Woolacombe Day Out for £50 or Less: How to Actually Do It

Short answer: Park at Mortehoe rather than the village, walk Morte Point for free, eat at Meraki or the Harbour-style cafés rather than the seafront restaurants, and use the beach itself as the main event. The biggest single saving is National Trust membership if you already have it.

Where the money goes

Woolacombe has no free parking and no cheap restaurants on the seafront, so a family of four can spend fifty pounds before lunch without trying. The good news is that the main attraction — three miles of sand — costs nothing, and so does the best walk in the area.

Parking, honestly

Every car park here is paid. The National Trust car park serving the Woolacombe end is free for members, which is the single biggest saving available and pays for a membership over a week. If you are not a member, Mortehoe's car park up on the headland is less of a lottery than the village and puts you at the start of the free walks.

The free half of the day

Morte Point out of Mortehoe is the highest-rated thing to do in the area and costs nothing — a loop out to the headland with seals on the rocks below for much of the year, benches at intervals, and manageable with primary-age children. Bull Point Lighthouse is about a mile and a half each way on a track rather than a cliff path.

Mortehoe Museum is free with a donation box — local history, shipwrecks and wartime material on two floors, plus a garden you can picnic in. Half an hour rather than an afternoon, but it is the obvious wet-weather stop and it costs nothing.

Eating for less

Meraki Coffee Co. is the village's coffee benchmark, opens at eight and is reasonably priced for a beach village in August — and it has a serving hatch, so you can order without taking up a table. The Porthole on Marine Drive does home-made cakes, sandwiches and scotch eggs with the best sit-down view in Woolacombe.

Town Farmhouse up in Mortehoe does the cream tea, generously, and is the natural end of the Morte Point loop. Barricane Beach Café serves curries on the sand in the evening — not the cheapest, but it is the thing people remember.

A £50 day

• Park at Mortehoe, walk Morte Point — free.
• Mortehoe Museum, donation — say £5.
• Coffee and cake at Town Farmhouse — around £15 for four.
• Afternoon on Woolacombe beach — free.
• Chips or a beach café lunch — the rest of the budget.