Add to this the sky-high prices (Understandable, of course! I daren’t even contemplate the logistics and figures involved in keeping a string of horses in this entirely unnatural urban behemoth!), and I often find myself flicking through the horse-y press’ classified sections entitled ‘Holidays’ and ‘Intensive Courses’. If you don’t get to go that often, I say treat yourself to an all-you-can-eat experience when the chance arises!

And so, with much emphasis these days on suggesting that you avoid the euro to allow your hard-earned quid to stretch further, we toyed with the idea of a summer break in Tunisia. Browsing through various brochures, we found First Choice’s provided the appropriate detail in their pages. I was completely swayed by the proximity of the stables at Iberostar’s Sahara Beach Hotel in Skanes, Monastir. They were, apparently, on site!

I’d been to resorts with stables before, and happily have yet to be disappointed: namely Club Med Agadir in Morocco (Club Med excellence, as always, but this did involve a brief shuttle ride from the grounds), and the legendary Jebel Ali Hotel in Dubai (A little out of our price range this time around). Upon arrival in Monastir though, on the kind of blazing July morning I pine for from my Middle Eastern childhood, I could all but contain myself and refrain from chiming in with the excited cries of the kids on our transfer coach as we rolled into the Sahara Beach, “Look, Mum! It’s got it’s own stables!” The ‘Club d’ Equitation’ was, indeed, the very first thing you saw.

This did it for me on that holiday, you see. It was all the expected fun ‘n’ larks involved in staying in a club-style resort (i.e. days spent in the sunshine amidst the shared, raucous conviviality of a truly international clientele; the infectious energy of the reps, most notably that cheeky one with all the in-jokes for the Brits; a few hilarious, water-up-the-nose, bum-bashing beach sports thrown into the all-inclusive package; the poolside and after dinner entertainment, where you continue to stuff yourself silly despite having just gorged on the sprawling buffets).. Pretty full, occupancy-wise, at this time of year but it was time to drop any such aversion carted from home. This wasn’t a commuting crush to work – we were on holiday, and the good memories were meant to be there for the taking should you choose. All this with the knowledge that I could top it all off by riding almost everyday if I wanted to! I could be up before anyone else at dawn’s cool breezes, or take in a glorious North African sunset atop my Arab or Barb steed whenever I wished (for less than half of what I would pay back home) …And all I had to do was trot down the driveway, even if I simply wanted to deliver the sugar cubes, that I’d stashed in my pockets at lunch, to soft equine muzzles, sleepily gracious form the height of the day’s heat!

Ambling down ‘Commercial Street’ (the open corridor the resort provided for external businesses to tout their wares to the guests on their way to and from the dining halls) is where we met our first friendly equestrian representative …And I mean friendly! The Tunisians disarm you with an instant, easy-going warmth that, I’m ashamed to say, made me almost suspicious at first – such is the sad, paranoid effect of modern, big city living (see the shaking off of the shackles of your day-to-day annoyances above. Just another tightly-wound aspect of it…and if you think I’m harshly opinionated, you try dealing with the sleazy male mutants I encounter working in a kids bookshop, for goodness’ sake!) …But I was so pleasantly surprised at such genuine good will here.. A little stand had been set up, plastered with photos of horses and riders: both of slouching but extremely smiley beginners, to the evident life-long perfected horsemanship of the owners and staff. Our cheery chap signed us up for the evening ride of our first full day, and thus we were launched into our little two-week world of horse-y adventures, Berber-style!

The quietest rides marched away at 5pm every day, doing barely more than walking nose-to-tail down the beach and back (Best thing to do as it was still quite scorching at that hour, and each to their own. Had my mum been with us, it would’ve been right up her street!) The 6pm ride took in a trot or two, and maybe a canter for those who wanted it; and the 7pm ride had you galloping home as the last light faded. If you had the magnificent presence of mind (that can only come with being completely in holiday mode; i.e. insanely energetic in the knowledge that you’re getting up to do something FUN!) to actually rise sometime after 5am and make the 6am two-hour ride (Again, thank goodness the yard was so close by!), you were in for something fast and furious seeing that the beaches were almost empty at this time. I opted for these as often as I could, as they most resembled the trek holidays I’d pored over in specialist brochures back home. Numbers were also small on these rides, so they often involved stops: tying your horse to a post ‘outside-a-saloon’ style, and sipping a coffee at still only 7:30 in the morning, at that sweet-natured expense of your guides. Long chats and playground shenanigans ensued that padded those morning rides out to well over the allotted time, only to return when everyone else was merely rising for breakfast. The whole fun day was still ahead!

