How to save money during a staycation

As a family of five with school aged children, holidays abroad in the school holidays work out to be VERY expensive (usually well over £2000 for a week in the sun). This sum of money is completely out of reach for us this year but over the next 12 months we are going to work hard to save as much as we can and hopefully save enough for a lovely holiday abroad next summer. We have been researching some fantastic ways to save money and reading advice from the money advice service and are now confident if we work hard at following their advice, we should be able to save enough.

We aren't going abroad this year but that doesn't mean we won't have fun! We have booked a couple of inexpensive staycations and will be making our money work hard during our breaks away by following these simple tips:-

When you are pricing your accommodation double check what's included as all of the extras can certainly add up. Do you need to pay extra for bedding or can you save money and take your own? Will you need to pay for gas and electricity? Is wifi included or do you need to purchase it? Do you need to pay a security deposit? Take all of this into account when pricing your holiday as the price advertised isn't necessarily the price you'll pay.

We are lucky to have family who own a caravan by the sea and have friends that live across the country. We always have the option to stay here for free which saves lots of money. Do make sure you buy your hosts a nice bottle of wine to say thank you though!

Before committing to booking your staycation make sure you google any money off codes or vouchers and check sites such as VoucherBin to see if there are any final savings to be made.

If you are going to be driving quite some distance for your staycation (as we will be when we drive from Northumberland to Cornwall this Summer) make sure you take into consideration the cost of petrol and keep your eyes peeled for money saving deals. You can easily find the cheapest fuel in the area you are staying using petrolprices.com and I usually find fuel is cheaper in supermarket forecourts than by the side of a motorway.

Once you are on holiday there is no need to spend money on eating out which certainly mounts up. Instead pack a picnic with homemade cakes and sandwiches - if the weather's not great the kids will love a 'car picnic'. An average lunch out for us costs around £40-£50 whereas a nice picnic can cost less than £10. Multiply this by 7 days and you have made a huge saving.

We have been members of the National Trust for four years now and pay just £8.67 every month for the five of us which is an absolute bargain. This entitles us to free entry to over 300 houses and gardens. We visit a national trust property every couple of weeks and wherever we are staying in the UK we will find a property nearby and visit for the day. They are a fantastic way to learn about the area you are staying and nearly always feature fantastic playgrounds, beautiful gardens and host exciting events. In the last year we have taken part in egg hunts, pirate day, den building, treasure hunts, pond dipping, blindfolded trails and more and all for the fraction of the cost of a theme park (with the added bonus of no queuing!).

You can't beat a day at the seaside for a free day out - even if the sun isn't shining children love skimming stones, hunting for pretty shells and building sandcastles. You don't need to spend money to have fun and most children will play for hours at the beach.

We have a couple of mini staycations planned this year starting with glamping at Bells of Hemscott next week. I have double checked what is included and we will be taking our own food and drink and will pack some board games for the evening. We have planned a day at the beach and a picnic in a nearby country park meaning we hopefully won't be spending any money whilst we are there but we'll still be having lots of fun!

Will you be enjoying a UK break this year? I would love to hear your ideas for saving money too. 

Tips for getting the most out of blogger post settings

Do you regularly use your 'post settings' on blogger? Do you know what they are all for? Hopefully this post will help with a few of the basics.

Labels

Labels are nothing to do with keywords that google searches for - they are mostly a way for you to organise your blog. I use my 'labels' as blog headers so my main labels would be '#LoveNorthEast', '#TravelTales', 'Dine', 'Explore', 'Stay'. 'Visit' and 'Contact'.

Every time you posted a restaurant review you could label it with 'dine' and then when a reader clicks on your 'dine' label all of your restaurant review posts will show up there in one place. Personally, my blog isn't set up this way (as I prefer to have one post per label and then every month add my new links to that post) however it is a fab way to keep similar posts together.

Schedule

I can't believe I didn't start scheduling posts until the beginning of this year! It helps you to be a lot more organised to schedule future posts rather than keeping them in drafts until you are ready to hit publish. You just need to 'set date and time' and select the date and time you would like your post to publish. My blog is set in Pacific daylight time (I haven't got around to changing it yet) so I publish posts in the evening for 22:30 which is actually 6:30am GMT the following morning. There are times when I have to publish a post ASAP but I do mostly schedule now.

Permalink

The Permalink is where you will find the URL of your blog - Your URL is important for SEO so try and edit it using 'custom link' to include keywords that will be picked up by google.

Also, if you want to be super organised and schedule tweets/facebook updates ect..... before your post is published you can copy your URL and paste it into planned tweets ect...

Location

You can type in your blog posts location if this would be useful. For example if I have written a post about Cragside I would type the location 'Cragside' into the search bar and add this to my post. The advantage being that my post location would show up in feed readers, map apps, and search engines will associate my post with that location.

Search description

This is also very important for SEO. If you leave this box blank, google will use the first few sentences from your post to summarise your post. It is far better for you to type your own brief description (less than 150 words) summarising your post. In terms of SEO, search description is the 4th most important factor (after post title, domain name and URL) that google uses to rank your post so if you get this right, it can have a huge influence on traffic. Make sure you write in sentences and include your post keywords. The search description is also used when you post your link on facebook.

