The Great 'Cheap When You Get There' Holidays

Daisies

Youth hostelling! I've only done it in this country but it's excellent and cheap. I was at Manchester Youth Hostel last week - a comfy bed, in 4 bed rooms with an en suite (there were only 3 of us in the room). You have the choice of self-catering (very cheap) or having meals provided at most hostels. Most include breakfast in the overnight price and it's an eat-as-much-as-you-want type breakfast with continental and English options all laid out. I bought the evening meal and it was about £7 for 3 courses - and was very tasty and filling. You could get away with just having breakfast and tea and skip lunch. Plus there are loads of facilities if you don't want to go out in the evening - Manchester had a room full of books, a games room and a TV room. I also met some wonderful interesting people over tea and breakfast - and it's up to you how much you get to know the others. Manchester also has free city centre buses (which you can use to get to the hostel) and the hostel is only 5 minutes walk from the free Museum of Science & Industry.
http://www.yha.org.uk

Also, on previous hostelling holidays I've been to various National Trust properties. If you arrive on foot or by public transport or bike you can often get free entry to the property (or if you're already a member a free cream tea). You can pretty much do the whole day for not much at all - tuck in at the YH breakfast, cycle or walk to NT property, show membership card, get free cream tea, spend most of day at property walking round park etc, walk back (we often got offered a lift by people driving away from the property who'd seen us arrive!) and tuck into hostel evening meal!

Daisies

And in much of the South West (and the Lake District and other places) many car parks are owned by the National Trust - you just have to have your membership car sticker on the car so you also get free parking. I don't know if English Heritage also does this?

falc_2

apparently you can stay for free on an organic farm in Italy or indeed anywhere as they always want people to help out. you have to work a certain number of hours a day, but it's not that taxing.

also for 3 x 6 hour shifts you can attend the Secret Garden Party Festival https://www.secretgardenparty.com for free! £110 normally.

Dinah_Gale_2

Some really good suggestions on this thread. Thanks everyone.

Don't know if this is the right place to ask a question but here goes. Perhaps this can be moved to a more appropriate thread if necessary.

I'd like to try camping for weekends but have no experience so would appreciate advice from anyone who knows a bit about it. For instance, I don't know which tent to buy. Lidl's have a two-man one for £9.99 right now but I don't know anything about the quality and whether it would be false economy to buy a really cheapo one - am tempted. As I said, any advice would be welcome.

I live in the westcountry and enjoy having visitors but do consider your hosts folks. You are likely not to be the only guests during the course of the year and it can get very expensive hosting holidays. Contributions to living expenses are welcome. As long as you are considerate it's a lovely way to spend some time away and you'll always be welcomed.

I have done house and animal sitting too. That's a nice way to see different parts of the country whilst getting paid or at least having all your food provided.

davidlizard

When we get a flight which arrives in the early hours of the morning, and ship out early the next day to a resort/island or wherever, we rarely bother wasting money on an overnight hotel - by the time one takes into account the time to collect luggage and if necessary get to the hotel (using expensive taxis as public transport is unlikely to be running at that time of night) not to mention later than planned arrival due to delayed departures, one probably only gets a couple of hours in the room.

Therefore we spend the night at the airport, for free !

This website has reviews of particular airports, and general sleeping tips.

http://www.sleepinginairports.net/

Just got back from Greece, arrived on the BA overnight flight at 2:30 am. Slept in the arrivals under some stairs until 6am when we got the bus to the ferries. A hotel would have cost us around £120.

Of course, this is not practical for all travellers or airports, but some are better than others.

Froggitt

The Sporting Manor Hotel/Manor House Hotel in Okehampton in Devon is pretty much all inclusive once youre there. Huge variety of inclusive activities, three pools, loads of indoor tennis courts, squash, bowling alley, three golf courses, art and craft, clay pigeon shooting...........

Daisies

davidlizard wrote: »

Therefore we spend the night at the airport, for free !
This website has reviews of particular airports, and general sleeping tips.
http://www.sleepinginairports.net/

I would definitely check in advance if you're planning to sleep at an airport though. I assumed that all were 24 hour places with those seats in rows you could lie along but I spent a night at Geneva airport and discovered that this isn't always the case. The airport closes for about 6 or 7 hours overnight (they will let you stay inside if you show them your passport and evidence that you're flying out in the morning but you get locked inside). All the seats had arm rests so you couldn't lie on them, so I spent half the night on the very hard floor! Plus, there was just me and a few men in the building - it was quite intimidating as they were wandering around. I think there was probably CCTV but I was still quite frightened and spent the other half of the night locked in the ladies! I was returning home from a job so it wasn't too bad (I went straight to a friend's flat on landing at Luton and slept for a whole day!) but I wouldn't recommend it as a way of starting a holiday - you'd be so exhausted you wouldn't enjoy it.

One option is to look for B & Bs locally, I know of several around East Midlands Airport that will let you leave your car with them - so you have to pay for overnight accommodation but you probably save on airport parking.

tenuissent

I can endorse Poland. We have just stayed at an "eco farm" in a tiny stone house with just about enough room for me, my daughter and her two sons, 8 and 11. They have fantastic horses and ponies (the famous Konik Polski indigenous ponies) and took us riding every day, safely and carefully, through extensive woods and fields. The boys helped with goat milking and loved the cats and kittens, dogs, frogs and toads, shopping in local town where the prices meant their pocket money went a long way, and being allowed to light enormous fires for cooking our food (normal cooker in small house). The final bill was so small that we spontaneously added £40 to it between us, not an instinctive reaction usually. They forgot to charge for heaps of fresh organic vegetables, goats' milk and cheese and some of the riding. It's difficult to explain how generous and welcoming they were (though I think they learnt quite a bit from us about how to deal with foreigners).

http://www.urlaub-anbieter.com/nowina.htm is in German, but you can get the flavour from the photographs. We drove there, camping on the way.

A neighbour will cook hot meals for a pittance, and we accepted gratefully for the first two days. They were so enormous that we made three further meals from them - she wept when we left, which made us feel guilty, as we had not seen much of her once we started cooking for ourselves. She also gave us some special dishes when she felt like it, for nothing.

There were some minor probs whch I can describe if anyone wants to know.

tenuissent

PS This is the site that explains how small Polish farms (now that Poland is in the EU) are being helped to receive foreign guests in order to remain viable:

http://www.solutions-site.org/artman/publish/article_12.shtml

nelly_2

I got my hair cut in Beijing for 14 pence

And one night we went out for a sushi all you can eat AND DRINK and it was £4.50