August holiday help

[BigLittleRedOne]

Partner and I are freelance which means work can be unpredictable and makes planning tricky, this year has been particularly so.
We've just about managed to book the last week of August off and am now trying to find us a holiday.
Looking for suggestions for low-budget (sub £3k) for one week, 2 adults 2 kids (age 7 and 10), not that keen on package hols.
Ideally somewhere where breakfast was included or meals were available (we did an agriturismo one year in Italy which was perfect for this) as I don't really feel like the endless cooking/cleaning up cycle is much of a holiday. I realise this might be too much to ask!
Anyone have any ideas? Ideally Europe but could do UK, could drive and ferry but don't want too much of a drive as it's not long enough to spend days in the car.
Looking for ideas of location and ideally specific accommodation recs!
TIA.

You could look at youth hostels. Most sell breakfast and an evening meal.

3k ppn or 3k all in?

have you got any camping kit?

Castleton YH might suit you www.yha.org.uk/hostel/yha-castleton-losehill-hall?startDate=23/08/2025&endDate=30/08/2025&males=1&females=1&malesChild=1&femalesChild=1#room

What do you find off putting about 'package holidays'.

Because if that's code for low budget All Inclusive where you spend your time getting pissed around a pool punctuated by fighting over chips at a buffet, you may have missed that it's not all like that and it's just a way of booking any type of accommodation, that could include a nice self catering apartment, small villa or caravan at the same time as the flights and usually a transfer that gives you extra legal protection and could possibly be cheaper, especially at short notice.

If your experience of self catering feels like an endless cycle of cooking and clearing up, it doesn't have to be like that either. We always either self cater or stay in a hotel on a B&B basis, eat out usually once a day and then have a couple of trips to the supermarket, which we always make sure is in walking distance, along with beach, restaurants and other amenities, to stock up on drinks, snacks, ice creams and perhaps easy food like cheese, ham, prepared salads, pizza etc if we have cooking facilities.

If you stayed in a hotel on a B&B basis, you'd probably nearly have enough food each day by having a big breakfast just before service finishes then one other meal out each day, plus an ice cream or other snack. So no cooking and cleaning at all.

So you could look at the late deals section of Jet2holidays, there's nearly 300 holidays under £3k, some under £2k, so would give you a decent chunk of spending money to pay for meals out - just check that it's somewhere central so you have a choice of restaurants, supermarkets, ice cream shops etc.

www.jet2holidays.com/search/results?airport=3&date=21-08-2025&duration=7&occupancy=r2c7_10&destination=155_153_154_152_2291_1679_1452_1497_122_125_145_2241_1773_151_150_149_2112_160_159_1584_156_1719_161_2053_157_2169_139_129_2191_8_95_103_2071_94_1364_99_2028_2235_98_97_1747_105_2051_2052_1857_1858_104_1929_1928_2034_2229_2233_2260_7_1359_2119_2118_26_4&flexi=3&boardbasis=1_4&tripadvisor=4&sortorder=1&page=1&maxtotalprice=3000

All in! We do have camping kit yes and we normally do a couple of camping weekends over the summer.