I tended to ride stallions. Just their mention was a tad alarming at first (which I found I shared with fellow countrymen – well, women, actually – who also came to ride over the two weeks). Stallions are, of course, known for their dominating personalities back home, and are not the best option when you either don’t know them very well or where you are riding them out to. A safe ‘two chevrons’ from the rest of the ride, to avoid any kicks or bites, was essential for starters! The Sahara Beach horses were incredible confidence-givers, though. I found them exuberant, feisty and fast when they needed to be, yet endearingly quiet and docile, whatever their gender, when it was equally required: while tacking them up, or untangling yourself from the bunching-up with the rest of the ride that occurred from time to time out among the twisty palm tree trails, or even on the hairy bend of a racetrack we visited! It wasn’t a week before I found that letting them release their pent-up energy, and going flat out was amazingly, entirely safe. You would always be able to slow them down…

I’d have to credit their training to their owners: a father and son team who’d adopted some quite enchanting methods with their horses, such as responding to various human whistles. This playful atmosphere abided fittingly throughout the holiday yard, form the complete lack of over-worked, hanging horse heads at the back of their sunny loose boxes, right down to the silly lop-eared, resident Alsatians that seemed to greet everybody by ploughing playfully into them! Yes, I was right back in that animal-filled haven of my youth.

Other than the beach, we cantered through wild eucalyptus groves around adjacent resorts, and galloped along the banks of red-hued ‘chotts’ (dried salt lakes) between us and Monastir’s airport. Depending on the experience of those in the group, fun races were also on the cards! I loved slamming back into our home stretch of beach, several horses abreast, whooping like a mad, swelled-out ‘Magnificent Seven’!

Most of the friends I made at the resort came from those rides, including some who drove from nearby hotels. It’s always special to genuinely maintain a holiday friendship through shared passions and fantastic memories (Yes, that’s you my dear Melanie!) I rode so often that the owners would ask me to lead rides, assist with the younger horses, and help promote the stables among the guests. It became a lovely way of life for a while, especially as the same host family would absolutely insist that my other half and I join them each evening for more mayhem (!) and merriment. (Your ‘Candid About Travel’ founder (my other half mentioned) developed quite a following at the table on these evenings, bantering away with this amiable bunch of stable hands and hotel staff, after braving his first ever crazy beach canter! I was extremely proud!) It was a family affair that brought about big, sad goodbyes when our stay came to an end… Among the holiday-makers I’d met, there were a few who’d returned after a previous visit… Something we’re certain to also do now that Tunisian friends, both four-legged and two, are beckoning.

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The Tunisian holiday was eventually decided upon mainly due to the ‘bargain’ equestrian break it offered, but we also certainly made the most of the sights. Above them all, personally speaking, was the nation’s position as a gateway to the Sahara!

Monastir is a short drive southeast from Skanes, accessible by a mini train that connects the resorts. I was relieved to find a fixed price gift centre, as – yes – I am one of those who cringes even as a spectator to haggling! The 8^th century Ribat is fantastic for a confirmed Monty Python fan, as it was used as a location for ‘The Life Of Brian’. All together now: “’ROMANI ITE DOMUM!’ Now write it out a hundred times…”

Sousse is a slightly longer drive north, which presents another time-transforming Ribat, plus a heaving Medina at its centre. With its Kasbah and Great Mosque, this is one of eight UNESCO World Heritage sites in Tunisia (two others being the site of Carthage and the amphitheatre of El Jem ~ see below). Port el Kantaoui is an almost completely purpose-built tourist town. This is to take nothing away from its spotlessly chic marina, where we took a sprawling catamaran out to sea: whoppingly stark white, and expectedly westernised, but I could’ve done without the gangster rap soundtrack! Nothing a personal mp3 player wouldn’t fix though and, I don’t know if it was merely the heat of the day or just the sun’s reflection off of all of that white…(!) but I returned baked to a crisp from that one!

