Summary – October to December 2025 and 2026 wishes

Published on by Mélodie

I would like to wish you a Happy New Year 2026 to all of you and your family. Also, I would like to thank you all for reading my little blog.

As every Christmas, I took a little break during end of December/beginning of January to enjoy time with my family. This year we even travelled to and around France for two weeks. Here a summary of what happened in our life during the past three months (October – December 2025). Additionally, I am going to discuss my wishes for 2026. Hope you will enjoy it.

Read January to March 2025 summary here. Read April to June 2025 summary here. Read July to September 2025 summary here.

Saint Pabu beach, Cote d'Armor, France
Saint Pabu beach, Cote d’Armor, France

Personal Life:

Autumn months have been very busy at work both for Matt and myself, which has slightly impacted on my personal writing time for the blog and willingness to go out during the weekends. To be honest, the weather has not been great either, which didn’t help to motivate us to go out exploring. Most importantly, the biggest news for me during this autumn months was my change of role within my company. After being a nuclear consultant for 10 years specialised in the development of strategies for the management of radioactive wastes, I felt I needed a change and decided to move toward sustainability. I am now the sustainability lead for my company, which means that I am still working in the nuclear industry but for my company and not for external clients and I am dealing with a lot of different topics. So far so good and I am enjoying learning more about this field.

October – we had the visit of my mother. She stayed with us for two weeks, which meant that we did revisit some places in Cumbria with her. She really enjoyed the visit of Lowther Castle, Castlerigg stone circle and the Borrowdale valley.

November – was my birthday month, celebrating my 36th birthday with an afternoon tea with friends at the Hetland Hall Hotel near Annan in Scotland. It is a beautiful hotel and the afternoon tea was lovely. Definitely recommend it if you are around. It also reminded me how much I like doing afternoon tea with my friends and we agreed to try to do that more often.

December – it started with a couple of Christmas meals and then I caught a bad flu that put me in bed for a good 4 days. By the time I felt a bit better, it was time to prepare our trip to France.

Read about Lowther Castle near Penrith here.

Lowther Castle, Cumbria
Lowther Castle, Cumbria

Walking:

We didn’t do a lot of walking during last autumn. Just our usual local walks around Ennerdale or on St Bees Beach. We did however do a walk up to Walla Crag that I need to write about and with my mum we did a short walk to the caves of Borrowdale at the bottom of Castle Crag.

View from the top of Walla Crag
View from the top of Walla Crag (original walk – Nov 2018)

Travelling:

As we went on holiday in Spain at the beginning of September, we didn’t travel during autumn and waited for our Christmas break. This year we spent two weeks in France taking the ferry (Plymouth – St Malo and back St Malo – Portsmouth). As every time we go to France, we did a lot of travelling going from Brittany to the South West of France and then back up. This time we even spent a couple of days in Charente near Angoulême. I will soon write about these holidays.

Read about our adventures in France here or Spain here.

Port d'Erquy, France
Port d’Erquy, France

Blogging:

I haven’t been great at blogging recently and I still have some blog posts to write about our holiday in Norfolk in April/May 2025. I am hoping to be able to write these posts soon and then catch-up with our autumnal adventures. So let’s hope 2026 will be better writing wise.

Books:

I read several books during the end of the year and managed to overall read 32 books in 2025 (9318 pages total). I know for some of you, it is not a lot but for me it was so I am proud of myself.

  • Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabinelli (EN)
  • Huis Clos and Les Mouches by Jean-Paul Sartre (FR)
  • Wahala by Nikki May (EN)
  • The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden (EN)
  • Frappe toi le coeur by Amelie Nothomb (FR)
  • The Christmas Cottage by Sarah Morgan (EN)
  • Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (EN)

I think my top three books of 2025 are: Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, Le Crime du Comte Neville (The Crime of Count Neville) by Amelie Nothomb and Segou (Volume 1) by Maryse Conde.

Blog discoveries:

Unfortunately I won’t be sharing any blog posts this time as I haven’t had time to read the blog posts of my fellow bloggers. I am slowly catching-up with all their adventures before I can share with you.

Church of Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, France
Church of Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, France

2026 wishes:

After several years of thinking about it, I have decided that in 2026 I will stop writing in both French and English languages to only write in English. Writing in both languages is very time consuming and I am struggling to keep up, so instead of not posting, I prefer to reduce to one language. I also realised after talking with my mum, after she asked me why there were a good French version and a weird French version of my text written in my blog posts, that most people have google translation activated, which means that they either see two French or two English versions of the text in the same page. So here we go – to a blog in English. Please let me know what you think.

I am going to continue writing walks and moderating walks on Visorando website. See my Visorando profile here.

And we will surely use Home Exchange again this year to plan our holidays. We haven’t decided yet where we want to go but we are thinking about spending next Christmas in a sunny place. Any recommendations? Read about our experience exchanging houses here.

Finally, I would like to keep reading and discovering new authors during this coming year and hopefully be able to do more walks and enjoy the outdoors.

Let’s see what 2026 will bring !!!

What are your plans for 2026?

Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com

Find all our adventures in UK here

32 thoughts on “Summary – October to December 2025 and 2026 wishes”

  2. Happy New Year. All the best to you and your family for 2026.

    I enjoyed and appreciated your bilingual blog posts. My first language was French (Canadian) but was supplanted by English and has now become very rusty. I found it great to read your English version and then the French – an excellent exercise for me. But I understand completely how time consuming that is and why you would want to just post in one language. Thanks for all the effort you put in to do that, though. Much appreciated.

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    1. Thank you Lynette.

      It is nice to hear that you were finding useful to have both languages. I was hesitant to stop but I reach a point that I need to make a choice. I enjoy writing my blog but writing in two languages is too much work at the moment so I think it is better that I only write in English than not writing at all.
      I would be happy to discuss with you by email if you want to practice your french. Feel free to use the contact form 😉.

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  8. Happy New Year. Nice to see people sailing from Plymouth even if it is a little longer than some of the other crossings! Good job you went when you did as Plymouth port is closed yesterday and again today (and probably tomorrow) due to finding an unexploded WW2 bomb near the port. Its all going on down there as they try to make it safe

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  9. Je comprends que tu n’écrives plus qu’en français. Est-ce que ça te dérange si je continue à te laisser des commentaires en français car je suis bien plus à l’aise pour lire l’anglais que l’écrire ? Tu as eu une année bien remplie ! Ton changement d’emploi semble te réussir. Quant à ton top 3, je suis ravie d’y voir Amelie Nothomb 🙂Bonne année !

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  12. Happy New Year! Congratulations on the shift in career direction. I can relate to that feeling of having less time to get out and about or catch up on blogging over the autumn months – I always feel I end up going into hibernation of sorts at that time of year! Hope 2026 holds many more adventures for you.

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  13. Happy Healthy New Year, Melodie! And huge congrats on your new position. I’m so excited for you. I always love seeing your photos and reading about your beautiful walks.
    I’m almost finished with The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, and my next read is The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson. I’ve heard it’s incredible.
    Thanks for being here:) I really do love your blog!

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  14. Congratulations on your new position at your company – don’t they say that ‘a change is as good as a holiday’? And an afternoon tea in Scotland must have been a very nice birthday gift – I wouldn’t mind that 😊. I always wanted to write our blog in two languages (Afrikaans being my native language), but it’s too time-consuming. Time is sometimes limited, and writing the same post in two different languages demands a lot from you (well done to you for doing it for such a long time). So, I think you are making the right decision in that regard. May 2026 be a good year for you – happy travels and great hiking trails!

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