Today at lunchtime we arrived back at our place in the forest outside Uppsala, Sweden, after driving all day yesterday and since early morning today. From Brussels the drive is over 1600km and takes over 18 hours without breaks. But since the whole point of driving instead of flying is to get our dog from one place to the other, we do stop regularly.

Some years ago we did this trip in a single day, starting very early and arriving around midnight. Even with two drivers switching every second hour, the final hours were a real pain; alone as I did it once, it is no fun at all. So we started booking a dog-friendly hotel located such that we arrive at dinner time and have around five hours of driving left the next morning. This is much more comfortable and arriving by noon means losing less than half the day - which we would otherwise have lost recovering anyway.

This was the 18th time we took this drive, usually we spend long summers and new years in Sweden, the rest in Brussels. There are rarely any major hassles in such a trip through five countries. Once we got stuck in a storm though, on the way down when both the ferries and bridges to and from Denmark had to close. Waiting out a storm near the sea at night in a shaking car sure was an unwelcome adventure. But this time all went smoothly.