An excursion with ‘Tunisie Voyages’ to Carthage was something we were looking forward to, but was unfortunately marred by a guide who bore the manner of a sour old headmaster prone to reprimanding everyone at every opportunity! Comically enamoured by the sound of his own voice, we bore over an hour of his gassing at the key displays in Tunis’ Bardo Museum. It was clear on the faces of our coach party that they were aching to drift away and take in the wealth of artefacts at their own pace (The Bardo boasts the world’s richest collection of mosaics). Things got unbearable at the site of Carthage itself, where our diminutive host actually insisted that we pore over a MODEL of the Antonine Baths, listening to him drone on and on- with the REAL THING all around us, bathed in glorious sunshine against a glistening Gulf of Tunis! By this point, a few folk had cracked and the sarcastic quips and sniggers started to emerge among us. Some (which we divulged included university archaeology majors and teachers) started to simply walk away. Despite patronising efforts by our guide to make us stay and continue to suffer him, he eventually relented and instructed that we had FIFTEEN MINUTES to take in the ruins by ourselves before meeting back at the coach! Nobody could believe it! It’s hard to break free at these sorts of things, mainly because you have no real idea of where you are and you don’t want to get left behind. Power lies with the masses, though, and I’m sure we all wished we’d banded together sooner in mini protest. I don’t think we were the only ones who felt cheated out of truly visiting circa the year 800 BC’s worth of history at Carthage. Let that be a lesson should you ever draw the short straw in such a patience-sapping tour guide!

The complete opposite could be said of the top man we had over our two-day epic to the Sahara Desert (thank goodness!) Mr. Issam, from the same tour company, was an absolute star! Endearingly passionate about where he was taking us, he also adhered to that simple but golden point that we were on holiday, not at school. We wanted to experience, learn AND enjoy it! From the off, at the magnificent 3^rd century Roman amphitheatre at El Jem, we knew we were in for a good’un! Issam briefed us quickly on its gory history, and then left us a whole hour to indulge our daydreams (from the safe distance of seventeen hundred-odd years) and pretend to be Russell Crowe! Exploring beneath the once blood-soaked arena floor (something you can only imagine at the Coliseum in Rome) was particularly atmospheric: amongst only the shafts of sunlight over the dusty holds (that at times reportedly still smell of the poor lions and other beasts they caged), marvelling over the quaking fear and certainty of death the gladiators must have resigned themselves to while waiting for show-time!

Film sets came thick and fast! Only 4×4’s could handle the terrain into the eastern part of the desert to visit Tozeur’s location for ‘The English Patient’ (remember the other worldy, camel-shaped rock’?) and Ounk Jemel’s searing moonscape that features in ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ The insane heat made the latter in particular quite surreal: I was parched and dizzy enough to believe that ol’R2 and C3PO really would appear, kicking sand about while descending the powdery dunes! The troglodyte ‘Sidi Driss Hotel’ in Matmata, the location for our first day’s lunch, completed the ‘Star Wars’ fantasy. Were Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle (from the original film) going to be around to dish out seconds? We couldn’t wait to watch the films again back home to see where we’d been!

Chebika gorge and stone village, a working Berber troglodyte house, and the vast Chott El Jerid (yet another ‘Star Wars’ feature) were also included on the trip. It was amazing how the vistas changed as we dozed on and off on the coach, thrown out of balance by the very early morning starts required to beat the heat. One moment, your head would be dipping before endless groves of olives, only to wake on a landscape more befitting the blue/grey of, say, Venus! El Jerid’s eerie vastness must be a gift for sci-fi location hunters!

The Saharan highlight was still to come in the form of as sunset camel train into the desert at Douz. Our party truly got into the spirit of things and dressed up for the occasion, for a few dinars. Once again, our guide’s enthusiasm did much to encourage us as he egged on his “fearless nomads” to ride into action! Despite an overly chatty camel wrangler (who was only doing his utmost to ensure a hefty tip), we had to pinch ourselves while taking in our surroundings: it was like every sand-duned epic you’d ever seen, in IMAX! The giant burning orb of a sun, blurred by its own heat, sank slowly behind un-broken dunes that seemed to wash up on oases of clustered palms… Shepherds herded their goats back from these as the light started to fail, against the evening rhythm of nomadic drum beats; one’s tiny donkey so used to this ritual that he walked on ahead of them all, unguided, with his little load… My utter legend of a character camel’s silhouette grew longer and longer as we headed back home…

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A hospitable welcome is something that is waved around all to easily in the travel press and its advertising, but I found it to be real – more often than not- in Tunisia. It certainly haunts my memories in a way few destinations have, especially after merely a single visit. Tunisia’s romance succeeded in capturing me! How more rich our experiences are if we just allow those moments and incidents that encourage us to give ourselves up to foreign worlds, simpler values, customs faded from childhood memory and, most importantly, new faces… Strangers who embrace you so completely that you forget such differences between you ever existed at all!

