With summer right around the corner millions of us will be looking for things to do, either during the school holidays or as a quick weekend getaway.
When the weather holds out the UK is a fantastic place for a staycation, hopping on a train or jumping in the car for a day trip, or a few nights away.
Staycations are a fantastic way to explore the country, see the sights and relax without needing to fight your way through an airport.
The perfect destination
First port of call is to decide where you’re going. There’s tonnes of choice when it comes to travelling in the UK, from the Scottish Highlands to the south coast, to any one of the hundreds of city breaks, campsites or holiday homes that are available.
There’s a lot of choice, which means actually choosing where you want to go can be hard work. For a family trip, it means trying to please everyone. As part of the planning process, it might be fun to get everyone to suggest ideas for where they’d like to go. This can help create a shortlist or narrow down the sort of places people want to visit. For example, if most people want to head to the beach or want to go on a shopping trip to a city, you can start looking at city breaks and coastal stays. There might even be an option to combine the two depending on where you finally decide to visit.
This gives you some extra breathing room and takes the stress out of your journey, which if you’re covering a lot of distance makes the whole drive a lot more tolerable.
This gives you some extra breathing room and takes the stress out of your journey, which if you’re covering a lot of distance makes the whole drive a lot more tolerable.
When do you go?
What dominates the UK summer is the kids being off school. Planning a staycation tends to be a case of working around term-time, or if you’re child-free, trying to avoid as many kids and holidaying families as possible.
Keep in mind that day trips and staycations spike over Summer, so booking in advance or aiming at the earlier or later points in Summer could help to avoid crowds or ensure you can actually get into the places you want to visit.
If when you go somewhere isn’t influenced by the school holidays looking at locations and any events that jump out at you like festivals, shows or exhibitions can help you to pick the time you want to visit.
What to do
Sometimes you can visit somewhere and just want to do nothing. Relaxing by a pool or chilling out in a spa might be your perfect idea of a getaway. Some people like to relax by being busy and having things to do. Whether that’s exploring, shopping, participating in activities or taking in the sights.
Organising what you’re doing while you’re away usually involves a little bit of forward planning. It’s often a good idea to book anything major in advance, either to avoid disappointment or in many cases to help save money.
Setting a budget
It’s really easy for the costs of a staycation to skyrocket if you aren’t careful. From splashing out on accommodation to eating out, entrance fees, souvenirs, and everything in between. It’s important that you set yourself a budget, especially because unlike being abroad you have constant access to your money and there’s no need for currency conversion. That means it’s much easier to be impulsive and end up spending more than you intended. Having a budget in place helps avoid this and stops you from feeling stressed when you get back and undoing the whole relaxing part of going away.
Have a plan B
Sometimes plans need to change. Issues with transport, poor weather or attractions being closed can throw a spanner in the works when it comes to your staycation.
When you make your list of possible destinations and activities there will be some that are absolute essentials for a trip and others that you might want to do but not necessarily have to do. Keep them in reserve as your plan B activities. That way if something goes wrong with your initial plan you aren’t scrambling for ideas and as you already have a backup of something else you can go and do.
In theory, a staycation should be much easier to plan than a holiday abroad. There’s less shopping, prep and hunting down of passports to do. In some cases, it’s as easy as jumping in the car and away you go.
Your parking shouldn’t cause a problem either. Stress around where to park can ruin a trip, thankfully we’ve recently released our new Evology Parking app which allows you to pay for parking the way that suits you as well as letting you browse car parks around the UK to find the perfect place to leave your car while you get on with your day.
You can get your hands on the Evology Parking app on the App Store or Play Store using the links below:
