We are Sophie and Lewis and the combination of vanlife with our golden retriever Humphrey sums up ‘bucket list’ for us. Travel has always been a huge dream for us both, but it wasn’t until our whole world was flipped upside down when we were in our early twenties, that we even considered the possibilities of converting our own campervan, and bringing Humphrey along for the ride.
Lewis was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Lymphoma at the age of 21 - we were travelling in Australia, which had always been our first big travel dream, and living in our first campervan which was a tiny old Mitisbushi Express. It was our first experience of vanlife, and even though the road was by no means smooth – we were hooked. We had only managed four months into our planned two years in Oz, and within a couple of days of Lewis’ diagnosis in a hospital in Sydney just after Christmas, we had to abandon everything and return home for him to begin chemotherapy immediately.
Eighteen months of unsuccessful treatments later, we couldn’t see an end in sight and Lewis had always wanted a golden retriever puppy...so along came Humphrey. He promptly put Lewis in intensive care following a severe case of campylobacter, which actually resulted in discovering he was in fact in remission! Two long years of recovery later, and although we had become engaged, bought our first home together and had family members nagging about wedding dates and babies left, right and centre, we knew that our mind was still firmly on other things.
Lewis began scouring the internet for VW vans, and the next thing we knew, we were driving the two hundred miles to London and viewing an ex police riot van - Volkswagen T4. Humphrey was there with us, the previous owner loved him, and just like that, we (and the van) were sold.
The van build was slow going as Lewis was still recovering and by no means feeling back to normal. It took over a year of evenings and weekends, but we got there – Lewis wiring the electrics, building us a worktop, shelves and storage and then it was down to me to make it into a home – adding in our personal touches, our friends’ handmade curtains and stocking out the cupboards and fridge. It was small, but perfect for our six months in Europe that we had been planning for when the build was complete. We had already been for a few test trips in the UK so we had an idea of how vanlife was going to be with Humphrey, but we could never have anticipated how incredibly dog friendly we found Europe. From preparing him to travel, catching a ferry to France, finding places to camp, shop and eat – there wasn’t one moment when we regretted bringing him with us.
The process began with visiting our vets and applying for a ‘pet passport’. All you need for this is for your dog to be up to date with their usual vaccinations, have an additional rabies vaccination, and then the passport was issued – complete with a space to add a passport sized photo of your dog if you wish – which is a no brainer! Taking Humphrey with us on the ferry from Dover to Calais was as simple as booking a space for our van, and then specifying that we had a dog with us. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed on the deck during the crossing, and it took around five hours in total - Humphrey just slept the whole way! If you do have concerns about leaving your dog for this amount of time, there are shorter crossings and different routes available though. There’s also the Eurotunnel, which leaves from Folkestone, and only takes 35 minutes - but we found this was considerably more expensive than a ferry when booking for our leaving date in July.
We travelled throughout ten countries during our six months in Europe and split our vanlife camp spots between wild camping and paid campsites. We had no issues with finding dog friendly campsites, and when wild camping, the open spaces; beaches, mountains, forests, were just so perfect for a dog. We also found that because we had Humphrey with us, we were so much more motivated to explore every inch of the area we were in. He was as good as gold whenever we would spend hours driving, or on the occasion when he needed stayed to stay in the van on his own, so we loved spending hours exploring with him whenever we set up camp somewhere. It meant we really got to know whatever area we were calling our home for a night, or a few days if it was really special.
Of course, travelling with a dog does come with some restrictions – you should always try and check whether they’ll be allowed where you’re planning on visiting, you can only leave them in the van to do other activities if the temperature allows, and sometimes you have to skip the best beaches in favour of the dog friendly ones. But for us, Humphrey is part of our dreams, our family, and adventures just don’t feel the same without him.
