![travel holiday staycation uk affordable alternatives](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/07/20/TELEMMGLPICT000303427390_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The UK's biggest summer rip-offs – and their affordable alternatives
Swap the honeypots for somewhere more imaginative and you could save thousands of pounds on your summer holiday
![travel holiday staycation uk affordable alternatives](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/07/20/TELEMMGLPICT000303427390_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Summer is both the best of seasons and the worst of seasons for travellers. In the UK, we can go almost anywhere with expectations of warm(ish), dry(ish) weather, and a fair chance of some real heat if we’re beach-bound and keen on a swim. But because we all do the same thing, schools and universities close, and the hotels fill up, prices skyrocket, and there are queues on every motorway, in every museum and for every coin-operated loo on the prom.
A handful of places in the UK have become fixtures, for the media, for mass tourism, for the hype-mongers and would-be aspirational zeitgeist-nailers. Year in, and year out, we hear great things about South and North Devon, Cornwall, the Cotswolds, Bath, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Hay on Wye, the Pembrokeshire coast and twee towns like Totnes, Frome and Rye, and any number of posh redoubts in Dorset and Wiltshire.
But all these places have crowd-free doppelgängers. So, this summer, why not swap one of the clichés for somewhere a little different? Even better, is the fact that you’re likely to save hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds. Here are five to get you planning – or thinking, at least.
Swap London for... Belfast
Inflated hotel rooms, packed pubs, sweaty Tubes, museum and gallery queues... London is truly at its worst in summer. King rooms at the Bulgari in Knightsbridge, on booking.com and other (supposed) deal-finding websites are being advertised at £1,500 per night for July. Afternoon tea at the Wolseley will set you back £44.50 per person. Sure, they’re both pretty posh. But even a decent Airbnb room – not a flat, not a house – in Chiswick – not really London – costs £538 for one night.
![Titanic Museum in Belfast](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/07/18/TELEMMGLPICT000170207522_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqq26TX-rkvwwXA2f8oBGFwnwSCF1R0VweJ7DS2UnVMSQ.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Belfast, meanwhile, is the capital we least visit. Many Britons who have been to Berlin, Rome, Madrid, and even recent war-zones like Sarajevo and Dubrovnik, have never been to that major city just over the water. Regular ferries and flights go there from all corners of the UK. The Ulster Museum is free and while a Discovery walking tour at the dashing Titanic Museum costs £24.95 per person (£11 for 5-15 year olds), it’s far more fun than leaning over the crowds to see a Van Gogh at the National Gallery.
You can get a room at the Merchant Hotel – a luxurious property in the Italianate former Ulster Bank HQ – for £339 per night even in midsummer. But I found three nights in a Deluxe King at the Bullitt – which has the same owner and loads of style – for £522 in mid-August. Read our expert guide to Belfast here.
Swap Cornwall for... Carmarthenshire
For the ultimate follow-the-herd holiday, join the millions of mindless motorists that take to the A38 and A30 every July. Your reward? Some eye-catching Cornish coastline, no doubt, but also crowds in Padstow, queues in St Ives, and inflated prices for hotels and cottage rentals – like six nights’ B&B at the four-star Scarlet hotel outside Newquay from £2,385 in July, or £900 for a wee cottage near Marazion (and the nice ones have been booked for months). The very point of Cornwall – the bracing wind, the greenery, the exposed coast – is sacrificed to popularity and pullulating sightseers all gawping at the same view.
![the Tywi (Towy) Valley in Carmarthenshire](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000383464672_17194167539890_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtGQB12KHxxQCrwnTZkX0nwgWqwm85JEWpGVhFb46TTg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
By contrast, Carmarthenshire, the Cinderella County of Wales, is undiscovered, undersold and largely unspoiled by caravan sites and second-home “honeypots”. While not quite at the end of the road – that’s Pembrokeshire, as busy as anything every summer for the same reasons as Cornwall – it feels like it when you get down to the shore at Llansteffan or on to the montane ridges of the westernmost Brecon Beacons. Snap up a six-night stay at iconic Brown’s Hotel in Laugharne for £817, B&B, and use that as your base. What was good enough for Dylan Thomas should be good enough for even the most poetic traveller.
Swap Edinburgh for... Liverpool & Manchester
A very cool, relatively small arts festival was launched in Edinburgh in 1947 and for about four decades stayed pretty hip and provocative – and then, like everything else, went big-time global, and touristy, and became all about telly comedians breaking through and which celebrity dropped in to act in No Exit. Well, I simplify a bit, but that’s because I want to encourage arts, theatre, painting and music-lovers to swap the Scots south-east for the English north-west and go to the two great Lancashire capitals for their festy fix this summer.
