Bargain holiday!

I thought as many of you have expressed an interest in how our barain holiday went I would dedicate a post to.

I booked at the very last minute and got our caravan for £69 instead of the £250 it should have gone for. We had 4 nights; Monday to Friday. The caravan was on a Parks holiday site. See my post here for pictures of our caravan. It was a Silver level caravan this meant that we got the bedlinen included in the price, we had a fully equipped kitchen with toaster, microwave, fridge etc. We also had a tv and dvd player (although it says you only get DVD players in Gold accomodation on the website). The caravan was very clean and well looked after, unlike some we have been in in the past on a different holiday site a few years ago.

Our entertainment passes were included in the price I paid for the caravan these gave us use of the swimming pool, and the clubhouse. There were also children's entertainment activities going on during the day included but we didn't use these so I don't know how they were. There were some entertainment in the evenings for the children for me the entertainment leader lacked a little enthusiasm and could have livened up a little, that said Stephanie seemed to enjoy herself when joining in.

Not advertised on the website was that the swimming pool on our site was closed, we were told we could journey to the next Park holiday site and use their pool free but we didn't do this. There was no hidden extras onsite; no fair rides for children to pester for, no go-karting/crazy golf etc etc that we have had on previous sites. This did mean there wasn't a huge amount to do on site but as we planned on exploring the local area it wasn't a problem I have never been a fan of all singing all dancing spend spend spend sites. So this site suited us perfectly.

 This holiday did prove to be a complete bargain, I would happily pay cheap rates to come again, I wouldn't pay the full asking price. When I compare this break to ones in the past when we have taken a sun holiday I have found that it is not for £9.50 as advertised as you have to pay for 2 adults!!! I hate that! then you pay for the children, then a surcharge for the entertainment passes, then pay for bedding etc. When we did a Sun holiday I took my sister as I refused to pay for an absent adult, altogether our £9.50 holiday was around £100.

I took food for us to make all of our meals with us and each day we took a packed lunch out with us so we barely spent on food. Apart from Thursday when I managed to leave the cool bag on the caravan table! I had packed it with drinks and nibbles as I was planning to surprise the children to a fish and chip lunch, so not a great loss I did end up paying out a few pound in drinks, but this was balanced out by discovering if we parked at the top of the Cliffe and walked down to the front we paid £1.20 to park for 4 hours instead of £4 for 3 hours at the bottom of the Cliffe.

We had 2 days we spent on the beach and a little play in the arcades I gave the children £2 each in total and they used their pocket moneys and had lots of fun. We visited Battle Abbey making use of our English Heritage membership so saved £7.80 per adult and £4.70 per child  on entrance fees, also as we were members the car park for the whole day was £1 instead of £4.50. So in all we saved £20.70 on that day out.

I did spend a little on treats, we went to the clubhouse for one drink each evening which cost between £3.50 and £5 each time, and we spent £1.25 per game on 3 games of bingo. Our fish and trip treat ended up being a little more than anticipated as due to wet weather at lunch time we decided to eat in and not have soggy chips. So lunch for 3 plus drinks came to £14.00. Which was only a little more than I had expected it to be.

We had a fantastic time on our bargain holiday which truely had no hidden extras, so I will be keeping a close eye on the Parks holiday website to see if we can book a bargain during another school holiday.