What's your best 'ridiculously cheap travel' story?

phatbear

linz said:

My mum saved enough Nectar points about 25 years ago to redeem for 3 return flights with BA to South Africa to take my nana to visit her nephew. So yeah, effectively free but God knows what she spend in Sainsburys beforehand to reach the criteria.

Now were talking. 

I was one of the many who took advantage of the frozen roast beef situ at tesco and pay for buis class flights for not a lot of cash, this was back in the day when avios didnt charge any taxes etc on flights

gallygirl

Years ago, newly separated and hard up. Friend and I booked Sun Holiday deal to a site in Torquay, pleased to get our second choice.
Arrived early to discover site on fire! Got moved to top grade caravan on our preferred site then got a nice note through the door the following day to apologise for the inconvenience and refunding all we had paid .
Sun shone all week, we had a great time .

AlexMac

We hitched through France to the Costa Blanca, south of Valencia, in the late 1960's when there were still unspoilt, empty beaches stretching for miles and backed by orange groves.  Many now turned into concrete strips of hotels and high rise apartments; I checked Google streetview for the one running north from a place called Cullera the other day.  It was so quiet there then that we only saw one other local couple walk past us all day.  Tourists were so rare that they rang the Guardia Civil who sent a soldier out to sweat along the beach in full military gear; shiny patent leather bandolier and tricorn hat and gun, to check us out (the Dictator Generalissimo Franco was still in power to you didn't mess with the authorities!  But everything, from hotel prices to the menus in Cafes had to be approved, and stamped by the Town Hall)

Transport obviously only cost the ferry-fare, and we couldn't believe how cheap everything was in both France and Spain.   Our first ever hotel room in Spain (in fact, my first hotel anywhere, although this was in La Jonquera, on the French border) cost us 150 Pesetas; about 17 shillings and sixpence in old money- less than a quid or about 85p today.  We needed the hotel; with brandy at 6d (six old pence) for a massive glass, and not having slept for the 36 hours it took through France, my girlfriend got blind drunk!

France had been equally cheap en route. We stopped and tentatively ordered a glass of wine on the first afternoon; 30 Centimes, or about three p in today's dosh.  We'd also never been in a proper restaurant; so when after hitching since the night before, we rocked up, ravenous, to the only hotel-restaurant in the little village we'd reached; a "Relais Routier", we were a bit nervous. Then amazed to see the menu; ten Francs or a quid then, for a slap up meal with three courses, bread, wine and service.

We lived like a king and a queen!

zagfles

AlexMac said:

We hitched through France to the Costa Blanca, south of Valencia, in the late 1960's when there were still unspoilt, empty beaches stretching for miles and backed by orange groves.  Many now turned into concrete strips of hotels and high rise apartments; I checked Google streetview for the one running north from a place called Cullera the other day.  It was so quiet there then that we only saw one other local couple walk past us all day.  Tourists were so rare that they rang the Guardia Civil who sent a soldier out to sweat along the beach in full military gear; shiny patent leather bandolier and tricorn hat and gun, to check us out (the Dictator Generalissimo Franco was still in power to you didn't mess with the authorities!  But everything, from hotel prices to the menus in Cafes had to be approved, and stamped by the Town Hall)

Transport obviously only cost the ferry-fare, and we couldn't believe how cheap everything was in both France and Spain.   Our first ever hotel room in Spain (in fact, my first hotel anywhere, although this was in La Jonquera, on the French border) cost us 150 Pesetas; about 17 shillings and sixpence in old money- less than a quid or about 85p today.  We needed the hotel; with brandy at 6d (six old pence) for a massive glass, and not having slept for the 36 hours it took through France, my girlfriend got blind drunk!

France had been equally cheap en route. We stopped and tentatively ordered a glass of wine on the first afternoon; 30 Centimes, or about three p in today's dosh.  We'd also never been in a proper restaurant; so when after hitching since the night before, we rocked up, ravenous, to the only hotel-restaurant in the little village we'd reached; a "Relais Routier", we were a bit nervous. Then amazed to see the menu; ten Francs or a quid then, for a slap up meal with three courses, bread, wine and service.

We lived like a king and a queen!

The relative change in price to today is interesting, looking at RPI https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/cdko/mm23 here prices have gone up about 20x since the late 60's, so that'd make:

The hotel about £17 - cheap (maybe comparable to some parts of Eastern Europe today)

The brandy - 50p - very cheap!!

