How not to have a money-saving holiday!

by Alison Hunt on 10 June 2009  |  2 comments
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I don't know about you, but my family at least is on a bit of an economy drive. So while I do love my luxurious foreign trips, for the last couple of years we've been watching the pennies and staying closer to home.

Welcome to my first official blog!

I don't know about you, but my family at least is on a bit of an economy drive. So while I do love my luxurious foreign trips, for the last couple of years we've been watching the pennies and staying closer to home.

To be honest, so far we haven't felt like we're missing much - we still get to see beautiful sights, beaches and countryside but travel at our own pace and completely avoid airports, which, when you have small children in tow is an obvious added bonus.

This year we planned to camp in Scotland with another family - at just a few pounds per night we'd save a fortune and May was forecast to be dry and midge-free. So we booked a lodge for the first few nights, borrowed a tent (we're newbie campers!) packed the kids in the car and off we went.

The sun shone, the birds sang and everything was idyllic. We smugly grinned at each other for planning such an amazing holiday and looked forward to sunning ourselves at our campsite overlooking the sea, while the children all played happily nearby.

Yes, it would be perfect.

So what happened? Yup, you guessed it, it rained. And rained, and rained and rained. And then the midges appeared. Great. And finally, after grudgingly admitting financial defeat we searched for a cottage via the internet for the rest of our trip.

But there was a bright side. By arguing the fact it was a last minute booking (the cottage would have been empty otherwise) we drove down the price by a third - and splitting this between two families made it very reasonable indeed. Ah, who wanted to camp in the first place?

So what did I learn? Have a plan B, always negotiate and never, ever rely on the wonderful British weather!