Holiday highs and lows

Much as I love cooking, self-catering holidays drive me bonkers. The cooker etc is never as good as one's own, no dishwasher, there is no stock of herbs, salt and pepper, cooking oil etc etc etc, there is often a lack of decent knives, no colander, mixing bowls - oh, I could go on but, basically, no more self catering for me!

I love self-catering. We eat out everyday.

I think self-catering is OK if you have young children. It makes everything so much easier and you can keep an ear out for them when they are in bed which you can't in a hotel so you have to stay in the room once they have gone to sleep. We did it a lot when ours were young but did eat out sometimes too.

When it is just DH and me we always stay in hotels, much better not to have to think about meals especially when it is a busy type of holiday.

We have had many more holiday highs than lows. Just one terrible hotel in all the years so not much to complain about.

The highs are when I get waited on hand and foot (i.e. a great hotel). The lows are when a holiday means more work for me (we go self catering somewhere remote) or we find ourselves on a tour with some annoying people!

I have been doing both. I've always felt that self catering has to be top of the range and even then as kitty says there can be a dearth of sharp knives and
Instructions for idiosyncratic dishwashers. It has to be better than home is my golden rule. I can cope with the things my home throws at me but one year we stayed in a last minute booking in the Lakes. It was expensive and August but the place was covered in labels saying out of order. We took a couple of days to realise that things were breaking down around us and we gave up and went home. This year we went and inspected before we booked. We also took GC 2 to wales and booked a five star place. This was new and so high tech we had to keep phoning the owners to find out how things worked. We are going to the same place in July . We then feel we deserve our own holiday having done our duty so we had a cruise to somewhere we wanted to go and September we will plan our next adventure. My DH is talking Himalayas I am talking one of those trains to Jodphur and Jaisalmer. Beans on toast until Xmas .

I love self catering we eat out at a different place most days and get to sample the different styles of restaurant. I'm not comfortable in hotels I always feel I'm being observed, much prefer the anonymity of self catering and how much cheaper it is. If we stayed in hotels we certainly couldn't afford 2/3 breaks each year. I don't mind if its just OH and I or family come along .

tanith; that's just how I feel. Over the past few years we've combined a bit of eating out with cooking simple meals. I used to make quite an effort when we went oop north but realised that it was my only holiday of the year and I was cooking all the time [and putting on weight]so it's fish fingers and salad most nights with a couple of pub meals. I'd quite like to have a caravan holiday again one day. I used to love going the Crete and self catering with a meal in the evening; with it being so hot I never wanted to eat much anyway.

Tegan we do caravan at least once a year we just had 4days in Suffolk I'm just more comfortable if its just 'us' didn't do much cooking this trip though. I'd love to go to Crete but OH won't/can't fly so we holiday in the UK , but I do get the odd trip abroad to visit family.

The past three years I have joined DS1 and family in their caravan. This year we are going again to Provence. DS is a trained chef and can rustle up a good meal very quickly. The kitchen and the barbecue are his province - nobody dares to interfere. In France I eat loads of fruit - peaches, nectarines and apricots - and salads. I am very happy in my favourite greengrocer's shop! My DiL keeps me well supplied with liquid refreshment. There's a house in a local village where the owners run an occasional restaurant in the garden - rustic cooking! And the same village has an annual soirée du vin which we all enjoy, even the children who are supposed to sample only the various fruit juices.

I love going away with our touring caravan, no packing, just take everything to the van a couple of days before we go, and store it all away. The bit I don`t like is all the hassle of making sure everything`s set for daughter staying behind. She`s disabled, can manage on her own in a limited fashion, but we have to make sure everything is as she needs it to be, and I always have a feeling, as we`re driving to our destination, that I`ve forgotten something. I also hate the 2, sometimes 3, binbags full of dirty washing that we bring back with us!

But you have to clean the caravan when you get back. And the seats are just not comfortable. Scatter cushions can't make up for those awful backrests. And feet are always cold in a van.

We use our caravan for storage.

I used to live in a caravan. When it was really cold me and my flatmate [or should I say caravanmate] used to soak our feet in a bowl of hot water with mustard to warm up.

Oh, I lived in a caravan for a while, but that was so cosy! It had a gorgeous little fire with a hot water tank above it. That was the only heating apart from a paraffin stove. The bed dropped down out of the wall.

