, Caravan, Camper, Motorhome, Overlanding & Self-Build Events. There is even a FREE event in January to get you into the mood for the season!

Just before we set off on this summer’s travels, The Beast got some new head gear. We’re thrilled with our new roof rack, built by our friends Amy and Dave of Roadtrip Industries.

Travel News

At the beginning of August, we caught the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe, and started our Randi Scandi expedition to Denmark.

We had applied successfully for a French VLS-T long stay visa, which has extended the time we can spend in the Schengen area. We are able to use our 90 Schengen days either side of the six month visa period we are permitted to stay in France, which gives us a full year in Europe – something we’ve not been able to enjoy since Brexit. This post How to Apply for a Long-Stay French Visa (VLS-T): A Quick Schengen-Busting Guide for UK Travellers explains how we applied for the visa.

In Denmark, we explored Jutland, and found lots of trolls, nature, and viking relics. However, we found Denmark is not the most dog-friendly country. Dogs had to be on leads on all beaches, and most woodlands, which was not ideal for our free range Fab Four!

Our drive down through Germany into the south of France was one long route of stunning scenery. We planned to drive through Andorra, only to find ourselves trapped! We entered from Spain with the intention of traversing the country to exit into France. On our paper map, there were two major roads out of Andorra which led into France: one with a bridge 3.5m high, the other 3.9m. Since we’re 3.85, we thought we were okay… except the satnav claimed the 3.9m bridge was actually 3.8. We opted not to risk it. Retracing our steps through the mountains took 5 days, although at least we had filled up with cheap diesel in Andorra. At the end, we were about £10 up on the deal, so it wasn’t all bad…!

You can follow our Randi Scandi route on Polarsteps by clicking HERE.

We were planning to head down through Spain and into Morocco, but the Morocco plan has been on, off, on, and off. Our tenants were moving out, then they weren’t, then they were, and now they’re staying! We almost cancelled our Morocco trip to return to the UK and deal with the property.

Then, Ruby developed a growth, which we were told needed an operation to remove, and I broke two teeth, which required two crowns and a root canal! We cancelled our ferry from Sète (France) to Nador (Morocco) scheduled for 7th January 2026 because we didn’t want the time pressure of an impending departure in case either of us developed complications.

Thankfully, after a referral to a specialist vet, Ruby was given the all clear and no longer requires the op, which is the best outcome ever. However, I need to return to the dentist in March.

Since we lost our dog friendly cabin for the long crossing from Sète, we now need to drive all the way down through Spain to cross into Morocco. We like to travel slowly and enjoy our surroundings – although with a top speed of 45 mph, we don’t have a lot of choice! This won’t leave us a lot of time to explore before we have to return to France, so maybe Morocco is just not meant to be this year.

However, a visit to Spain will be about fourth time lucky! Something has always thwarted our plans to explore Iberian peninsula. My book Dogs ‘n’ Dracula chronicles the first thwarting – a deadly heatwave in Spain persuaded us to hang a left and go to Romania instead!

Book News

I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who have followed my blog, left kind comments, bought my books, and reviewed them. It means the world to me, and you have really kept my spirits up through a difficult year!

Mark booked the farmhouse in France from his hospital bed in Italy. I think we both just wanted some stability and security. We ummed and ahed about it, but in the end, after almost a decade on the road full-time, we appreciated the rest and the immense joy of having a bath, flushing loo, and washing machine on tap!

As full-time carer for Mark and The Fab Four while Mark recovered, I had little time to write, so my blog and book publishing journey stalled.

I was also subjected to a hideous image copyright trolling scam, which really knocked the stuffing out of me. I truly felt like quitting writing and blogging altogether. It costs me money to keep my blog online, but I received an aggressive demand for thousands of euros for the perfectly legitimate use of a royalty free image I downloaded from Pixabay. You may note that some older posts are missing images. To be on the safe side, I have removed all royalty free images from my blog and am in the process of downloading them again, this time keeping fastidious records of when and where I sourced them, even though I have done nothing wrong. You can read about the scam here, and find out how to protect yourself: Bloggers Beware The Copyright Trolls – Even If You Use Royalty-Free Images

Our time in the south of France has been the perfect writer’s retreat, and I completed and launched More Manchester Than Mongolia: An Unexpected Road Trip Through Back Road Britain a mere eight months later than intended! The book has already been awarded a Readers’ Favorite 5* seal and had a fleeting stint as a bestseller in Regional UK Biographies on Amazon. It’s selling well, but at the moment can’t quite stay at No 1 with all the celebrity books reduced to 99p to take advantage of readers filling their new Kindles. However, I’m pretty chuffed to be in the lineup with memoirs from the likes of Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Clarkson, and Billy Connolly – and hot on the heels of The Salt Path!

More Manchester Than Mongolia is the sequel to Building The Beast: A funny true story of van life, DIY disasters, and one very big truck which chronicles the story of finding and converting our expedition truck, with no experience. That too had a successful year. In April 2025, Building The Beast won bronze in the adult non-fiction category of The Wishing Shelf Awards.

I have completed the first draft of my next book, and commissioned the cover on Christmas Day as a present to myself! It is very exciting for me, although perhaps landing a detailed design brief on the company’s desk the day before Christmas eve was a little less thrilling for them, although I did tell them not to worry about actioning anything until after the holidays. It should publish in the spring, so watch this space!

Special Offers – Award Winning Travel Books 99p (99c)

The ebook More Manchester Than Mongolia is still available at the special launch price of 99p/99c across most Amazon markets for a limited time, so grab your bargain copy of while you can!

Amazon UK has selected Dogs ‘n’ Dracula, my Romanian road trip memoir for a 99p Kindle deal (ebook only) throughout the month of January, so if you want to check out what one reviewer described as ‘Armchair Travel Delight’ fill your boots (and your Kindle!)

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Unmissable Blogs!

With the theme of disaster preparedness, I would like to direct you to author DG Kaye’s ‘Safety and Awareness’ series written for Sally Cronin’s excellent Smorgasbord blog magazine. It offers excellent advice on online safety, avoiding scams, fire safety, and travel safety.

Books

I’m pleased to say that, despite focussing on writing, the French R&R has given me more time to read. If you’re interested, I have started publishing my reviews on my author website, JacquelineLambert.co.uk, along with writing advice.

You can find other books I’ve read and reviewed on my Goodreads profile and find my Year in Books 2024 HERE.

Thank you for reading, and for all your support during 2025. I hope you enjoy my content and find it useful. If you’d like to see more, don’t forget to subscribe.

Wishing you a WONDERFUL 2026!

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Cover Photo – The Fab Four, our canine travelling companions with the Ask troll sculpture in Denmark