Adding ALT tags to photographs

Adding ALT tags to images also has an impact on SEO - google can't read images so if you add text describing them, they are much more likely to show up in search results resulting in increased traffic. I will be honest and say I did not start doing this until a few weeks ago but it only takes a few minutes and I have already seen the benefits. To add a ALT tag simply click on your chosen image once it has been added to your post and select 'properties'. (Here is an example from an image in this post):-

Then simply add an image title (this will be what is displayed next to your image in a google search) and the ALT text which is a little description of your image. This only takes a few minutes but is definitely worth it.

I hope you have found this post useful - Please share any other tips you know of in comments xx

Gateshead's Great Outdoors - Westwood Yurts | Glamping at National Trust Gibside

I have wanted to visit Westwood Yurts ever since I noticed a poster advertising them back in 2012. Last summer provided the perfect opportunity when some of the mums from school organised a little get together to look forward to at the end of the holidays. We loved our trip so much that we have booked again for this year.

The Yurts

We stayed in a large Yurt (priced at £135 for 2 nights). This sleeps up to 6 and was very spacious - there were 2 double futons and 2 single futons. When they were folded up there was the most space we have ever experienced on a camping trip. It was great being able to stand up everywhere too and have your own wooded lockable door.

The Yurt's were so well equipped - each has their own little kitchen stand containing pots, pans, plates, bowls, cutlery, knives, BBQ tools....and you are given a basket of logs to help you get started. (More can be purchased at £3 per bag should you run out). Each Yurt has it's own BBQ and outdoor gas stove (in a self contained box) so you can cook anything you would normally cook on your own grill or hob at home. I also loved the HUGE ice boxes which could easily hold the entire contents of our fridge. These were packed with industrial sized ice blocks which really did keep everything cool. I don't think I have ever been able to enjoy a properly cooled beer camping before! Well here you can. Fresh ice packs can be collected from the communal dish washing room every morning.

The only things you need to remember to pack are your sleeping bags, food, charcoal, matches, towels/toiletries, a torch and tealights.

The Yurt's all have their own mini solar generators which are used to power two lights in the Yurts should you need to and you can plug your phone charger in if you really need to - although remember to unplug when not using as you will drain the power.

The Yurt's are so snug and cosy. They are all raised from the ground on a wooded floor and are kitted out with carpets and rugs. There is so much insulation that we only needed our stove on for a few hours in the evening and that was almost too warm. You definitely don't get that freezing cold feeling you get with conventional camping.

Every Yurt also has it's own boot box for muddy boots, water carrier, outdoor picnic table, clothes rack and detailed welcome pack and maps. They really have thought of everything!

Evening's in a Yurt

Evening's in the Yurt fields were lovely - there are only 6 Yurts spread across 2 fields so it did feel lovely and intimate. We started our evening's with a BBQ - there is a communal covered seating area in the bottom field so we could all enjoy our meal together.

Then we would change the children into their onesies and send them on a stick collecting mission in the woods.

Then as the sun was setting it was time to build a fire in the fire pit provided and toast our marshmallows.

Finally, we would put the kettle on and make everybody a warming hot chocolate before lighting the stove and snuggling down for the night.

We certainly aren't party animals. I think we were tucked up in bed by 9:30pm every evening, but this suited us fine.

The farm and surrounding areas

You have to remember that you are situated on the middle of a working farm. The surrounding fields are full of cows and sheep. We loved this and the cows in particular made us laugh quite a few times.

You need to navigate past some cows to get back to your car.

The Yurt fields are very well equipped - there are two toilets (you need a torch if visiting at night) and two hot showers. We always found the facilities nice and clean. There is also a washing up room where you can wash your dishes in HOT water - everything is provided so you don't need to remember the washing up.

One of the main benefits staying at Westwood Yurts is that you get free un-restricted access to Gibside which is a fantastic National Trust property. Entry is normally £19.80 per family per day so if you stay at the Yurts I urge you to make the most of your free access. I have blogged separately about our day exploring Gibside here - Summer at Gibside. The strawberry castle play area is about a 20 minute walk through the wood from the Yurts. You can visit everywhere when Gibside closes to the public and it would be amazing to have the play area to yourself.

In a nutshell, our group enjoyed the Strawberry castle play area complete with play castles and zip wires, we built dens and took part in a blindfolded obstacle course in the woods, we toasted marshmallows and walked around the beautiful grounds and some of us even took the free bus to the stable areas to enjoy the indoor play areas and discovery zones.

I really don't know how Alistair the farmer manages to provide such a fantastic facility and run a farm at the same time! He was very welcoming - you just need to ring him when you arrive and he pops over and explains everything you need to know and he is on call all of the time - if there is anything you need to ask he is just a phone call away. We were sad to hear some guests had stolen from and purposely damaged some of the Yurts. I just don't know what would possess somebody to do this! Westwood Yurts are the most wonderful retreat from everyday life and we can't wait to return.

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