I hate my budget holiday

[ValentinaTheVampire]

We have small children to do things on a budget so we tend to do self catering in the UK to avoid paying for flights and also so we aren't all squashed into a hotel room.

But ugh, it has been so miserable this time (we are away at the moment). The weather where we are staying is pretty miserable. We are staying near family where I grew up as we tried to do holiday and family visit in one and I am honestly just counting down the days. I'm so tired from all the driving about and visiting and trying to keep kids entertained in the rain with none of their usual stuff around to help.

The cottages we've had the past few holidays have been so tired looking and even then they are so expensive.

I have a small but perfectly nice house at home. Kids aren't exactly getting a cultural experience here (although they are loving seeing family).

Dh wants to do another holiday cottage for my 40th birthday which is coming up over other school holidays and I've just told him no fucking way 😂.

I'd rather spend the money on my house or save for a nicer holiday even if we don't get one as often.

I can't tell if holidays have got worse or if I have become a that who just likes staying at home.

We learnt from last year 3 toddlers and a teen we've always stayed holiday cottages but last year was dismal rain rain rain. So this year we changed it to stay home, days out, treats,takeaways etc and it went great for 2 weeks, all seemed to enjoy it and the amount of places we had fun at we didn't even know was on our own doorstep

Thanks for all the posts.

I'm reading them now.

@Onomatopoeiadoodle, that's a great deal! I will look at that for next summer maybe. Just a short break and then we can staycation the rest of the time.

@Ohdofuckofdear there is a swimming pool with slides nearby and an aquarium. Further away there are other things like fairly well known beauty spots and a zoo. There is a cinema too. It's all a bit of a drive away because we're in the countryside, but we are booking the aquarium and not seeing relatives one day. I'm trying to keep some days free of family visits to make it more of a holiday, but tbf, the kids are enjoying the family visits. There are kids their age so they run off steam as well which helps.

I think campervans are £££££ these days? That's quite a big investment. Not sure we're up for that at the moment, but I can definitely appreciate they would make travel a lot easier.

@ValentinaTheVampire I've seen that your accommodation cost approx £800 per week? I'm the UK I wouldn't expect a decent cottage for that price to be honest.
We love our UK holidays but that's because we plan everything before we go and have contingencies for bad weather. So we have a list of everything we want to do and I spend weeks researching locations to make sure there is enough to do. We have National Trust + Englsh Heritage membership so get free entry to places etc.
We've been all over UK from Scottish Highlands to Cornwall and enjoyed every holiday but we spend at least 1.5K per week on the accommodation and don't treat it as a budget holiday.
When DD was younger (same age as yours are now) we loved Featherdown holidays: glamping on farms where the kids could run feral and they didn't care whether it was raining or not. Always other kids around the same age so you could guarantee that she would make friends and have a blast. They are much cheaper than renting a cottage.

You're right @twistyizzy. It's a low budget.

In years gone by we could go out of school holidays and also things were cheaper, so a cheap cottage then was actually quite nice!

I think we need to have shorter, nicer holidays less often instead of 2 weeks somewhere not great

@ValentinaTheVampire sounds like a good plan! The cost of holidaying in the UK is getting crazy.

For £800 in the UK with younger kids, I'd have been more likely to go down the Haven or similar route.

I find that with small children that if you pick the right holiday for them it's a much nicer holiday for you, even if it's somewhere you'd prefer not to go to. Like others our best holidays have been Butlins. I know people turn their noses up at it but it's easy with the shows, fairground, swimming etc all together. We also did the food plan so didn't need to worry about food. We also have enjoyed caravan holidays over the years with pools and stuff on site.

This year we have had a self catering holiday in the UK and multiple day trips out which all ended up costing ££££ despite my best efforts

I can categorically say next year I will be booking an AI abroad somewhere hot and sunny with a pool.

There's no Butlins or Haven or anything in this area. There are caravan parks but they tend to only have a play area and a shop rather than what you'd get in Butlins.

I'm just looking at a short break at Butlins for next year though. Not £500, but the cheapest accommodation is £750ish for 4 days so about the same as this cottage but at least there would be activities for the kids? Or is it not worth it if it's the cheapest part?

They've rebranded their accommodation so it's a bit confusing but as a rule of thumb anything labelled 'standard' is pretty poor. We did silver once & it was just about ok. I would say anything above silver will be fine. We stayed in the comfort plus apartments recently at minehead and they were lovely. The lakeside chalets are even nicer but ££.

Go on LoveHolidays.

You can find holidays abroad with flights and hotel for a family of four for £1,500 (£375pp) or less.

OK thanks @MissAtomicBomb1 and @TheWayoftheLeaf. Will look at both

That's an amazing deal.

which butlins?

I am currently on a UK s/c holiday, luckily we have hit lucky with the weather this week where we are.

Prices shot up ridiculously in COVID times, but they are (ime) slowly coming back down, for example the place we are at now is currently at least 10% cheaper next year for the same week.

It is much harder when they are little, I have a grumpy teen but she just keeps herself to herself and I'm fine with that. The younger years are tough, but it does get easier.

OP I know you responded to this, but I just wanted to second house swaps,
Especially with kids. We used to do that and had amazing holidays which we could have never afforded if we had been paying for accommodation.
You are staying in somebody's home and it's so much better equipped than a holiday let or Airbnb.
If you swap with families with children of a similar age, there are toys to play with, kitchens were properly equipped, the places we stayed in were generally bigger than any holiday rental we would have gone for.
I loved home swaps - now our children are not interested in coming in holiday with us anymore and I miss the house swaps.

