sorry two people
chris

To give you a very rough idea of how much you'll need, I've split the basic items up for you. The amounts are totals for 2 people.

For accommodation, I'd allow at least £50 per night. You can find cheaper, but best to be on the safe side, especially around the Christmas/New Year period when prices rise and places get booked up early. £50 x 30 = £1500

Petrol's very expensive in the UK and the amount you use will obviously depend on the distance you cover and whether you're travelling in towns or on motorways, etc, but £5 - £10 a day is probably a decent average. Say £250 for a month.

Assuming you get breakfast in your room rate, you can pick up cheap snacks or sandwiches for lunch at any local bakery or supermarket for about £5 a day. £5 x 30 = £150.

Dinner's obviously up to you and can vary enormously between cheap pub grub up to expensive restaurants. If you eat in fast-food places or cheap pubs every night, then around £10-£20 a day should be enough, but you can quite easily double that by eating in even a fairly mediocre restaurant or a pub that does decent food. £20 x 30 = £600.

So, for the basics, you're looking at around £2500 and then you need to add on drinks, admission to various attractions, entertainment, personal items, shopping and probably a bit extra for Christmas Day and New Years Eve.

For a weekend away, try putting a departure airport in here to see where the cheapest flight deals are.

Hope this helps.

thankyou very much for that sounds like what we were thinking

Hope you enjoy your holiday! One tip- when looking for accomodation try turning up at the Tourist Info office for that town quite late on in the day(5pmish) as they often have discounted rates for hotels and you can get a bargain. However, best not to do that over the Christmas period.

Hi,

You say that you don't mind staying in hostels in which case you could reduce your overnight costs. I suggest that you have a look at:

http://www.yha.org.uk

which covers England and Wales and

http://www.syha.org.uk

Which covers hostels in Scotland.

Youth hostels in the UK have changed a lot in recent years and it is now possible to book twin rooms and even rooms with en-suites - you don't always have to stay in a shared dormitory these days. And they now have many more hostels in city centres too. For example, a twin room with an en-suite shower room in the purpose built 4 star hostel in Liverpool would cost £20.50 per person per night inc breakfast which would be hard to beat anywhere else in the city, especially for such a central location. This is one of their top of the range ones and you'll find that others with fewer facilities are much cheaper. Scottish ones do tend to be cheaper as well mainly because many of them are more basic but twin rooms are still often on offer and the location can be so superb as to be a good enough trade-off for a night or two. Also, sometimes staying in budget hostels could give you some flexibilty in your budget so that you could then afford a few nights in somewhere more luxurious on another night :-)

SM

PS Forgot to say that you can book online too and it would be advisable to do so over the main Christmas/New Year period when most of those that are open provide additional services and/or entertainment, meals etc.