Working From a Staycation: Making a Workation Work

Working remotely from somewhere pleasant sounds straightforward and frequently is not. The failure mode is predictable: you arrive somewhere beautiful, discover the internet is unusable and the only table is the kitchen one, and spend the week doing your job badly in a place you cannot enjoy. Almost all of that is avoidable by treating it as a working arrangement first and a holiday second.

What to check before booking

Ask for a speed, not a yes

Every listing says it has wifi. Ask the owner for an actual download and upload figure, and mention video calls specifically, because upload speed is what fails and it is rarely advertised. If the answer is vague, assume it is bad.

Ask where you would sit

A great many holiday properties have nowhere to work that is not a dining chair at a low table. A week of that hurts. Ask directly whether there is a desk or a table at a proper height, and what is behind it if you are on camera.

Check the mobile signal separately

Signal is your fallback when the broadband fails, and in rural Britain the two are unrelated. Ask which networks work at the property rather than in the nearest town.

Where it works well

Small towns rather than remote cottages

This is the central trade-off. A town has connectivity, somewhere to get coffee and something to do at six o'clock. Whitby, Ludlow, Hexham, Tenby and Bakewell all give you countryside within minutes and infrastructure on the doorstep.

Cities with good surroundings

York, Bath, Edinburgh and Cambridge are reliable for connectivity, easy without a car, and have enough around them for the weekend at either end.

Coast, with care

Pembrokeshire, north Devon and Northumberland are wonderful for this if you choose a town rather than an isolated cottage. The compensation is that a working day ending at five leaves real daylight for a walk most of the year.

Structuring the week

Go for longer, not harder

A workation only pays off over at least a week. Two or three days is mostly travel and setup, and you get neither good work nor a good break.

Book one thing at the end of each day

A swim, a walk, a table somewhere. Without it the day extends the way it does at home and the point of being there evaporates.

Take a proper break in the middle

Blocking out one full day, or two half days, is what separates this from simply working somewhere colder than usual.

Practical points

Bring an extension lead, a laptop stand or a couple of books to raise the screen, and headphones. Tell people you are contactable as normal, or genuinely do not be — the halfway state is the worst of both. And check the checkout time on your last day against your calendar, because a Friday morning meeting and a ten o'clock checkout do not combine.

See also our car-free staycations, digital detox and solo travel guides.