How to holiday for free (if you know the year of the Battle of Culloden)

I've not long got back from a long weekend in West Sussex. There were six of us altogether; we shared a huge and rather luxurious converted barn (The Granary at Pitlands Barns), with three en-suite bedrooms and all mod cons. We had two pub lunches, two pub dinners, a takeaway Indian, coffee and cake, and copious amounts of alcohol. And the best bit? It didn't cost any of us a penny. 

Lounge at The Granary

Hallway at The Granary - you could hold a party here!

Chichester Cathedral

So how did we do it? Well, it's all down to my second love - quizzes. Lee and I have been regularly quizzing with two of the group that came away with us for nearly 20 years, and the other two joined us over ten years ago. We do a regular pub quiz together every Wednesday; we also take part in regional 'Big Quizzes' organised by our local newspaper, along with occasional wine and wisdom events and other quizzes in other pubs. As you can imagine, the more quizzes you go to, the more you learn (and, admittedly, the more you also forget). Over the years, our knowledge bank has grown, and we make a pretty good team. Our success also lies in our range - we have an equal match of genders, we have differing interests, and our ages span from forties to seventies, so we cover a range of different eras and specialist subjects. (When we first started, Lee and I were the 'young ones', able to answer questions on up-to-date music. Sadly, our music knowledge hasn't progressed along with our advancing years...) The result of this is that we win quizzes fairly often, and our wins paid for our holiday - and it wasn't the first one. 

Over the years, we've won a variety of things - mostly bottles of wine and the occasional box of chocolates. One of my favourite prizes came when four of us won a national quiz organised by the CSMA - we won a large Fortnum & Mason hamper and a £250 leisure break voucher. We travelled up to Ghyll Manor hotel in Sussex for the formal presentation of our prize, and snagged ourselves a free three-course lunch. We then returned for a night's B&B and a three-course dinner, courtesy of our leisure voucher. 

Another favourite prize, which we have won several times, is P&O ferry vouchers. The Big Quiz I mentioned earlier takes part in four locations across the county each year (we usually attend two or three but have been known to go to all four), followed by a county final. In the early days, there would be around 80 teams, and you would win a 5-day return crossing for each member of the team (that's one each for me and Lee) for coming as 'low' as sixth. Over the years, as the number of teams reduced, the prize became restricted to first place winners, and was 'demoted' to a day-trip. (Eventually, a year or so ago, P&O withdrew their sponsorship, but the Big Quiz has recently snared DFDS as sponsors, so I have high hopes again!) Regardless, we have come first or been high-enough placed over the years to have won a fair few ferry vouchers. And even when they were only day trips, we were able to swap two of them for a longer-duration return. We've used them to pay for our travel for numerous summer camping trips to France, a couple of day trips, a few Easter breaks and a long weekend in Bruges at Christmas. If I'm honest, using up a ferry voucher has actually been the reason behind (read 'excuse for') several of our shorter holidays...

A day trip to Boulogne many years ago!

Anyway, back to our long weekend. It dawned on us years ago that it was a bit of a waste putting our cash winnings at the end of a pub quiz back into our pockets. Anything we won would get swallowed back into everyday life and not really 'enjoyed'. And if you're going to win something, you should really enjoy the prize. So one of us came up with the genius idea of pooling our winnings and saving them each week, rather than splitting them up and taking them home. The idea was that when we'd saved enough, we would use them to do something special and treat ourselves, so that we felt like we'd really got the benefit of our prize money. In the meantime, we'd put the money into premium bonds in the optimistic hope that we might win a little extra to help us on our way (we haven't yet, sadly).

Our first trip was back in February 2013 - a visit to Ypres. I believe we paid for our own travel (although we probably used one of our ferry vouchers...), but our winnings paid for our hotel (the rather lovely Ariane) and all food and drinks. It was absolutely freezing but we had a lovely weekend, exploring Ypres, visiting the WW1 Passchendaele battlefield and cemetery (extremely moving), wandering around Lille on the way back and eating lots of lovely food. It gave us a taste of what we could do with our winnings (not to mention a much-needed 'adult' break from our lovely but exhausting children), and we were soon planning what we'd do when we'd saved up enough money to go away again. 

Menin Gate Memorial

Passchendaele

Freezing in Lille

It was October 2014 by the time we'd saved up enough. This time we decided to stay in the UK to avoid wasting our kitty money (or spending our own money) on travel. We plumped for the Cotswolds and booked a couple of nights in the lovely Falcon Inn in Painswick. We went for a long walk in the countryside and visited Gloucester (beautiful) and Cheltenham (disappointing), as well as drinking and eating out lots - all paid for again, of course.

