Things to do as a couple?

gram333

This sounds like a stupid thing to post/say, but me and my girlfriend can never think of anything to do on our days off. Maybe its just this time of year, but anything we think of seems to involve spending a lot of money like going to the shops for the day and having a nice lunch out. That was ok when we weren't on a tight budget but we have a large mortgage together, cars to pay and a holiday saving for so cash is at a minimum. Its hard this time of year because the weather is so unpredictable. We end up spending weekends in the house, watch films/tv, cook, and venture for our weekly shop. Wow exciting life!

Few long weekends coming up so would like to plan ahead and have some cheap/free things to do for the day.

So any inspiration for things to do as a couple?

duchy

Depends where you live
You could go car booting, walk along a river or a canal, visit a local place of interest , check your local paper for events, fetes , exhibitions, go bowling .
Outdoorsy things don't have to mean a meal out -take a picnic, sign up for freebie tickets for the cinema, poke around antique shops, garden, go to the pub or wine bar after eating at home, visit an art gallery, lots of stately homes have free or reduced entry for their gardens , go to the gym (off peak rate of course) invite people around for a meal (who hopefully will ask you back so another day taken care of), volunteer for something -maybe a green project or an animal sanctury, go swimming , use tesco points for theme park admittance (with sandwiches of course), visit friends and family.
Your local paper may have ideas too- Most people with kids would LOVE to have your problem of what to do with "couple time"

OK some of those things are weather dependent but most aren't -and if all else fails there's always DIY -but done together-increasing the value of your investment.

pinkteapot

Hubby and I spend most of our weekend time out walking or playing boardgames (not Monopoly - decent board games!).

Walking is free (except for petrol/parking costs to get there) and around us there's lots of nice countryside and coast. Whereabouts do you live?

For walking with more of a purpose my husband's family are into geocaching - search for it on here. Basically, people hide little trinkets all over the place (outdoor areas) and you either know exactly where they are or you have clues to try and find them. A cheap GPS unit to start you off and you can take that up - crossing off ones you've found.

Boardgames cost us around £30 each on average but one game is the same price as lunch out and lasts a lot longer. :money:

We also both like cooking so we'll try out new recipes together.

Hubby is into wildlife photography and I'm a web geek so I've recently built him a website for his photos and we hope to start selling prints, mugs etc in the future.

We actually wish our working days were shorter as there's never enough time for everything!

Hubby loves it though because with his ex the only thing they would ever do together was watch TV.

dangers

We took out National Trust membership last year and although there is the initial outlay, you do tend to go out more. We re-couped our costs in only two or three days out and probably visited around 15 properties. Looking forward to March/April when they are all open again.

gram333

Thanks for the ideas! I know that we are lucky to have all the time in the world and nothing to do! We both have a busy week so can be glad of a rest at the weekends but dont want to waste away our holidays.

I live in Central Scotland, so a short drive would get us to some nice walking routes i imagine. Just knowing where to go i guess now... I like the sound of walking with a purpose, have heard of geocaching, i think she would think thats weird! Maybe castles/canals/beaches would be good to walk at.

pinkteapot

So jealous! I live in the south and would love to live in the Lake District or Scotland for the walking!

Google Scotland walks; bound to be plenty nearby. O/S maps don't cost too much and are often on 3for2.

Ebe_Scrooge

When the weather warms up a bit, you can't beat a spot of wild camping. A nice walk during the day, then in the evening sitting around a campfire, toasting sausages on sticks and enjoying a glass or 3 or wine is hard to beat.

FatVonD

Are either of you musical? My husband plays guitar very well (I play bass guitar very badly) and we've spent many a happy evening leaping around the sitting room learning a new song on our child-free weekend! If you're not musical guitar hero might work too

We currently have all the recording equipment for our new business venture in the house so we have spent a good few evenings singing various songs to backing tracks but you could do that with a fairly basic mic, it costs about 99p to download a backing track and it is good fun.

We opted not to go on our honeymoon (long story involving 16 pints of cider and my DH) and instead spent the next day in the greasy spoon for brunch then window shopping in the local antique shops. I feel blessed that given the choice of a weekend in Spain and what we ended up doing we actually preferred to do that because we can do that at any time

I love browsing around a local posh farm shop but have never gone down the 'pick your own' route (morbid fear of caterpillars) but that might be fun?

[Deleted User]

dangers wrote: »

We took out National Trust membership last year and although there is the initial outlay, you do tend to go out more. We re-couped our costs in only two or three days out and probably visited around 15 properties. Looking forward to March/April when they are all open again.

We also got the National Trust membership too. We buy ours using tesco vouchers though to save money.

One of the things we like to do when the weather is nice is get out early and go walking into our local wood. We usually have the place to ourselves. We stop halfway and have a nice picnic breakfast (croissants, fruit, hot chocolate).

We also play board games too. We have running revenge matches of Scrabble and Boggle as we are both evenly matched and are always desperate to beat each other.

Are you near the coast? We are about an hours drive away and sometimes go for a wander along the beach and then have fish and chips for dinnner / tea.

How about art exhibitions and museums? Even ones you are not interested in can be fun. We once went round a whole modern art museum (not our stuff at all) trying to vote for the worst piece in there.

ailuro2

Geocaching??

mirrorimage0

geocaching is good. we do it as a family


http://www.geocaching.com/