Budget UK Staycations Under £75 a Night

A good staycation doesn't have to mean a coastal hotspot at peak-season rates. Plenty of British towns and regions offer the same walks, beaches and history at a fraction of the cost, especially if you travel outside school holidays, book self-catering, or pitch a tent instead of booking a hotel room. Here are some of the more affordable options covered on this site, and why they tend to be kinder on the wallet.

Affordable seaside towns

Kingston upon Hull is one of the best-value city breaks on the east coast. It has a working waterfront, a genuinely good aquarium in The Deep, a compact old town you can walk end to end in twenty minutes, and none of the price inflation that comes with being a fashionable weekend destination. Accommodation here is priced for a working city rather than a tourist one, which keeps costs down across the board.

Margate has had a lot of press for its arts scene and Dreamland revival, but it's still a fundamentally unpretentious seaside town with a long sandy beach, a harbour arm lined with independent shops, and the kind of guesthouses and B&Bs that haven't yet caught up with its reputation. Visit outside the summer weekends and school holidays and it's noticeably quieter and cheaper.

Sidmouth in Devon keeps a lower profile than the county's bigger resort towns. Its Regency seafront and red-cliff beaches are worth the trip on their own, and because it draws an older, quieter crowd rather than a stag-and-hen one, prices for rooms and food stay more reasonable even in summer. Shoulder-season visits in May or September bring the cost down further while the weather is often still decent.

Market towns away from the coast

Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk is a compact market town built around a ruined abbey and a Georgian theatre, with none of the premium pricing you'd find in comparable towns further south. It works well as a low-cost base for exploring Suffolk's villages and coastline by car, and its weekday market and independent cafes make eating out cheap without feeling like a compromise.

Camping and self-catering in the national parks

The Yorkshire Dales are one of the better places in the country to do a budget outdoors break. Campsites are plentiful through the dale villages, walking is free, and a lot of the appeal, drystone-walled fields, river valleys, market towns like Skipton and Settle on the fringes, doesn't cost anything to enjoy. Pitching a tent or taking a small campervan pitch here costs a fraction of a hotel room in the Lake District over the same weekend.

More generally, camping is the most reliable way to bring the nightly cost of any UK break down, whatever region you're visiting. A pitch is typically a small fraction of even a modest hotel or guesthouse room, and it opens up rural and coastal locations where budget indoor accommodation is thin on the ground. Combined with self-catering, cooking your own meals rather than eating out for every meal, it's the single biggest lever for keeping a trip affordable.

A few ways to keep costs down wherever you go

• Travel midweek or outside school holidays, when demand and prices both drop.
• Choose self-catering over half-board where possible, so food costs stay in your control.
• Look at market towns and inland bases rather than the coastal towns everyone already knows.
• Consider camping or a campervan pitch for at least part of a longer trip.

None of this requires sacrificing what makes a staycation worthwhile. Hull's waterfront, Margate's beach, Sidmouth's seafront, Bury St Edmunds' abbey grounds and the Yorkshire Dales' valleys are all substantial destinations in their own right; they're simply priced for the people who already know them rather than for a premium tourist market.