Staycation as spa

August. How are you doing – and where, pray, are you doing it? Back in May, then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer noted that “people might change where they go on holiday this year,” with all the rhetorical flourish with which he remains associated. And so it has come to pass. In June, YouGov confirmed that 64% of adults were plotting a domestic escape, cost-of-living concerns influencing 42% of pleasure seekers. If the pandemic made holidaying at home desirable, this year it’s the smokin’ trend (term used advisedly, but more of that anon).

I rarely go away during peak holiday season. As a non-breeder, I don’t have to. Plus: vampire. So my staycation took place in June. My partner, Terence, and I had five days at a friend’s cottage in Hampshire, followed by three days in Weymouth (less delightful, but cracking environs). We enjoyed a few excursions by way of beaches (West Wittering, Hive and Durdle Door), ancient woodland, Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens (cracking), and a little light thrifting. I collected rocks (note: NOT on Chesil Beach) and gazed at the waves, while Terence indulged in soupy-hot swims.

But, mostly, we ate simply, slept lavishly and read; slowed, did nothing, lost in that exotic void that is not knowing the time, or where one’s phone is. Think milling about all day, before succumbing to vast, unfathomable, holiday dreams from which one never quite wakes. Our whippets basked and so did we. Forget a spa: all schedules, being pummelled and valiantly striving to chillax. Staycays are life as spa - a happy vanishing, blissful blur; busy going nowhere in the best of all possible ways.

Behold, my definitive guide to why the Great British staycation reigns supreme:

1) It requires zero bandwidth

I am in no way a planner, petty administrative tasks being Betts kryptonite. This means that the need for a holiday frequently occurs at the point at which I am too burnt-out to arrange one. As for travel hassle, fuhgeddaboudit. The entire going-on-holiday thing can become so stressful that, by the time you’ve uncoiled, it’s time to come home.

Cue the staycation: no passports, no baggage allowance, no angst whatsoever. You just go somewhere, then exist. There’s no need to worry about forgetting anything, because there’s nothing that can’t be acquired. Behold, the heady pleasure of not having to capital P Pack, merely going in what you’re wearing, plus a couple of things like it, a pair of flipflops, plus your own bodyweight in books. No trains to book, no flights to miss, no scrape you cannot evade. We were six hours late setting off for our staycation and still managed to arrive by 11pm.

2) It’s boiling & the planet is on fire

I’m not one of those currently trilling: “It feels like the Algarve so why go to the Algarve?” I’ve always loathed the heat. The idea of heading somewhere even more sweltering in July or August is never on the agenda. Still, most humans require a spot of sun to increase the old vitamin D levels, so I get that I’m an outlier here.

But, to sally forth this summer of 2026, you’d have to be insane. I found myself in the south of France during last year’s late 30-degree shitstorm and pleasant it was not. The residents of Bordeaux, Madrid, Valpaços and the like have suffered enough without an influx of lobster-coloured Brits. The world is broiling, infernos are bustin’ out all over, and one doesn’t want to be competing with traumatised refugees for that last portion of chicken chasseur.

Share