Hello budget holiday, you penny pincher beauty! (Part 1 – Yorkshire)

No English holiday is complete without ruins and a red phone box.  Peferably both!

I have a confession to make.  

I have a bad case of the travel bug, but I’m mostly broke.  Well, I’m not THAT broke but I certainly can’t afford lush holidays and wanton spending.  Every single penny gets turned over and considered before we can spend it, and this naturally includes holidays.  It’s only because of very careful planning that we get to travel and explore as much as we do, but if you look closely, you’ll see that I’m self-appointed queen of cheap and free activities.  Which basically means I do great research.

And I absolutely love it!  Little did I know that my slender wallet would lead me on a path of travel that I didn’t consider…the jam packed, penny pincher, cultural experience holiday.  I’ve shared my tips on travel in the UK before, you can read it here, but this series of posts is a few months overdue.  Today I want to share how we managed a week-long summer holiday on just £700. 

You read that correctly, £700 inclusive of food, accommodation, transport and activities.  Yes, it CAN be done, and this is what we did. 

I’m not going to bore you with tiny details on how we pulled this off, but I will say that I spent 6 months planning this holiday.  6 months of writing notes in a little note book, jotting down URLs, recording ideas and prices or great places to see.  Before we even got in that car, I had our budget worked out to the last detail, as well as what we were going to do with our time in between driving.  I’ll include links in my posts to save you some time because I’m nice like that.

What this series is about, is what we actually did for a whole week while we were child free in the hot, hot summer of 2018 😊

Our journey had a bumpy start when we decided to take our bikes (THAT's a rather funny story for another day), but hadn’t actually worked out how to properly fit the rack. So we had to stop on the hard shoulder and rearrange the car to fit the bikes inside so we could safely travel again.  Then we had the disastrous realisation, after an hour of driving, that we had left the all important tickets to the Royal Edinbugh Tattoo which had cost a cool fortune!  We turned around, returned and collected them but we had essentially lost 4 hours with all this faffing.

This was a slight damper on our high spirits but we recovered well enough when we got to Leeds.

Leeds

The magnificent Kirkgate Market

We only had a few hours here so our plan required military precision.  Well something like it anyway.  To start, we took a stroll through Kirkgate Market which, for any Saffa in the area, is an attraction because of the great Saffa stall (we found NikNaks here!), but the market itself is very much like the China malls we know and love.  It's a beautiful old building and also the home of the very first Marks & Spencer stall.  From these humble beginnings grew a retail giant that we all know and love to hate. From here we walked through the city center, and eventually made our way to the canal where we caught the free water taxi to the docks.  

Be warned, it can be really busy so be prepared for a wait. 

Trying to take in all of the tower of swords

Once at the docks, we spent a delightful few hours taking in the wonder of the Royal Armouries.  It’s free to visit and I have to stress in my forceful Saffa way, you HAVE to take the time to see it!  The Armouries is crammed with history and genuine weapons, and the rather delightful discovery of replica weapons from Lord of the Rings.  The cool factor is very high here, and so is the wow factor and you’ll find yourself captivated from the time you walk in and see the tower of swords to the moment you tear yourself away. I don’t believe I could get tired of this place and I plan to return in the future.

York

On we went to York to spend our first night and rest for the next day.  We found a delightful glamping site which was perfect for us, even though it was a bit out of town. 

Because....glamping

York has always been on my bucket list because of my not-so-secret fascination with the Tudors and the Roses, so this was a non-negotiable stop for me.  It is quite an intriguing city with oodles to do and not all of it has to cost money.  Our plan for the next day was to walk the walls, which are shaped something like an upside-down heart, taking in all of the city as you walked.  This website was absolutely helpful in planning our walk and I got so carried away with the detailed explanations of each section that I felt the urge to print it and bind it to take with us so we could refer to it as we walked.  In my mind, it would be a few pages, but little did I know that it would be over 300!  Lesson learned and I’ve kept it to pay it forward to anyone I may meet who is heading to York to walk the walls (so I keep telling myself).

Walk these walls with me

Parking is really tricky and eye wateringly expensive in York, especially if you make the mistake of parking within the walls.  We learned this painful lesson when we headed into the city to take part in a ghost tour on our first night.  Our parking cost more than our dinner and put me in a bit of a mood by blowing the day’s budget.  Thankfully we asked a few locals for advice and were told to park in the long term parking at York train station the next day, which was far cheaper being a Sunday and only a few minutes walk from the city. 

York, being a city with such a rich and somewhat turbulent (read violent) history, has several ghost tours on offer and all of them are quite entertaining.  We chose the original walking tour which, at £5 a head, was in our budget and gave us a chance to acquaint ourselves ahead of the next day’s adventures.

But the next day’s walk was what brought us here and I really can’t dump everything we saw and experienced in this post, so I’ll give you the highlights and must-sees:

Escape the city in a secret garden

Lunch in a secret garden – St Anthony’s church has a delightful and very peaceful garden, nicely hidden away , where you can enjoy lunch or just a break. 

It's a shambles in the Shambles.  No really, it is

The Shambles – made famous as Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, the Shambles is constantly crammed with people.  It’s not hard to imagine what it would have been like when it was a meat market, but if there is one photo you have to take….it’s to be taken here.

Probably the shortest street in the world...

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate – England’s shortest street with arguably the longest and weirdest name is right alongside the Shambles.  You need to see it to believe it really.

Glimpse of the Rowntree factory – from the north wall, walking along Lord Mayor’s walk you can catch a glimpse of the red brick building and Victorian smokestack that was once the Rowntree factory.  Now abandoned and planned for redevelopment, the factory has a story to tell too.  The history of chocolate and sweets in York is just as interesting as the blood and gore as you can learn here.

Quiet reflection and abbey ruins

Romans, Abbey Ruins and magical gardens – the museum gardens are just beautiful and give you loads to see and explore such as the remaining evidence of a roman fort sharing the space with majestic abbey ruins.

On our quest for an exciting budget holiday, we got off to a great start with 2 days of free activities…you should give it a try!