Happy days. Just me and my cat.

My caravan was called Tudor Queen because I reckong that's when it was made. Either that or it was named after a spam like food at the time.

We lived in a 12` touring van when we first moved over here, the two of us, 5 kids aged from 13 down to 6, and a cat. The idea was to live there till we sold our house and bought another over here, naively thinking it wouldn`t take long! We were in the van for 15 months, including a very cold, snowy winter, no heating, we`d light the cooker then stand on the seats to feel the heat! When the snow was right up to the step, we didn`t go out unless we had to, used to fill a pan with snow to melt and boil, to save going to the tap. It was an experience that I don`t want to have again! After that, going on holiday in a caravan is a doddle!

AND it`s easy to clean.

Highs: caravanning hols with the children when they were little - I loved it.

Lows: terrible self-catering on Pembs coast (a few weeks after I had had a hysterectomy!) with a gang of teenagers (mine and friends) - the beds were so filthy that even the scruffy teenagers opted to sleep on the floor rather than in them! It was revolting, and embarrassingly had been rented from a person local to us via an advert in the parish mag. I did alert the mag as to what they were advertising!

We always go self-catering as it is easier to have a lie-in! - and to scruff about in jarmies if you want to. Some of our home improvements have been as a result of the self-catering accommodation being so superior to our own home that we felt shamed into making some improvements at home.

I always finish up cooking as OH is very reluctant to go out to eat because of his swallowong problems; but I don't mind cooking. I always think the best self-catering cottages have cooking oil, spices, herbs etc. - otherwise it is a bit of a pain I agree.

High - today, snorkelling three times, over four hours all told. Some lovely new soft corals and I saw a lion fish very close. MY calves are like rugby players' calves and my shoulders are a little sore after all that breast stroke swimming - but it certainly firms up the arms!
Low - paying a mint to go to the Maldives and finding the coral had been bleached by El Nino.

High - today, snorkelling three times, over four hours all told. Some lovely new soft corals and I saw a lion fish very close. MY calves are like rugby players' calves and my shoulders are a little sore after all that breast stroke swimming - but it certainly firms up the arms!
Low - paying a mint to go to the Maldives and finding the coral had been bleached by El Nino.

Numberplease - you must have been very stoical - my imagination ran riot at your description.
(Don't know why my last post appeared twice)

Numberplease - you must have been very stoical - my imagination ran riot at your description.
(Don't know why my last post appeared twice but I am in my hotel room).

We seem to have Greatnan in duplicate at the moment!!

I'm very fed up with self-catering. OH likes it, but we will be touring around France this year for three weeks in four different places and the thought of packing and unpacking all those boxes is driving me mad before we have even started - washingup liquid, washing stuff, plus all the dried goods that are cheaper over here. He does somehow seem to think I can rustle up a meal 15 minutes after we have arrived, but it takes that long to work out how to use the cooker sometimes. We go away for weekends to hotels, and I love that. All the time that I would have spent cooking is spent on me instead, so that I can eat looking presentable, not flushed and flustered. Luxury. I think I am just getting fed up with cooking, if the truth be told.

So, the low is when we arrive and I am knackered and have to rustle up a meal whilst trying to unpack at the same time, as it is usually very late and miles from anywhere.

The highs are the few times I have managed to have a hotel holiday and know that someone else will get the blame if the food isn't good, and I get to wear nailvarnish and know it will last, and that my hair won't go frizzy in steam.

OH does do some of the cooking, one or two nights usually. Maybe I could break an arm this year...

DH and I go on hotel hols now and BB basis.. so we can eat out or in as we like. If we go away with the kids and g-kids then it is self catering: caravan, chalet, house depending on what we can find! Building myself up for a week at Camber Sands at the end of July!

We always went on camping / caravan hols when I was a child and also when or kids were primary school age. Took them on a couple of hotel trips as they got older.

Loved holidays in France camping with the girls..lots of happy memories but funniest was when DH & I stayed in a tiny tent on a hillside in rural France and woke in the night feeling as though we were on a water bed. The rain was so heavy it was running like a stream under the tent and lifting us up! The well organised Germans in the luxury tent next to us lent us a spade to dig a trench to divert the water!