![liverpool](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2024/06/26/TELEMMGLPICT000383464677_17194167906370_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Both have cutting-edge theatre spaces (Liverpool’s Everyman, Manchester’s Contact), world-class museums and galleries (the Tate is closed for a refurbishment, but the Walker, Lady Lever and Whitworth are world-class), smaller festivals and cool gigs through the hot season – including New Order at Wythenshawe Park on August 24. The new Aviva Studios, aka Factory International, hosts the film-focused Mubi Festival on July 12-13.
Poky Airbnb rooms during Edinburgh Festival start at £500 for six nights; Liverpool rooms start from £147 and you can have a flat for a week for £268. Six nights’ B&B at The Witchery in Scotland is a hubble-bubbling £6,691.50; at the posh 2 Blackburne Terrace in Liverpool’s Georgian Quarter, just £1,431. It’s a little over 30 miles between the northern cities, or 37 minutes on the fast train. Read our expert guide to Manchester here.
Swap Devon for... Dumfries & Galloway
Between the mega-popular Lake District and the heavily trafficked Highlands of Scotland, Dumfries & Galloway (D&G) is the capacious, verdant, thinly populated bit of Scotland that is all too easily bypassed.
In the case of D&G, it’s the Solway Firth that juts in and pushes main roads elsewhere. Though Solway is one reason you should visit: it’s beautiful, bird-filled, and the Scottish side is less explored. D&G is in the Lowlands, but forms part of the Southern Uplands, with forested hills, hundreds of lochs, rocky shores and sandy beaches.
Galloway Forest Park is 299 square miles of woodlands, with a million trees give or take. While many are plantation varieties, there are expanding areas of “new natives”, including downy willow, sessile oak and wych elm. In 2009, it became the first area in the UK to be designated as a Dark Sky Park. For woodland walks and mountain biking circuits it’s hard to beat.
![Loch Trool in the Galloway Forest Park, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/07/18/TELEMMGLPICT000136887152_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwSX5rhseiWKOo9p9OQ-ymek.jpeg?imwidth=350)
If you prefer motorised wheels, the South West Coastal 300 is a loop rich in culture and history – and has had none of the publicity, grim or good, of the North Coast 500 route.
Dumfries is popular with those in the know, so bagging an August room can be tricky. I found three nights B&B at the excellent Trigony House Hotel and Garden Spa for £825 in August. A comparable room in South Hams would be Bovey Castle, which was quoting £1,000.75 for the same stay, minus breakfast (another £40), via booking.com. And yes, you can swim all along the D&G coast and no, it’s not much colder – the Gulf Stream has led to some calling it the Scottish Riviera.
Swap Bath for... Bradford
Bath is quite beautiful, and some might say very naff. Any place that is touted as “a backdrop in Bridgerton and the Netflix’s Persuasion” slips down any respectable rankings. The whole Austen-Regency-Roman Baths schtick is so overegged that it has all the synaptic shazam of seeing Mickey Mouse in Orlando.
Bradford is, by devastating contrast, a city to blow your mind. Its Venetian Gothic (yes, you read that correctly) town hall is the stuff of architectural fantasy, and the Little Germany quarter is an Italianate film set – literally, though it’s more Peaky Blinders than Bridgerton.
![Cartwright Hall in Lister Park, Bradford, Yorkshire](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2022/07/18/TELEMMGLPICT000297166290_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqEejfkzjN7L6ae-GPvzZaZ3GTJFJS74MYhNY6w3GNbO8.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Recently scrubbed-up Lister Park, meanwhile, is a romantic whirl of terraced lawns and stately, tree-lined paths. The Cartwright Hall Art Gallery at its heart is excellent, with important Hockneys in a dedicated room. Around the park are grand Victorian mansions built for mill-owning magnates, making for an eye-opening amble north through to Unesco-listed Saltaire.
Another great walk is out to Haworth, there to do the Brontë sights, if you’re missing your 19th-century female novelists. But I’d also recommend the city-centre cinema heritage walk, taking in the locations for Room at the Top, Billy Liar, The Wall, The King’s Speech, and The Railway Children. After all, this is the UK’s national media and film city, as well as its youngest city, and its most multicultural city, and its curry capital, and UK City of Culture for 2025 – go now, before everyone else has.
You can stay in a grand country pile like Holdsworth House or Shibden Mill if you want a taste of rural West Yorkshire. Six nights at the Great Victoria in the city from £377 to £810 (for a junior penthouse). The same period at Bath’s Gainsborough came in at £1,593 to £2,382 (for a junior suite). Easy decision, really. And if you want the spa town vibe and some posh facades, Harrogate is up the road.
Prices stated throughout the article are for double rooms unless otherwise stated. Six nights has been used to compare prices.
This article was first published in July 2022, and has been revised and updated.