Well, here we are at the very last post of the year and rather than anything new, it’s time to look back at the year. Consider this the Christmas round robin letter that your parents/grandparents send to all the friends they never actually see in person (and be glad that I’m sparing you the doggerel of almost epic length that one friend sent my parents. No rhymes here).
54 nights away from home
20 different beds
9 nights under canvas
3 Girlguiding trips away
36 nights abroad
7 countries
1 new country
4 currencies spent
14 flights
13 airports
5 airlines
0 upgrades
10,760 miles flown
31 hours and 15 minutes in the air
6 languages encountered
104 blog posts posted (including this one)
2025 in travel
I’ve got around a fair bit this year so let’s look at where I’ve been (and what I’ve written about it)
I started the year with a weekend near Reading playing Taskmaster – I haven’t written about that but it was a weekend crammed into a youth hostel with 50-ish other people playing a lot of silly games that involved a lot of ducks, dragons, mushrooms and bananas. Don’t ask.
My first international trip of the year was to Germany in February, where I spent five days rushing around the three Great European Spa Towns that happen to be in Germany, taking five or six trains a day to get from one to the next. Good times but even with four spas in the mix, kind of tiring.
In April I went on my first Girlguiding trip of the year, to adult International Opportunities selection, where I was not selected, despite two of the four trips available being right up my alley. It was a weekend of psychological warfare where you feel like you’re being watched and judged for absolutely everything so while we did some fun stuff, it was quite a relief to get home and relax.
Saying that, 48 hours later I was on my way to Pula in Croatia, where I very much enjoyed the contrasting delights of the massive Roman amphitheatre casually sitting in the city centre and the harbour cranes that light up in jewel tones overnight as an industrial art installation. Fun fact: one of the INTOPS trips I didn’t get selected for was to Croatia and although it’s not been confirmed yet, I’m 99% sure it’s going to be to Pula.
I had two trips away in May – I went camping in West Dorset and my tent got damaged by wind out on the ridge and then two weeks later I went glamping in East Devon, in a sort of suspended spherical tent in a little glade in the corner of a field, which was just wonderful.
June was busy too – a Guide camp in the pouring rain followed the next weekend by a Brownie sleepover (indoor camp) where I was QM, the person in charge of food. Guide camp was “back to basics” theme, so cooking over wood fires and building gadgets, and Brownie camp was Moana 2 themed, so we made beach scene jellies and boats and also went climbing and caving.
In July I went off for two weeks in Iceland in a campervan and kept up the blog posts on the subject until October. At the end of August I had a weekend in Staffordshire at Rebel Summer Camp, a Guide-style camp but only for adults, where my personal highlights were the axe throwing and the rifle shooting.
September brought a weekend away in Krakow and an adventure deep below the ground in the salt mine and a flight home delayed for 26 hours, plus an overnight in Torquay just because it was easier than driving all the way down to Budleigh Salterton at dawn on Sunday morning for a book event.
Two big trips in October – I had a weekend in Paris to visit the new Notre Dame and I took advantage of it to go to the Moulin Rouge, all dressed in sequins and sparkles. Then I went and re-did my 2009 trip to Bucharest with a better hotel, a successful trip to Brasov on the train and a whole day at Europe’s biggest thermal spa complex.
November brought another two weekends away, this time to Spa, the original spa, for a teeny-tiny spa break by train, and to Birmingham for Rock Choir Live and the Frankfurt Christmas market.
Finally, I had two nights in London in December for my work Christmas thing, which I turned into my own weekend away by adding ice skating, lampworking and a trip up to Islington to see my favourite band, Twin Atlantic, who were performing their entire third album to celebrate its tenth anniversary.
Then I finished up the year with another weekend in Paris, this one spent entirely at Parc Asterix where I tried out some non-scary rides and some scary rides that shouldn’t have been.
2025 in blogging
In 2024, Google updates broke blogging but in 2025, the numbers definitely began creeping up. July was right where it should have been last year, so that was a bit better. You can see the peak was between the summers of 2023 and 2024 but as the end of the year draws in, things are looking better. After my views & visitor statistics fell off a cliff in September last year, they’re back up to around the levels they were in early 2024, which is an improvement. It’s not quite the end of the month as I write this so I don’t know for sure but because the first half of 2024 was so good, it’s almost certainly going to be the first time in my blog’s ten-year history where I don’t improve on the previous year’s numbers. Still, I don’t make any money from this so there’s no harm done except to my ego.
