People's Postcode Lottery: Yorkshire dog courier to tour Japan and buy a digger after winning £12,000 for next 12 months

Mother-of-five Meg Carr said she had palpitations before finding out her prize – and now plans to go on a bucket list tour of Japan and buy a digger for her husband Andy. She will also spend some of the money doing up their secluded home in North Yorkshire, which they bought for a second time 22 years after British Coal forced them out using a compulsory purchase order.

Meg, 69, of Sherburn in Elmet, said: “This sort of money every month is dream-making. I had palpitations all morning and now they’ve gone. My heart was coming out of my chest. It’s just amazing and the weirdest sensation. I’m elated and feel like a kid in a sweet shop.

“We were already planning to take a trip to Japan this year. It’s been on the bucket list for quite some time. It’s a place we’ve both wanted to see. We’ll fly business class and go straight to Japan. We want to do the bullet train, Mount Fuji, see the monkeys and the cherry blossom trees.

“That’s the first £12,000 gone!”

Her LS26 6HW postcode won the People’s Postcode Lottery’s ‘An Unforgettable Year’ prize with 12 months of £12,000 cheques, but she will also be able to choose from a series of unforgettable experience ranging from a a seven-day safari to Kenya with Fauna & Flora International, a Brazilian rainforest visit with WWF and excursions to a national park in Mozambique or South Africa with Peace Parks Foundation.

The retired radiographer – who spent 43 years working for the NHS – now spends her time shuttling dogs across the globe as a courier. Her daughter Anna, 33, breeds French Bulldogs and five years ago a customer in Guam - a US island territory in Micronesia in the western Pacific – bought one.

She said: “We sold a dog to Guam and I didn’t even know where Guam was. The client asked if we could get a dog there and I said I didn’t know how. But I figured it out and flew Korean Air from Heathrow to South Korea then to Guam with a dog in a bag in the cabin.

“It is allowed. You’ve just to have the right paperwork. From there it just went crazy.”

Meg has now travelled the equivalent of five times round the world through the First Class Canine Travel business she started in 2018 – and is part of a network of French Bulldog breeders. Her deliveries have taken her across Europe, 38 states in America, Trinidad, Vietnam, Korea and Puerto Rico.

But now she wants to take time out to treat her family.

She said: “We have five daughters and seven grandchildren. There are a lot of things on their lists that we can now tick.”

Husband Andy, a HGV driver, wants a new digger to help transform the land they have around their converted farmhouse, including the rutted track leading to their home.

He said: “I want an excavator to do some work around here now. The track at the moment is dreadful. I’d like a Volvo or a CAT with a loading shovel. When we bought this place I had a 20-tonne excavator.”

Meg added: “Working the land is very time-consuming if you have to do it by hand.”

The family had lived in the secluded home – the oldest part of which is mentioned in the Domesday Book - until 1992 when they were forced out after British Coal successfully got a compulsory purchase order. The property was bricked up and left derelict for 22 years until the persistent couple finally managed to buy it back – and have been transforming it ever since.

Meg, who will use some of her winnings on a new shower, said: “It was heart-breaking to leave. We had a dream for this place, and they didn’t allow it.

“But we never stopped asking to buy it back. And when they said we could have it, it was amazing.

“The windows were all bricked up and some kids had set fire to part of it. But, apart from that, it was exactly as we’d left it with the wallpaper still on the walls the kids’ stickers still on the bedroom doors. It was very strange.”

Meg said they would celebrate their windfall with a night out – and hinted at a big party for her 70th later this year.

She said: “Tonight, we’ll be going for a steak and a bottle of champers. I’ve got a big birthday coming up in August. We’re going to get a marquee and a band and have everyone here.”

Meg also said she will donate money to some of her favourite charities including Cherished Gowns UK, who make burial gowns for babies.

She said: “Some of this money will go to charities that I support. I used to knit clothes for African charities. Now I’ve found a charity which converts bridal dresses into burial gowns for stillborn babies.”

Ambassador Danyl Johnson said: “Meg was this month’s winner of An Unforgettable Year and we really went out of our way to get the prize to her. Literally, because she lived a mile down a country track. It was great to spend time with her and Andy in the beautiful Yorkshire countryside. And the sun seemed to be shining a bit brighter by the time we’d left.”