Various important points made themselves rather clear on this trip.

• A five day car journey is an awfully long way both for dogs and humans. We covered up to 550 km in a day punctuated by long stops to charge regularly and exercise the dogs but even so, it’s a lot to ask dogs to cope with such extended periods of inactivity.
• Charging using chargemap is a relative breeze but every stop has to be planned in advance and the area surrounding the charge point isn’t necessarily ideal for either dogs or humans. Lack of access to grass and coffee is fairly typical.
• Tolls were surprisingly expensive. On our first day for example we paid more than €50 in tolls. Not using tolls on such a long journey isn’t really practical.
• Ibis budget hotels are ideal for dogs, better than travel lodges and better than more expensive hotels where we’d normally stay. The floors are uncarpeted, they welcome dogs and the ambience generally is well suited to dogs.
• The eurotunnel train experience was fine, journey time short and fairly effortless for the dogs.
• The Animal Health Certificate is an expensive addition to the overall costs of taking pets abroad but individual vet practices such as at Havant have streamlined the process. (Cost for Tal and Perro : £149 in total). Finding a vet to issue the appropriate worming tablets in France/Spain seems to be very straightforward especially as you get closer to Calais. Unfortunately this is another €100 or so.
• If we were intending to travel regularly abroad with the dogs, rather than buying an AHC every time, it would be more sensible and cheaper to buy a three year European animal per passport from a Spanish vet in northern Spain. We’d need to have a three yearly rabies injection in Spain (one year only in France and southern Spain) plus worming each time we returned. A palaver, somewhat Brexit related of course.
• The weather noticeably improved as we headed south – however Tal suffers in the heat so ideally any visits to southern Spain should be restricted to the autumn, winter and early spring.
• Would I attempt to reach southern Spain again by car with dogs? Yes, but five days down, five days back again is only worth doing if the stay in southern Spain is long enough, two to three weeks at least, possibly longer.
• Time to try to buy a finca in Spain? 🤔