Top 10 posts
These are the posts that have been most popular this year. Many of them are a surprise to me, I just didn’t expect some of them to get picked up like they have. And some of them are a surprise because they’re old. In a world where everyone cares about TikTok and Instagram stories and content that’s almost ephemeral – see it once before it fades away into the void – this has been a surprising lesson in the longevity and therefore the value of blogging.
Tent review: Eurohike Sendero 4 vs Cairne 5 DLX I wrote this in early-mid 2024 after a trip to the New Forest and I’m astonished it’s so popular, let alone nearly two years later. I guess people want medium-large tents more than I realised.
What is the best solid conditioner bar? In which I tested a lot of conditioner bars and eventually picked the one that I now travel with, because conditioner bars are actually reasonably good these days. You absolutely should turn to conditioner bars, at least for travel.
Which is the best geothermal lagoon to visit in Iceland while the Blue Lagoon is closed? This one is from two years ago and I wrote it to capitalise on the eruptions that kept forcing the Blue Lagoon to close. Even though Iceland has been eruption free for about six months (or at least it had while I was writing this; who knows by the time this is published the week after next), it seems people still want to know about lagoons.
What happens at a private Tbilisi sulphur bath? It’s just the post I wrote, nearly two years ago now, about my experiences at the sulphur baths in Tbilisi. I had a kisa scrub at one of them and over my week or so in the city, I visited three different bath houses and then wrote about them. Does this show that Georgia is blooming as a tourist destination?
The Guide Camp Kit List part three: the bedding roll An old reliable. This one peaks in the summer, for obvious reasons, and then drops away in the winter, only to pop up again the next year. Kit lists always have a bedding roll on it and the parents have no idea what one even is, so they turn to me!
Down to Earth with Zac Efron: episode 1, Iceland Ah, there was a time when this was my runaway number one post for years on end. That it’s still in the top six posts after five and a half years is pretty amazing, though. Are people really still watching this? Seems so.
A night bath at Rudas The third post about hot pools to make it into the top ten, this one is about Budapest and the spa with the rooftop hot tub, and my experience of being there at midnight. I would definitely write Budapest differently if I went back in time and every pool would get a dedicated post. Not too late to do it even now. I’ll think about that for 2026.
How to spend a day in Budapest’s Castle Hill district I hadn’t noticed this one creeping into the top 10. I’m generally aware of what’s doing well month to month at least but this one is a surprise. I guess people want to know about Budapest.
How do the lockers work at the Blue Lagoon? For such an incredibly over-popular place, it amazes me that the lockers are still such a complex issue that this post from 2018 remains in my top 10 most-read in 2025. Blue Lagoon, fix your lockers! People clearly don’t understand them!
I found every supermarket in Iceland This was work spilling over into blog world because this is exactly what I do at work, only I don’t do in Iceland at work. It’s a map, with details, of every supermarket in the country. I’ve not kept it up to date. Maybe that’s something else to do in 2026.
A few of my own favourite posts
Because the top 10 doesn’t actually include anything new from this year, I’m just going to add in a few of my personal favourites.
The 7 mistakes I made in Romania in 2009 and how I did it right in 2025 It’s exactly how it sounds and it’s managing to round up both trips in one post with a bit of a person tale going on in there too, of me growing as a traveller and maybe even as a person. It also kind of hints at why I didn’t write up a lot of the first trip.
Mývatn Nature Baths becomes Earth Lagoon and other changes in Iceland’s lagoons I think this is a bit less diaristic and a bit less of an attempt to catch people’s attention. It’s more what we’d call “a snapshot” if I’d written it for work purposes, a bit of reflection and analysis on lagoon strategy.
Stuðlagil: Instagram vs Reality We love an Instagram vs reality and as I hiked along this canyon, I knew exactly what this post was going to be.
Why I like and how I use 35mm film I like taking photos the old-fashioned way and since I irregularly put up posts consisting of nothing but film photos from trips, I wanted to talk about it a bit. Features timer selfies out in the garden because it’s hard taking photos of yourself taking photos.
2025 in everything else
What else is there, as I asked last year? I neglected my garden a bit this year because the summer was every kind of hectic but I did write an entire book (it’s called sixteen pools and it’s a short meandering adventure through the sixteen very different pools I visited in Iceland) and I did have a Societally Significant Birthday, which makes me feel very old.
