Our Frugal Holiday to Brighton

We’ve had to be a bit hush-hush about this for a number of reasons. But now that we’ve been and back, we can reveal that our word for the week is holiday! I feel refreshed and at the same time tired and sore. But isn’t that what some holidays are like?

There was the anticipation leading up to it and then the wanting to cram in as much as possible, leading to sore, achy muscles and joints that haven’t been used up or used properly for months or maybe years.

Anyway, I think in so many ways, we chose the perfect time for this holiday and I’ll list a few reasons below.

The weather

We experienced warm, hot, even, sunshine every day this week. I know that in my post last week I said how we were happy about the rain. Well, the truth is, we are the type of people who give thanks for everything.

So the sun was out in all its glory and it felt so good to not have a coat on. I even got my sunglasses out too. The walks on the beach filled with pebbles could be a little less comfortable if we didn’t wear our crocs. Some people learned the hard way and had to rush out to the shops, including a lovely little charity shop set on the high street near enough to the beach.

The travel

So for our mini-break, we travelled by train from Birmingham city centre all the way to Brighton. It was our first time to Brighton and it was a lovely way to start the holiday. To make sure that we didn’t have to pay the ridiculous prices for food on the train and in the various train stations where we stopped, we stocked up on what we needed at our local Aldi.

The train travel reminded us of our days on the channel 5 show, Shop Smart, Save Money. The stations pretty much looked the same but with much less hustle and bustle and overcrowding.

One major difference on the train and underground tube rides was that most people were wearing masks. At one point after we had to make a really brisk walk to catch a train, I was so out of breath that I seriously considered removing my mask! But my better sense prevailed.

Cost-wise, taking the train was the most cost-effective and frugal way to enjoy the trip to our destination. I couldn’t imagine any of us doing that long drive and also none of us is good enough of a driver either.

The cost for the travel was a bit cheaper as the Uni girl used her railcard. That little discount was handy.

The food

Apart from taking our Aldi-bought snacks with us, we also took drinking water too. When we eventually ran out of water, we bought larger bottles of water from Poundland nearby and use them to refill the smaller ones that we could take with us when we ventured out.

Saving money at Aldi allowed us to be able to afford breakfast at Weathersoons when The Premier Inn ran out of breakfast even though we had booked in advance!

We also treated ourselves to some really lush ice cream from one of the little ice cream parlours nearby.

All the flavours were lovely and yummy and they ranged from Sour Cherry to Carrot Cake and from Hazelnut to Chocolate.

The fun

We made our own fun. Although there was the usual games arcade and every square inch set up with inviting Guess the This or Guess the That, and Throw the Hoop over the Something or other, we chose to get our pleasure from watching others lose their money. That was entertaining and I still marvel at adults who exchange their hard-earned cash for coins to play those games that offer stuffed toys as prizes!

We brought our Uno card games with us and have our fun that way. Leisa also bought a little finger bowling game from Tiger and that gave us some good laughs too.

One day we also took a break from sitting by the beach in the sun and go up to our rooms to do a facemask! It was a bit of a laugh as we jeered each others looks and we even commented how we don’t even know what’s in the stuff that we put on our faces most of the times.

We joked around too about the fact that none of us felt any different especially with regards to the claims made on the mask packets. No one felt, nourished, rejuvenated, revived etc. We ended up with rather oily faces. Thank God it was nothing worse. But this made our holiday fun.

And the pain

Well, all good things must come to an end. Yesterday was the last day of our little getaway so we decided to walk down to their pier and have a fish and chips lunch from one of the shops there. We chose the wrong shop! The queue was quite long and there was confusion amongst those serving inside.

We couldn’t help but notice that the time to catch our train was drawing ever so close but some of us had got our orders but some hadn’t. Dilemma! Do we leave with just two meals or should we wait for the others and risk missing our train?  Well, we chose to wait, only got to taste our food and had to sprint (fat people sprint) to catch our train.

The long story short is that we are now home, happy that we had a lovely holiday away but our feet are in so much pain after that sprint. Would we do it all over again? You bet we would. Check out our Youtube channel if you want to see photos and videos of our week.