Hull mum explains how she enjoyed London trip for bargain price

With summer holiday prices usually inflated by an average £400 – budget-conscious parents might want to take tips from one Hull mum blogger.

Jennifer Gilmour, an author, blogger and campaigner from Hull, spent three nights in London with her husband and three children.

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But instead of breaking the bank, the astute family spent just £584 for their entire fun-packed trip through careful budgeting, planning and making the most of free activities.

Jennifer, who writes the Gilmour family geocaching blog and is a domestic violence campaigner, has now shared her savvy tips for taking the family away without breaking the bank.

Jennifer Gilmour’s three children on their budget London trip

She said: “We certainly have started to get a thrill out of travelling on a budget and we wanted to share how we had a four day/three night break in London on a budget a couple of weeks ago.

“The reason we wanted to go to London was to go to an attraction Kidzania and we created everything around that.

“We are going to give you a breakdown of what we spent and how we did it, hopefully inspiring you to travel on a budget especially as staycations this year are ridiculously overpriced.”

The total spend was £584.47.

Here’s the breakdown and how they achieved those low prices:

Food

The biggest overall cost was food for five people for four days, which came in at an impressively low £192, which included all evening meals while out and about, and £25 on supermarket food for breakfast and lunch which they took with them.

The family took bread, ham, cheese, crisps, fruit, drinks, treats, UHT milk, mini cereal boxes and snacks.

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Jennifer said: “Our plan was to have breakfast and packed lunch on each day meaning we would only need to fund one meal a day.

“We got into the mindset of camping but in a hotel room and we are out most of the day so we only need to be at the hotel for sleep. It happened to be very hot the weekend we went away and so our plans are to take a cool box with us the next time we do this.”

Petrol

£75

Mum blogger Jennifer Gilmour and her family had a three-night break in London for under £600

Mum blogger Jennifer Gilmour and her family had a three-night break in London for under £600

Hotel

£93.97

Jennifer said: “Travelodge have been doing some fantastic nights away for £29 a night. We actually went away last year for a few nights in Nottinghamshire when the eat-out to help-out was on.

“We managed to find the same £29 a night deal in London which was just 3 miles away from Kidzania (our main location target).

“We started at the London Park Royal for 3 nights, one of the staff members was so very helpful on our arrival and gifted us the car parking which would have cost us £18. This hotel is also outside of the congestion charge area.

“An amazing bonus was that we were a 5 minute walk from the nearest underground which meant we could go into the centre of London.”

Kizania

£110

“What an amazing experience this was and highly recommend it to anyone with children under 14 years old.

“It’s a city run by kids and the idea is that they need to work for their money which is loaded onto their cards, they can spend their money on non-work-related activities or in the small gift shop at the end.

“Our children enjoyed being police officers, firefighters, nursery nurses, hotel staff, radio hosts, flight crew, window cleaners, delivery drivers, shop assistants and more.”

For more information on Kidzania click here.

Kidzania in London was a great day out for the Gilmour children

Kidzania in London was a great day out for the Gilmour children

Attraction parking

£12

Underground tickets

£38 x 2 days

The attraction tickets, parking and underground tickets were all set in stone, but we accepted this and we adapted our break so that the other days were filled with adventure

Geocaching

Free

The family are big fans of geocaching – a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.

Jennifer said: “If you have no idea about Geocaching, the fun never ends and it’s almost like a worldwide treasure hunt, download the app for free.

“We are Geocachers, so this played a big part in our adventures and made us find out about London in a completely different way.

“We managed to visit, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, China Town, Covent Gardens, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch.”

The Gilmour family enjoyed geocaching adventures at Trafalgar Square

The Gilmour family enjoyed geocaching adventures at Trafalgar Square

The family said the trip was great fun and could have been even cheaper with little more planning.

The mum-of-three added: “Looking back we believe we could have saved more money on eating out by planning where we would like to eat in advance, it takes a little more organisation but it will be worth it.

“Having three kids you never know what you might have to buy on the go but we can safely say we didn’t hold back, for example when we were in Hyde Park we all enjoyed an expensive ice cream.

“We didn’t feel like we were holding ourselves back to purposefully stick to a budget but be mindful on our spending.”

She added: “I wonder where our Geocaching adventures will take us next.”

To read Jennifer’s blog, click here.

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