I’ve done a lot of Rebel stuff – I’ve been trying to complete Chief Rebel’s Challenge which is a special badge for people who do everything and I think that’s been a bit too much. That said, I’m considering doing it again – the major pitfall is the Global badge that appears as part of the requirements every year. This year it’s been Advanced Rebel Buddy, which means personally mentoring new Rebels and next year it’s Advanced Rebel Community, which is actually a lot easier. I’ve technically completed it, but I’m not allowed to until I’ve completed ordinary Rebel Community, which requires me to recruit a new Rebel, so if any of this intrigues you, leave me a comment and I’ll be in touch to scoop you up! While I’m complaining right now, it means I’ve done a lot of interesting, exciting and weird things I wouldn’t otherwise.
Yeah, lots of badges, I’ve covered the travel, I’ve covered the blog. What else have I done? One thing I haven’t done is stayed at home and just been lazy for enough weekends, I’ve been living on a permanent whirling circuit of “too busy, don’t have time, can’t sleep, too busy” since at least April, so maybe if things can slow down a bit next year…
2025 as intended last year
I was quite vague about my plans for 2025 when I wrote this post last year. I always am. I don’t tend to plan my year in advance. I do things pretty much as and when I think of them, so I don’t tend to have a lot in my diary when the calendar turns over.
That said, I had an idea that I was going to finally go to New Zealand, which I haven’t. Neither have I got it planned for this coming February/March, which was my backup plan. I have been to the German spa towns although I haven’t been to Turkey. I did have my campervan trip to Iceland and I did go to Rebel Summer Camp. I’ve barely touched the Bath Book. I did finish the Budapest blog posts, I did do the Iceland posts and I’ve looked back at previous trips and decided that where I had gaps it was because I either didn’t have the pictures, the material or the detailed memory to fill them in so although I’ve gone back and written up some old stuff, it’s nowhere near as much as I hoped.
But on the whole, if you don’t make plans, you can neither be disappointed when you don’t fulfil them nor delighted when you do.
Plans for 2026
Well, when I started writing this, it said “Nothing! As usual!” but in the last couple of weeks, I’ve had some ideas and started plotting.
First, I’m having a weekend in Switzerland in January. At time of writing, that means flights into Geneva and then no idea. At February half term, when I’m not at Brownies or Rangers, I’d like to go to north Finland if I can figure out the logistics of getting to the middle of nowhere solo rather than spending three months’ salary on a ready-made holiday. The West Bohemian Spa Triangle at Easter. Back to Iceland at May half term for the re-opened Fontana and to finally tick off Laugarás Lagoon. Then… I have a very vague but quite exciting idea for the summer, which I’m not going to tell you about. Beyond that, nada. We’ll see how much holiday and how much money I have left by then.
I have some plans, writing-wise. Start putting a serious dent in The Bath Book. Get it a proper title! And get my first two books, A Polar Night’s Tale and Lava Land, formatted in both physical and ebook to sell via Amazon. It’s the only way to actually wring a few pennies from them. Maybe do the same with sixteen pools, although that’s only half a book without proper editing, meant to empty out my trip to Iceland over the summer from my brain so I can concentrate on The Bath Book.
For the blog, it would be lovely to earn a few pennies but I don’t think it can be done. Self-hosting to get ads on it just isn’t financially viable and I don’t have enough followers anywhere for anyone to care enough to pay me for ads/PR etc. But at least I can self-promote, create a story template as part of the process and link every new post from Instagram so people come to realise it exists and get it read enough to beat this year’s stats. And comment – social media best works when you’re social and I’m very much a silent observer 95% of the time. In 2026, I need to start making people aware that I exist.
I’m also in the process of getting two Substacks up and running. One, I’m A Polar Bear Here Too, is a kind of written equivalent of YouTubers’ 2014 “second channel”, so it’s going to be a mix of “here’s something I saw on Instagram that I just have to talk about” and maybe some notes from the road and just anything vaguely travel- or adventure-related that doesn’t end up right here. I think that’s going to be Saturday evening, if it happens. Starting to wonder about the viability of this one. The second one, which is definitely going to happen, is going to be a book blog. Mostly it’s just going to be talking about whatever book I’ve read recently but I’ve got a few bits and pieces ready and waiting for when I need to fill a gap. That’s Sunday nights and it doesn’t yet have a name. Because when you’re already teetering on the edge of overwhelmed writing two blog posts every week, why not double that?
I Am A Polar Bear 