Frugal in Wales! A budget adventure

We have just returned from the most wonderful week in Wales, where we managed to dodge the rain the whole time. The forecast was dire, but kept changing and in the end we couldn’t have asked for nicer weather. We are so lucky! It’s not easy to achieve five frugal things when you are on holiday, but we tend to keep a pretty frugal mindset wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Here is a brief round up of our budget adventure being frugal in Wales.

The Green Gathering

We began the week at the Green Gathering in Chepstow, spending three days under canvas. We took our camping stove, kettle, a saucepan, teabags and some basic food with us. This saved loads of money.

There were quite a lot of nice food stalls at the festival but a lot of them were vegan. This means lots of soya and onions, both of which I struggle with because I have IBS. We had a couple of meals there, most notably a delicious pizza made in a portable pizza oven.

Mostly we drank water or went back to the tent to make a tea or coffee, but had our reusable cups with us and had the odd tea out.

We saw lots of very chilled music and had a lovely, gentle yoga session. I meant to have a massage in the healing area but ran out of time!

I loved the ethos of the festival and the determination of the organisers to leave as small a footprint as possible. I will write a separate post on this.

Charity shop bargains

As the festival was just a mile from the town of Chepstow, we took a walk into town one morning. It was a nice, old fashioned sort of place with a good castle.

Mr S sighed a bit but accepted that it was almost impossible for me to walk past a charity shop whilst we were there. I found a couple of nice bits, including a lovely East cotton jumper. It doesn’t always happen, but as much as possible when I am buying clothes for myself I am trying to buy natural fabrics. This is 100% cotton and a lovely pale blue colour. I am really pleased with it as it was only £3.95.

Another good find was a brand new dress with its tags for £2.50 in the reduced section. It is no good for me so I will list it on eBay.

Travelling

We moved on from Chepstow and headed towards Sageston, near Tenby, where we had our AirBNB booked. En route we stopped for lunch and a stroll along the beach at a little place called Burry Port. It proudly displays a plaque to show that Amelia Earhart landed there as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. You can read the full story here.

We bought lunch from a supermarket, which was cheaper than going into a pub or cafe, although we did pop into one later for a cup of tea. We ate looking at the boats on the little port.

Cheaper accommodation

We were really pleased with our AirBNB accommodation at Sageston. Kim and Adam, the hosts, had converted a small outbuilding into a self contained suite, with a double bedroom, lounge and kitchen area and shower room.

It was lovely – super clean, comfortable and well equipped to make our own meals. The hosts left us milk, tea and coffee, a little pack of Welsh cakes, wine and some flowers, which was a really nice touch and well appreciated. It was really close to Tenby and had a castle down the road at Carew.

I love AirBNB* for its huge variety of possibly accommodation, from a basic room in someone’s home to an entire apartment in the middle of a city.

Our stay cost just over £130 for 4 nights. I think this is a huge bargain for such a lovely place.

Tenby, St Martin’s Haven and Marloe Sands

We managed to squeeze a lot in the four days we spent in Pembrokeshire.

Tenby was lovely, as you would expect. We got there quite early as we knew it would get busy and parked all day in the multi-storey for just £4! You would pay that for a couple of hours in Essex.

We bought a pasty each and a cup of Welsh Brew from the Pembrokeshire Pasty & Pie shop. It is justifiably famous as they were top quality and totally delicious. I can’t remember how much they cost but they weren’t expensive and it was much cheaper than eating in a pub. Instead we sat in the sun on the beach listening to the waves. Fantastic.

We went to Pembroke one day to look around the Castle. In a country full of castles, we thought it was rather impressive.

St Martin’s Haven and Marloe Sands were the highlight of our budget adventure for us both. The views from St Martin’s Haven across to the Island of Skomer were stunning. We had a walk around and spotted two seals lounging on a rocky beach. In fact, we thought they were rocks to start with. We saw another bobbing in the sea. Magic.

World’s best beach?

From there we drove a short distance down the road to Marloes Sands, where we parked up and walked down a track to  the beach. I can honestly say it is the best beach I have ever been to. We felt like we were walking into a scene from Planet of the Apes or into prehistoric Britain.

The cliffs were all different colours, with bright sections of red sandstone, and there are craggy black sections of rock poking out of the sand all over the beach. It is great for exploring rock pools.

We will definitely be going back. Why do people spend a fortune flying to overseas locations every year without ever exploring the treasures we have in the UK? I absolutely love Wales!

So I think we managed a dozen frugal things during our budget adventure in Wales, not just five! I hope I haven’t bored you too much with my holiday snaps…. How was your week?

Don’t miss the UKMB giveaway!

Don’t forget to enter the latest UK Money Bloggers giveaway, explained in this post. You could win one of five beautiful M&S Afternoon Tea hampers worth £50 or a runner up prize of a “You’re the bees knees” gift bag. I would love it if one of my readers was a winner in this.

I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.

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