What (free/cheap) things do you & your DP do together on winter evenings?

[Sadik]

Other than the obvious

Summer evenings if we're not too tired after work we'll often go out for a walk / to the beach / cycling. I always feel sad when it gets too dark in the evenings for that to be fun, it'd be really nice to find some winter-time equivalent.

We both go out to (separate) activities one evening in the week, & at weekends we'll often go to the pub with friends / out to a gig or something, so really looking for inspiration for activities that are home based / not costing money.

Our TV tastes don't really overlap, so that's not a great option as we tend to run out of things to watch.

During Covid, we started going on “post-work walks” and just kept them up, even in winter. Coffee/hot chocolate/mulled wine in a travel cup, and go for a stroll and a chat. When people start putting Christmas lights up then we like to have a look at those.

We don’t have space at the moment, but we also like to have a jigsaw on the go, to chip away at in the evening. Could you listen to a chapter of an audio book together, or a podcast episode?

Do you like board games? We've found some escape room type board games that are quite enjoyable. EXIT games do a series of them and they can be quite fun working out together. And there are some other cool investigative-type board games we've enjoyed a lot.

We do console/PC gaming too but that's obviously not free or cheap if you don't have the hardware!

Oh and one free thing we found that is fun is there are YouTube videos of guess the song from 80s/90s etc, so you stick them on and it plays a snippet of the song and you have to name it/the artist. It's quite nostalgic!

Play cards or board games.

Sporcle!

That definitely sounds fun!

We never seem to be inspired by board games just the 2 of us, but I should get back into inviting friends round to play, good reminder

Honestly, lots of tv but also following people on you tube, music stuff as pp suggested.

I'd never heard of that - looks great! Pub quiz without the pub

I'll look out for jigsaws in the charity shops too

We sometimes just read our books, in companionable silence.

It really is great. We're both mad Frasier fans and the Frasier quizzes are great!
The Geography ones are our next favourite.

We've got an eternal tournament of gin rummy on the go. Some matches in the tournament have prizes attached to them (laundry slave, nice massage etc)

That we definitely do already :) :)

We actually walk more in the colder months. Never go for walks during the summer. Nothing better than a walk looking at all the Halloween and Christmas decorations . We also love just dance at home with the teenagers and karaoke.

Board games, with music in the background. We’ve got a 1001 albums to listen to before you die book so we try to pick something from that.

Find a console game to play together - just dance on the Nintendo switch if you like to be active!

Get yourselves a couple of kettlebells and do a workout together, in the garden if you have one.

We're very rural, so not much streetlighting to walk in - we were just saying the other day though that we should go out cycling by moonlight when it's full moon. Fingers crossed this winter will be a bit less wet than the last one.

We do jigsaws and every now and then get one of those escape room games that you can do at home. They’re great fun!
Also we hook up YouTube through the tv and do Jays Pub Quiz. He does them live I think twice a week, but we just play the recordings. They take about 45-60mins, with four rounds, and we compete against each other. We always have loads of fun doing them.

I don't have a DP, but my teen daughters & I love to play backgammon