A coastal caravan holiday suits anyone who wants the beach to be part of daily life rather than a single day trip. Mornings can start with a walk along the front, afternoons can be built around a paddle or a spot of rockpooling, and there's usually a working harbour, a promenade or a string of small seaside towns within easy reach for lunch. Coastal parks also tend to sit near longer coastal footpaths, so if you like a proper walk with the sea in view for most of it, this setting delivers that without much planning.

If the park has a clubhouse, pool or entertainment programme, these are usually optional rather than something you're expected to take part in every evening. Plenty of guests use a park purely as a comfortable, well-equipped base and spend most of their time out and about along the coast or countryside nearby, coming back only to sleep, cook and relax.

A countryside or Broads-side setting offers a different rhythm. Rather than one central stretch of coast, you're usually within reach of quiet lanes, market towns, nature reserves and, on the Broads specifically, slow-moving waterways that suit an afternoon boat trip or a riverside pub lunch. It tends to be a calmer setting day to day, better suited to those who want gentle walks, birdwatching or simply a quieter base to come back to after a day out, rather than beach-focused activity.

Midweek arrival is the other thing worth trying. Weekend slots get booked up first, particularly for short breaks, so a Monday or Tuesday arrival often has availability when a Friday one doesn't. If your work pattern allows it, a midweek break also tends to mean quieter on-site facilities, since most other guests are working to the same Friday-to-Friday pattern you're avoiding.

Self-catering is the biggest single saving available. A static caravan Tingdene Holiday Parks UK, with its own kitchen, means you're choosing when to cook and when to treat yourselves to eating out, rather than paying restaurant prices for every meal of the trip by default. For a family or group of any size, this alone tends to be the single biggest saving compared with a hotel-based break, where every meal usually comes at hotel prices.

Food shopping on arrival, rather than eating out on your first night, is a small habit that adds up over a week. A single supermarket shop covering breakfasts, lunches and a few home-cooked evenings, topped up with the odd meal out as a treat rather than a default, keeps a self-catering break comfortably within most budgets without anyone feeling like they went without.