Last Sunday was your pretty normal (or as normal as it gets in this house anyway!!) day. With my PC down (hubby blew up my monitor, bless him!!), I spent it in the usual housework avoidance way, watching TV, playing with the cats, and, oh yeah, wrapping birthday pressies for my beloved’s (yes, that is hubby!!) 30th birthday which was on the Monday. The phone call came at 5pm.
Hubby: “Get your bags packed love, I’ve got a week off work and we’re going away!”
Me: “Um, what? Huh? Where are we going?!”
Hubby: “I don’t know, have a look in the paper and book something starting tomorrow! Anywhere, I don’t care. Love you. Bye!”
After doing goldfish impressions for about a minute, I reached for the paper. Eagerly searching for anything half decent really, something caught my eye! Neatly tucked in the corner of page 64, there was a little red advert for Butlins, Minehead. Fantastic!! We’d been twice before, we’d always had a goodish time and more importantly, it was just too cheap to pass up! I mean, half-board accommodation for £79 each for the week? And not in the crappy Budget (sorry, it’s been renamed…. Economy!) digs either. No, this was no less than Gallery Accommodation (that’s the medium priced one to you and me!!) Grabbing the phone, I had us booked within 15 minutes, and the nice lady on the end of the line even let us have the room £11 cheaper each because I booked so late! So, 5 o’clock – normal humdrum; by 5.30pm packing frenzy…how’s that for being spontaneous!!!! (And the only things I forgot to pack were my fleece and hubby’s hair gel…big pat on the back for me I think!!) Anyway, enough with the diary entry because I’m sure you really aren’t that interested and so on with the op….

~~~A BRIEF HISTORY~~~
Billy Butlin opened the very first Butlins Holiday Camp in Skegness in 1936. The appeal of low price family holidays hit a nerve with the British public and the popularity soared. Camps were soon opened in Clacton (1938), Filey (1945), Pwhelli and Ayr (1947), Mosney (1948), Bognor Regis (1960), Minehead (1962) and Barry Island (1966). During the early years, the camps did make more of a passing resemblance to “Hi de Hi”, with early wake up tannoy calls, knobbly knees contest and Glamorous Granny competitions (and let’s not forget about the Olympic size swimming pool!!) However, as the 80’s hit, the jokes apparently began to wear a little thin and the Butlins Empire was sold to Rank Leisure.
The new owners began their streamlining and remarketing by closing four of the camps and renaming the others: remember Starcoast World (Pwhelli)? Somerwest World (Minehead)? No it didn’t work, did it? By then, Butlins was a non-runner in the tourist industry. By the late 90’s, something drastic had to happen, and it did. They sold all but three of the camps and started to spend some money on the remaining ones!
The three remaining Butlins now are Skegness, Bognor Regis and, of course, Minehead. £140 million has been spent on the total makeover of these, and the improvements are amazing (we’ll come to these in a bit!) Butlins, Minehead is now the flagship camp, and it shows! It’s the most profitable and most successful of the three, and is the second largest European holiday centre after EuroDisney. And yes, that fact shocked me too!!!!

~Studio Accommodation
Otherwise known as Economy. It is the basic, no frills, no bells and no whistles accommodation. No particularly big, not particularly exciting, but it’s a place to sleep and it’s cheap! Expect the bed to creak and for there to be slightly dubious stains on the floor and you’ll be OK!!! The Studio Half Board food is OK, but basic. Personally, I’d never book Studio again. It was cold, it was scummy and there’s only so much grey chicken I can eat!!!!

~Premier Accommodation
Premier is the bee’s naughty bits!! We stayed here on our honeymoon (don’t laugh, it’s true, I swear!!) and it’s bliss! You get to park your car outside your door and not have to drag your luggage for miles!! You also get a bottle of bubbly on arrival, and a bottle of wine every evening with dinner (yes, we were very, very drunk!!). The housework fairy arrives everyday while you’re out to clean up and make your bed. You even get your own lounge with a patio!!! Gorgeous! If you want to do Butlins with style, go Premier…it’s worth the extra!!

~~~FOOD~~~
As I mentioned before, Half Board food was really excellent; but if you do get a bit peckish between feeds there are plenty of places to chow down within the Skyline! (And let’s face it, if you’re on holiday, stuffing your face full of chips at 3 in the morning is perfectly acceptable, as is wolfing down ice creams and pick and mix less than an hour after your evening meal!!) There’s a Burger King (yey!! I never get to eat there at home; for one thing hubby prefers Maccy D’s, and for another they haven’t got a drive through!!) which is a bit more expensive than High Street prices, but not as bad as motorway prices which are scandalous!! (I mean over a fiver for a whopper meal, I ask you!!) Opposite BK is a lovely restaurant called Pinewood Studios (Butlins take on Planet Hollywood, doesn’t quite work, but the food is lush!!) where we ate on the evening of Hubby’s birthday as we arrived too late for our paid for meal! It was reasonable as well, just over £20 for two massive steaks (honestly enough to satisfy a ravished puma!!), two desserts (hey it’s me we’re talking about, there’s no way I’m missing out on ice cream, no matter how stuffed I am!!) and a bottle of wine. There’s also a Harry Ramsden’s, and a Chicken and Kebab place. Right in the centre of the Skyline is a big café that does the most gorgeous whipped cream topped hot chocolate ever!! The snacks and sandwiches are also pretty cheap there…we paid about £7 for 2 chocolates, and two filled rolls! Also scattered around the various entertainment venues are sweet and treat shops so the temptations are just about everywhere!!!! Definitely not the best place for dieters!!!

~~~THINGS TO DO FOR A FEW MORE PENNIES~~~
But wait, there’s even more stuff to do!!! All this stuff costs a bit more but generally the prices aren’t extortionate and it’s your choice whether you pay and play and don’t!!
There’s Cash Bingo!! Yey! Great fun! We went on an afternoon, it cost £24 for 2 sets of 6 tickets, which I thought was very over priced…until I won the first Full House of £19. Then Hubby won the next Line for £8. And the next. And the next!!!! So we made a tidy profit, and garnered the love and respect of all the other players…NOT!!! We didn’t go back….
Inside the Skyline there’s a bar/bowling alley/pool parlour called Hotshots. We spent a very happy morning playing away in here, pool costs £5 an hour, bowling is £2.50 a
Game, which I thought was quite cheap!! Well I did when we started, then when I didn’t win a single game of anything, I thought it was the most expensive place every!! I mean, honestly, you’d think Hubby would’ve let me win one game of something wouldn’t you?!!!! Bless him!!
The costy things we didn’t do were: the cinema, which was £4.50 but the films they had on just didn’t appeal (Croc Dundee 3, Rush Hour 2), Mega Zone laser arena, because I get claustrophobic in them, and the Aerobic Studio because m’haaa, I’m on holiday!!!!

This is where I felt a little let down! There’s shopping arcade in the Skyline that I couldn’t wait to hit…and I couldn’t find a single thing I wanted!!! The gifts shops are full of toys and gadgets for kids, but no toys or gadgets for grown ups! If your life long dream is to own the entire collection of foot high Tweenies then you’d be in Paradise…I don’t and I wasn’t!!! I was hoping to get a couple of fleeces whilst away but there were no clothes but kiddie tee shirts and let’s face it, they’re not going to keep the wind out!!!
There was a quite nice supermarket (late night alcohol fulled munchie shopping!!) for the Self Caterers; there were also a couple of nice-ish newsagents (got to have my weekly Heat and NE fix!!), but I found the thought gone into the gift shops sincerely lacking!! Of course, the aforementioned sweetie shops were great….