I’m playing catch up a bit here, as these two adventures were back in March. Life’s been a little hectic recently what with planning my new Etsy shop, working on various other writing projects, taking on more commitments for the children’s clubs and groups and life and HE in general! However, I would now like to tell you all about our trip to Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard. For anyone who has never been you need to go!! It’s amazing. I’m documenting this as two adventures, purely because the excitement of a road trip and a hotel stay was all too much to bear!
I have been fortunate to go to Portsmouth a couple of times in my life but this one was special because I got to take C with me. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned before, but a while ago, C began Sea Cadets. He wanted a space to go regularly which was without us as a family. A place to call his own and to “belong”. We looked long and hard at different clubs and groups, including scouts, air cadets and sports clubs and he chose sea cadets based on the activities they tend to get up to. Lots of adventure-style activities and boating being the most appealing to C.
So, to take him to Portsmouth was something he’d been wanting since joining and I’m so glad I did. Firstly, I’d like to point out that we are on a constant tight budget and so every excursion we do, I plan to it’s death to make sure I’m not spending unnecessarily. To make this trip more affordable, we used our Tesco clubcard vouchers. You only need to use £7 worth of vouchers for one entry into the dockyard. To add to this, that one entry lasts you all year! So if you live locally it’s fantastic, and if you don’t you can plan a couple of weekend trips there. Even if you only manage to get there the once, it is WELL worth the money. Ideally, plan it over 2 days minimum as there is so much to see and do, you really would be hard pushed to do it all in a day.
On top of that, we went with a friend and her son. We shared a budget hotel room which at the time, only cost us £50 between us, however, that will obviously vary depending on hotel and time of year you visit. Premier Inn’s and Travelodges tend to do their lowest prices on Sundays which has really helped us to find affordable places to stay. At times we’ve managed to get a room for 4 of us for £29 for the night which is an absolute steal! We took pastries and snacks to keep us going and used budget pubs for dinners, again to keep costs to it’s minimum.
I can’t say which was the best bit about the historic dockyard, as it is all so amazing that I couldn’t possibly narrow it down! However, For that £7 worth of tesco clubcard vouchers (or £32 an adult, £19 a child or £76 a family of 5) you get unlimited annual entry into 11 attractions including a submarine tour, 
Action stations, which has mast climbing, wall climbing, helicopter simulator experience, various obstacle courses and interactive games,
the Mary Rose museum, HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, boat trips and various other museums. It really is value for money, even if you’re paying full price. We spent 1.5 days there and still didn’t have time to do everything (although we did do all but one boat ride and one museum).
We definitely intend to return to Portsmouth with the rest of the family and very possibly again with the same friends we went with this time as it was truly an unforgettable experience.
Living Our Own Way 