Travelling On A Budget

We often get shocked at how much folks are willing to pay for vacations.

Even if we become billionaires...no don't laugh, you never know...we will no doubt continue to travel simply. 

We love camping for starters, so we can't imagine not doing it and then there's a real joy in bargain hunting hotels and holiday accommodation.

We tend to camp if we can do more than 3 nights and the weather's nice. If it's not so good, then we usually look at self-catering accommodation and easily find great places. When we're on the road we tend to find cheap motels for overnight stays and book a few hours before arrival to save money. These can be anything from a motel chain to a more fancy pants country hotel...on our last trip to France we found ourselves staying in the grounds of a vineyard in Burgundy and it was lovely! 

A lot of small hotels open up to business travellers out of season and when they still have rooms available, they reduce their prices and that's where we come in!

Travelling out of season is a great way of cutting costs, but if you want tourist attractions and great weather every day this may not suit you... 

We've been able to negotiate deals with cottage owners in winter, especially when it's been for more than a couple of weeks. 

If you are travelling with kids in France, we would definitely recommend looking at the companies who provide ready set up tents on campsites like Canvas Holidays or Eurocamp. They usually do great deals if you can have 3 weeks or more with a free week thrown in sometimes! 

Our family loved these holidays and the campsites have always been lovely, we have continued even after the kidlets stopped coming with us, just because we enjoy it so much!

The nice thing about paying less for accommodation means that we have more money to spend on food, though we have that down to a fine art too...being champion vegan picnickers, we always find food we can eat cold on the road with the occasional meal out if we can find a suitable place to eat. Quite a few people ask us about what we eat when on the road in France, we will write a post about it soon.

One of the nicest things to do when travelling is what we are doing now - house and pet sitting...in the UK we get paid assignments and in France, it's a free holiday with kitties!

Then there is WWOOF and Workaway where you can exchange your time for accommodation and food. 

Websites like Couchsurfer are becoming bigger and we signed up some years ago, though have never used it - we would love to hear about other people's experiences of free stays and any other ideas you might have for holidays on a budget.

Love Kay and Sime xx