After a long summer by UK standards, it’s that time of year when the temperature drops and the nights start drawing in, which normally means for us and many others the start of our winter travel plans. With a dog in tow though, we now have to be a little more organised and during our summer trip we got lucky booking a pet friendly cabin on the Portsmouth – Santander ferry crossing for mid November. So with just over a month to go and lots of social arrangements to squeeze in beforehand we are now starting to go through our “To Do” list to get organised.

Here’s our checklist of things you should consider or do before travelling overseas:

Travel and Vehicle

Book ferry or Eurotunnel crossing early to try and get a more advantageous rate (don’t forget if your a member of any of the big UK clubs they offer 10% discount if you book via them). We used a friends Club Voyager discount when booking with Brittany ferries this time.

Crit Air Sticker If travelling through France for several cities you will need one of these. They can be ordered on line, but you’ll need to do it well in advance as they can take several weeks to arrive (https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/)

Passport ensure your passport has adequate time left on it for your travel requirements and that it contains blank pages so that you can be stamped in & out.

Driving License you won’t need an international driving permit for Euro travel, but you will need to carry your license with you.

V5 don’t forget your logbook you may need it if stopped by the police

Covid don’t forget to check what the covid requirements are for the countries you are visiting and apply or download the relevant documents.

MOT don’t forget to check that this will last for the duration of your trip

Winter Tires and/or snow chains, depending on the region and the time of year. Spare wheels are also a requirement in some countries including Spain.

Here’s some additional items that may be required depending on where you’re travelling to

1. Reflective jackets (there must be one for each passenger and be kept within the cabin of the car)
2. Warning triangle (compulsory in most countries)
3. Headlamp beam deflectors (depending on your vehicle, you’ll either need deflector stickers or have to adjust the beam manually)
4. UK car sticker (if you don’t have a UK Euro number plate, or no matter what’s on you number plate when driving in Cyprus, Malta or Spain)
5. First aid kit (compulsory in Austria, France and Germany)
6. Blind Spot or Angles Morts stickers if your vehicle is over 3.5 tonne in France
7. Red & White warning sign if carrying bikes on the back

Insurances

Buy adequate travel insurance for the length of your trip – we bought LV’s premier multi trip policy before our summer trip as it covers up to 90 days

Take you GHIC card (this replaced the previous EHIC card)

Check or renew your house insurance cover – many have stipulations and requirements if you are away for more than 30 days so it’s wise to check your policy. We used the Caravan & Motorhome Club’s service last time as it automatically covers you for up to 90 days away.

Motorhome Insurance & European Breakdown cover we stuck with Safeguard when we renewed last year as they were very competitive. Don’t forget you will need to carry a copy of your insurance certificate with you.

Landlord Insurance if you are letting your house out ensure you take out appropriate cover – we don’t let our own house, but do have rental properties which are covered by CIA

Pets

Since leaving the EU things have become a little bit trickier for travelling with pets. The requirement for a single use Animal Health Certificate which only lasts for 4 months and costs around £100 each time have certainly also made things more expensive. We used Abbeywell vets in Folkestone (https://animalhealthcertificate.online/) on Nutmeg’s first trip and would highly recommend them. Our mission last winter whist in Spain was to get Nutmeg an EU passport which we did with ease. It just now means that her future rabies vaccinations now have to be administered in the EU (which is no hardship for us). We have already used this for our summer trip so at 60 Euros including her rabies jab we already quids in.

Prevention of tapeworm – although not required until we return to the UK we always take our dogs droncit tablet with us. This has to be administered by a vet and recorded in the pet passport or AHC between a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of 5 days before travelling back to the UK.

Medication if your pet is on any meds or flea/worming treatment, you will need enough for the duration of the trip.

Scalibor collar it’s advisable to buy a collar for the prevention of leishmaniasis caused by sand flies

Muzzle These are needed on some ferry routes and a requirement on public transport in some countries.

Maps and Apps

Ensure any apps you use are up to date and subscriptions are renewed. We tend to use Search for Sites and Park4night and pay for the offline version.

We also take a road atlas for any countries we are visiting. They are useful for planning where to go and following the route to ensure the Sat Nav behaves.

ACSI Book and card – this scheme gives discounted rates on selected campsites out of high season. For some reason it runs until the end of December and a new book comes out in January.

If you don’t already have it download the Maps.Me app and the relevant app. Once downloaded the maps are available to use off line so don’t require data.

Sat Nav We have a camper version from Aguri that allows us to enter our vehicle dimensions – we found out the hard way that this was preferable when our old standard sat nav tried to take us under a 2 metre high underpass in France on our first trip.

Wi-Fi and Mobile Data

Another area to navigate now we are out of the EU is phones and data. With the majority of mobile companies now seriously limiting data or charging by the day this takes a little more planning. For our recent trips our contract with 3 mobile allowed us still to use our phones overseas without additional daily charges. Unfortunately though our contract is ending, so we have decided to switch to ID Mobile. For just £10 a month we have 50 GB of data (when in the UK), and as long as we are in one of the designated Roam Like at Home destinations we can use our phones overseas (under their fare usage policy). We only need a small amount of data on our phones as we also have a Netgear mobile wifi unit which we currently have a Superdrug Sim card in. This gives us unlimited data for £20 a month in the UK (this serves as our wifi at home and on the go and is fine for all our wifi needs including streaming TV). It can be stopped and started as required but is limited to 12GB usage in Europe (and as we found out in the summer it stops working once it reaches this), although we could buy an O2 sim (we did this for our summer trip), we have found a better deal with Lobster in Spain who are offering triple data deals until the end Feb 2023. We can get 120 GB from them for 18 Euros (https://www.lobster.es/our-plans/). This has to be bought once there though, but we have ample data until we find a store to do this.

Prescriptions & Medication

Doctors will usually be willing to issue 3 months worth of medication before travel. It’s also worth taking a medicine kit with you too. We always take paracetamol and Ibuprofen as they are more expensive in Europe conversely some prescription meds can be much cheaper and available without prescription so it’s worth checking whilst there.

Spare glasses and sun glasses, in certain countries you are required to carry spares of both if you wear them for driving.

Money

We use Starling back for our international travels, their rates are preferable and as soon as you use the car you receive a notification of the transaction.

House

Don’t forget to cancel and regular deliveries or window cleaners etc whilst your away

With all this and more to organise it’s going to be a busy month, but it’ll all be worth it when we hit the road again.

Andi, Paul & Nutmeg x