The wine - 60p - cheap

The meal - £20 - quite expensive for a set menu in France IME! But not too bad. (cheap if was for 2)

I backpacked round Western Europe a few times for a budget of £5 a day each in the early 80's (about £21 in today's money). Eastern Europe in the communist days was incredibly cheap for the basics if you got money exchanged at the "real" rate not the "official" rate. But quite dodgy. In the early 90's just after Eastern Europe opened up properly after they all kicked the communists out, prices were dirt cheap, remember paying 17p a pint for a beer in Prague (41p in today's money) in around 1993. Hotels and eating out were really cheap too, but can't remember the prices. 

PompeyPete

I joined the Royal Navy in 1971 in the hope that I'd see as much of the world we live in on the cheap, and get paid for the privilege.....I didn't have to wait too long.

In May 1973 I joined my first seagoing ship, HMS TIGER, an helicopter cruiser.

A week after I joined TIGER she began a 7 months 'Flag Flying' deployment to the Far East.  The batting order of the deployment was as follows......Portsmouth...Gibraltar...Cape Town...Mauritius...Singapore (for 5 weeks)...Hong Kong...Philipines (Subic Bay)...Philipines (Manila)....Guam...Singapore....Mauritius...Cape Town...Gibraltar...Portsmouth just in time for 3 weeks Xmas Leave!

So considering all accommodation and meals were free onboard ship, I was getting paid, and that essentially the trip was Flying the Flag for UK, it was more like a long working holiday.  Pretty good value for money!

mark_cycling00

On the first anniversary of 9/11 everyone in the US seemed to go into a panic and cancel flights. I flew LA to London for $25 on that day and had a row of seats to myself.

Brie

if we're talking about meals....me and the OH went to Paris for a few days in 1987.  Can't remember what the trip cost but it would have been cheap as we had very little money.  OH had been there before so knew the museums and where to stop and what to eat and suggested a place near Notre Dame for dinner one night.  I though it was a bit much at 11 francs each but it had confit du canard which I was told I absolutely had to try.  So in we popped.  

The duck was one of about 4 mains on the set price menu so we set about trying to decide what to have for our starters.  Non! There was no choice!!  They brought everything.  Lentil salad, huge block of pate, basket full of bread, huge tray of crudites with various dips.  And OH asked for the wine list.  NON! Red or white?  a large carafe of red was brought.  And the waiter said to tell him when we were finished with our starters and when we needed more wine.  After about an hour we decided to move on to the main which was delightful.  And some more wine.  And then cheese - a whole trolley load was left beside our table.  With more wine.  There may have been dessert.  In fact I'm sure there was.  And wine.  And coffee.  So a long lovely meal taking about 4 hours in total for 22 francs. 

Entertainment was courtesy of the Americans sitting next to us who caused the very waiter to get more and more French with each passing exchange.  The best being when he tutted very loudly when they asked for rose instead of red or white.  Net result was a carafe of both red and white being brought to the table with an empty carafe that he then filled half way with each.  And then gave the remaining 2 half carafes to us as we were obviously not so silly.

purple12

My sister celebrated her 40th birthday by paying for siblings and partners to go to Las Vegas for a long weekend. I have two sisters. On the way to Las Vegas, busy Easter weekend - the airline (United) asked if anyone would transfer off the flight because it was overbooked. We were routed via San Francisco. I went to the desk and said five of us would transfer off, if they could get us to Las Vegas via a different route.  Four people out of the five were upgraded to business class (I volunteered to remain in Economy), we flew via LA and arrived in Las Vegas about 3 hours after we would have on the original flight. 

Better, though, we were offered vouchers for a free return flight from the UK to anywhere in the United States. My other sister had a friend who was working in Honolulu so the following Spring, we flew to Honolulu on the free return ticket and stayed with her friend so didn't pay for accommodation. Best holiday but also cheapest holiday. 

debbie6899

In 2019 I managed to find a bargain holiday for 2 people to Corfu for £564 total for two weeks in August. Place was beautiful, we even had a two bedroomed sea view apartment. We were due to arrive about 7pm at night. 

The outbound flight was delayed by 6 hours. We were given food/drinks and arrived at the accommodation about 3am so didn’t really miss anything. 

On our return to the uk I realised we could claim flight delay compensation of 300 euros per person so we actually got 600 euros back essentially making the whole holiday free! 🙂🙂🙂