Coast and countryside both make for a good UK break, so the real question is what kind of days you want to have rather than which is objectively better.

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.

A hotel stay suits a different kind of trip. If you want your meals cooked and tingdeneholidayparks.com cleared away without any thought, and you’d rather not do any washing up on holiday at all, that’s a fair trade for a smaller room. Hotels also tend to sit centrally in towns and cities, so if your break is built around walking to restaurants, shops and evening entertainment on foot, that convenience counts for a lot.

If your break falls within school holidays, particularly the summer holidays or half terms, book as early as you reasonably can, ideally several months ahead. These are the weeks every family with school-age children is trying to book at the same time, so the best weeks, and often the more sought-after units within those weeks, go first. Waiting until a few weeks before a summer half term usually means choosing from whatever’s left rather than what you’d actually prefer.

Before you book any UK holiday park, a handful of straightforward questions can save you from an awkward surprise on arrival.

A UK staycation can be planned around almost any budget, provided you know where the genuine savings sit and where cutting corners actually costs you more in the long run.