Our room at The Falcon

View of Painswick from our room

Gloucester Cathedral

In April 2016, we went to Redditch with our winnings. Okay, that might seem like an odd destination, but we found a bargain break at the Southcrest Manor Hotel through Travelzoo. The hotel (and its food) turned out to be very nice. We also went out for a curry, had a pub lunch or two, went for a walk around Arrow Valley lake, explored Worcester and its cathedral, and visited Kenilworth Castle. Again, all paid for.

Our room at Southcrest Manor

Arrow Valley Lake

Kenilworth Castle

As you've no doubt gathered, our recent trip to Chichester was our fourth paid-for holiday: another much-needed break, where we came back no poorer than when we went away - always a bonus. Even better, we still have £500 in the kitty ready to put towards our next break. We're thinking possibly the Norfolk Broads. And, of course, first we will have to have the obligatory 'planning meeting', which involves dinner, drink, much discussion of where to go and when to go there, and no actual decision - followed by another planning meeting to continue the process. Not to mention lots of pub quizzes in the meantime to try to win the money. Life is tough...!

Cards in the bathroom

Some of you may have noticed my frequent references to 'cards in the bathroom' and wondered what I'm talking about. Read on...

Picture the scene. It's August and you're staying in a hotel in Spain. You've had dinner, maybe gone for a walk or a drink or watched the hotel entertainment, and it's now 10.00pm* (*replace with an appropriate bedtime for your children). The children are tired, it's past the time they'd normally go to bed, you know they'll wake up early regardless and you'd really like them to get some sleep. However, you're not tired yourself yet and you feel you're due some child-free time. So you put the children to bed, turn out the lights and relax outside on the balcony with a drink and a game of cards* (*replace with your game of choice). After an hour or so, you creep back in the room. The kids are already asleep and you retire for the night yourself. 

Now picture this scene. It's November and you're staying in a hotel in the UK. You've had dinner and probably not gone for a walk as it's too cold. It's past the children's bedtimes and you're looking forward to child-free time, so you put the children to bed, turn out the lights and... ah. Herein lies the problem. You haven't got a balcony. And even if you had, there's no way you'd want to go and sit outside on it in the UK in winter (or, let's be honest, in the UK on many nights except unusually warm summer ones). 

So where do you go? What do you do? A couple of friends have jokingly asked just how loudly we play cards. All I can say is their children must be a whole lot more tolerant than ours if they could sit and play cards in the same room as their sleeping children! Our kids are pretty good at going to sleep, but they wouldn't be able to get to sleep if the light was on (even dimly), they could hear us talking (even quietly) and/or they basically knew we were awake and still in the same room as them. To be fair, neither would I. I need dark and I need quiet. How can I expect the kids to sleep in conditions I wouldn't be able to sleep in myself? 

I also find it really hard to sleep myself if I know the kids are still awake. If I tried to go to bed at the same time as the kids, it would not be a success. There's something about knowing they're awake that keeps me awake. I hear them sighing and fidgeting as they try to get to sleep, struggling themselves because they know we're awake in the same room. The end result is a pretty bad night's sleep all round. (Except for Lee. He can fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow regardless. Lucky sod.)

So what can you do? When you want your children to go to bed but you don't want to go to bed yourself, where can you go? The answer, of course, is the bathroom. Yes, I know. It's not comfortable, it's not pleasant, it's really not where you want to spend your evenings on holiday. But it is somewhere you can sit, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, and chat - yes, or play cards - with a drink until the kids are asleep and you're ready to turn in yourselves. If the bathroom's big enough, we bring in a chair from the bedroom and sometimes, if we're really lucky, a small table. We take it in turns to be the (un)lucky one who gets to sit on the toilet. If we're unlucky and there's no room for a chair, one or both of us will sit in the bath. It's not ideal but, for us, it solves a problem and works as a compromise. 

This is one reason I like going abroad on holiday - sunnier climes = balconies = much more pleasant evenings. Camping is fine, even in the UK - if we're in a tent, there's a reasonable chance the weather's also warm enough for us to sit outside in the evenings. Even if not, the children have separate 'bedrooms' from us inside the tent, which isn't brilliant but is better than the hotel room scenario. Hiring a cottage, chalet or apartment is usually our choice for this country - who needs a bathroom or a balcony when you have a whole lounge or another bedroom to relax in? But on short breaks or as a stopover on a longer journey, hotels are generally unavoidable - and locating a family room that has a separate bedroom for the children is either impossible or far too expensive. So bathroom cards it is!

Of course, now the children are getting older, a whole new world is starting to open up for us. With Finn now being at secondary school and having a phone, we felt confident enough to leave the boys in the hotel room on our recent break in London, while we sat less than 50m away in the hotel bar. It felt very liberating. We still played cards though.