Journalist Jess Flaherty ventured to a popular seaside resort with her fiancé and family for a week long staycation, naively thinking it would be a cheap getaway while saving for a wedding
There’s nothing better than going on family holiday and, after a beautiful but terribly rainy week away to Cumbria last year, my fiancé and his loved ones opted for Norfolk for our annual getaway this year. Seaside towns sometimes get a bad rap but I’m quite the fan of them. As my fiancé and I are saving for a wedding, a holiday abroad is off the cards for the foreseeable future while we save up so we – wrongly – assumed venturing to a local seaside town would help us switch off and relax for a fraction of the cost. I know, we were very silly.
There’s plenty of gorgeous staycation spots well worth exploring in the UK and while sunshine isn’t guaranteed, there’s a boatload of beautiful scenery and retro charm on offer.
My fiancé’s family are big fans of Norfolk, and he spent many childhood summers in Hunstanton over-indulging in fish and chips, ice cream, fairground rides and more. On the quest for some much-needed nostalgia, we planned a family holiday to the popular seaside town.
The retro charm of arcade games, the buzz of the Waltzers, the constant sound and aroma of the sea, and the never-ending array of sweet shops had me feeling like a child all over again.
Early on, we were keen to visit the fairground and take advantage of the rides my fiancé grew up loving – as well as a stomach-churning, twisty contraption named Insomnia which had my stomach doing more flips than an Olympic gymnast.
A word of advice: don’t re-watch the Final Destination franchise in the days leading up to getting on fairground rides – especially the third one which begins at, you guessed it, a theme park.
I didn’t end up going on many rides – and it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. It was because they were just so expensive.
I imagine we were relatively naïve in our assumptions about how much things were going to cost but neither my fiancé nor the rest of the family were prepared to have to spend a minimum of £3.50 per person per ride.
Some rides were more costly than that too, so it didn’t take long for our holiday fund to be depleted by our desire to chase an adrenaline rush.
Add in the cost of drinks (£2.50 minimum for a standard can of Diet Coke?!), ice cream at £3 per scoop (and realistically, who’s going to get just one scoop?), and fish and chips being significantly more expensive than I remember, and one day at the fairground became one of the most expensive excursions during our week away.
As there were eight of us, we split into two groups of four and stayed near one another in local holiday homes. Ours was far too small for four adults, with a kitchenette not equipped for cooking proper meals.
This meant we had to eat out most evenings – and we usually grabbed lunch while we were out and about, too. An ice cream here, a sandwich there, it doesn’t take much – at least, in England – before we were spending at least £100 a day.
We visited Wells-next-the-sea, which is a beautiful and serene seaside haunt with some gorgeous independent cafes and restaurants, a calming seafront, and beautiful woodland walks.
On street parking was a no-go, so we had to cough up £11 to park in a carpark near the thick of the action. We visited the popular Plattens cafe for lunch where my fiance and I got a portion of chips and a vegan sausage each, as well as a can of Pepsi Max (far superior to Diet Coke in my humble opinion) and our bill came to £17.20.
The portions of chips were generous and the sausages were delicious, so it didn’t seem that outlandish but I am baffled we’re living in a world where two portions of chips, two cans and two sausages costs almost £20. Is this the new normal? Where does it end?
We quickly realised our staycation was costing just as much as a few days away in Spain might have done.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a truly wonderful, relaxed time and allowed my nostalgia to really fly free but the steep cost of basic treats like ice cream and soft drinks, and the seemingly ever increasing cost of chips, does make me concerned about how long tourist towns will survive for.
Staycations are wonderful, and it’s great to explore and enjoy the country you live in, but it’s certainly not a cheaper option than going abroad but in the past, it was.
I wouldn’t be in a rush to revisit a local seaside town – not unless I’d saved up hundreds and hundreds of pounds so buying an ice cream won’t fill me with dread and anxiety.