We used guardian home exchange. You can just have a look at locations/properties without having to sign up. And it was less than £50 a year. And you can do as many swaps as you want.

If you were happy to just do a week, look at Center Parcs in Holland/Belgium. Cheap in last week of holidays usually, and feels more like being away than uk ones (plus cheaper!!)

We usually holiday in the uk, but never hotels it’s like being locked in a box with the kids, and I’m going off cottages, unless with friends. Holiday parks and caravan parks work at the moment, the kids go off by themselves now. Camping is good too but more work!

Hi OP, apologies if someone has already suggested it or if it’s not convenient for you to get but we recently had a wonderful short break stay at Fisher’s Farm Park near the South Downs - they only have 2 accommodation units (one that sleeps 6/7, one that sleeps 4) but I was able to get a booking this summer at relatively short notice and the accommodation is very pleasant (I think I have quite high standards) and there is lots for primary-aged kids at the farm park including indoor soft play. There’s a great gastropub 5 mins walk for the evening and it’s within reach of other things like Paulton’s Park. which is more than what you wanted The accommodation includes entry to the adventure farm park every day but if you go for more than a couple of days you’ll prob want to break it up with something else but we found it a very pleasant low-stress break. This year their summer hols price for a full week was £825 which is a good price for anything anywhere really.

@ValentinaTheVampire I think with the age yours are then Butlins is a great option- pay for at least gold plus meals (ideally) and it's good. You can't be snobbish about it, there will be some aspects you think WTF- but if you go with the mentality that your children will love it and can run around to their hearts content with tons of stuff to do . The foods not fancy but is ok and the weather doesn't become the focal point. Standard uk cottages , hotels and apartments are frequently a crap holiday unless you are lucky enough to hit a good week weather wise. If you are not a hiking, biking, mountain climbing family happy to be in cagoules- Butlins is your friend or even Haven at a push- some nice sites near Weymouth etc -

My other holiday suggestion is Landal parks but pick strategically eg look for the last 2 weeks of August for the Scottish ones, and depending on when your Feb half term is the Cornwall one is extremely good value. Also for the holiday parks if you can do a shorter break you can save a lot by going Mon-Fri and avoid the weekend where there’s often a bump in price.

Oh and finally YANBU to not be up for “same shite worse surroundings” type holidays.

I am completely feeling you OP. We are going on holiday on Saturday, week in Cornwall, in a s/c ground floor flat. The weather forecast is dreadful. DS2 is 15 and DD is 12. Dh and I have had a dreadful couple of months at work (NHS) and I really needed this week to relax before a new onslaught but it isn't going to happen by the looks of it. This is the last year I'm doing the UK. Last year we did camping in Wales, year before Northern Ireland, year before a Scottish Island. The air bnb's have been pretty dismal. The weather has been crap every year. No more!

We split our holiday budget and normally manage 4 holidays a year. We do a caravan short stay for the last weekend of September. In fact we just booked it this week. £205 for a top of the range private caravan on the haven Thorpe park site. It would have been cheaper (£168) to book direct with haven but the horror stories of bad caravans puts me off. Private booking we have always got exactly what we see in the pictures. It is costing us £76 for the passes and I have noticed that apart from free access to swimming and the entertainment you do still pay for the other activities so with food I expect the weekend will cost us around £4-500. We book Fri-Mon although come back the Sunday evening ready for work/school but booking the Monday means we have use of the caravan all day Sunday.
I have just been pricing up our other holidays but can’t book until I know my work schedule. 5 nights self catering to Tenerife in a lovely hotel with pool for February half term is coming in at £466pp with free child place for ds. We will then do 5 nights in a caravan for ds’s birthday at May half term in Skegness (his favourite place but definitely not mine) and then 7 nights all inclusive somewhere in July. We normally miss the last day or so of school to keep the cost slightly lower on that one. The 5 nights in Skegness is always the most expensive but we do let ds spend quite a bit in the arcades each day and £20 can easily be gone in 5 minutes these days.
I also think we are easily pleased, our holidays abroad mainly consist of laying round a pool for me as ds will spend his whole day in the water, dp gets bored easier so we have a few trips out to have a walk around the local area and sometimes do trips to places like Siam park/Loro park if in Tenerife
We are not a high income family, earn around 45k between us but live in a very cheap northern city with no childcare costs and day to day living isn’t much. We do activities cheaply through the summer holidays so booked the zoo late night opening when they sent through 50% off codes, used meerkat movies for a cinema trip yesterday etc

I've not read the whole thread so apologies if these have already been suggested, but definitely recommend Eurocamp (also look at Roan, Homair, Allcamps etc., and booking directly with the campsite - can be cheaper with better accommodation). Also European Center Parcs, we've off to Erperheide in October half term and it's perfect for young kids with pool, soft play, little farm. We're paying about £1000 including the shuttle - the same week at a UK Center Parcs is £2500! Landal also do lots of sites in Europe - check out Little Clogs Holidays on Facebook for lots of review and advice.

We did the Butlins just for tots Christmas week last year, paid about £200 for four nights including buffet dining and had a great time with all the festive activities, pantos and amazing pool.

Also have a look at Bowleaze Cove Holiday Park and Spa in Weymouth. It's a caravan site but they are really nice modern caravans, there's a soft play and fun pool, and they do kids entertainment. Similar price to the Haven sites in the area but so much nicer.