Technorati Tags: Bargain, Cheap Riding Holiday, Desert, History, Riding, Sightseeing, Watersports

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He immediately suggested I should come with him as he was going to Austria that year. I really wanted to go, but I’d just left music college so didn’t have much money.  I asked him how much he thought tickets would cost. “Only £900, come on it’ll be great!” he replied. I wonder if he saw the frozen look of horror I was trying to hold back beneath my casual answer of “cool, sounds good, let me think about it”. Yikes, I wasn’t even earning £900 a month at that point, so there was no way I could afford anything like that, let alone pay for food, ski hire and a lift pass on top. I needed a cheap ski holiday!

Since then, talking to friends and fellow ski enthusiasts, it seems people think they are getting a good deal if they pay around £650 for a ski holiday, and that’s before equipment hire and lift pass.

The above picture was taken a couple of years after the conversation I had with my friend by Miss Travel Addict at the top of a mountain at a gorgeous ski resort called St Johann in Austria. We’d paid just £150 each for a weeks skiing! And we weren’t part of a big group staying in a self catered chalet. It was just the two of us staying in a 3 star hotel with a cooked breakfast every morning included in the price!

That was the first ski holiday Miss Travel Addict and I ever went on together, and we couldn’t believe our luck at getting a price like that. Since then we’ve been on many other ski holidays and always get amazing deals for under £400, although we haven’t managed to better that £150 one yet. If you fancy a cheap ski holiday this winter, read on!

I’ll tell you which companies we use to find our bargains and how to best use their websites below, but first here’s some general tips:

If you don’t have children, booking your holiday outside of school holiday dates will save you lots of money as prices always go up during school holidays. Plus you get the added bonus of not arriving in a steaming rage because the back of your plane seat has been kicked constantly by the adorable young scamp sitting behind you! We’ve found the best value month to go skiing is in January. I think there are several reasons for this: people are usually a bit short of money after Christmas so demand for holidays is lower. This means that ski tour operators have to keep their prices lower to fill the slots. Another reason demand is lower in January is because children are back at school. We usually try and get a deal for either of the last two weeks in January when the snow conditions are usually excellent and the prices are still cheap!

Keep an eye out for deals that include free lift passes or free gear hire. If you can bag one of these it’ll also save you lots of money! Another great money saver is to try and find a half board deal. Although the initial cost of your booking will be higher, you’ll save money in the long run as not having to pay for dinner every night really helps stretch your budget, and it adds to the social aspect of your holiday as most people in your hotel or chalet will be eating dinner at the same time before going out for some après ski.

The two companies we use to book our ski holidays are and .

First up…: seems surprisingly under most people’s radar when it comes to booking ski holidays, and we’ve had some fantastic deals with them. In fact our £150 Austrian ski holiday was a one.

Click the above link to go to their website. From the top menu, click on the holidays tab. Once you are on the ‘holidays’ page, you will see amongst other things, a search box that looks like this:

Rather than looking at their featured holidays and deals, I’d recommend just using this search as there are usually some real gems hidden away. It’s worth checking every couple of days as the available deals change constantly, as do the prices for deals you may have seen already.

Choose the number of adults and select “ski and winter sports” as your type of holiday. Leave destination as “I don’t mind” and choose your destination airport. I’d recommend leaving the “month”  “day” and “number of nights” fields at their default values as we’ve found sometimes great holidays get filtered out by mistake, even if you select the correct values. Hit “search”!

You’ll be presented with a results screen. It is ordered by “Our Favourites” by default. Change this to “Price” and hit Go! Now all the ski holidays are ordered by price with a summary of each one. If you are like me and Miss Travel Addict, you’ll want to ski for a week so look at the duration in the summary for each holiday and pick any that interest you for 7 nights.

If you are going as a couple rather than in a group, I’d probably recommend skipping the listings with “Apartments” in the title or the Self Catering options, as the price per person quoted on the search screen is usually assuming you’ll be travelling in a larger group, and you’ll have to pay extra if there are only two of you. If you are going as a group though then these listings are a great option, so go for it.

Click the view details button to get more information about the hotel, holiday and flight times. If you like what you see and want to research more, hit the check prices button. There you are presented with a screen that will look as follows:

Here you can tailor your holiday options such as number of people travelling, your date of travel and your board basis. Experiment with the settings as they can affect the price quite a lot. The best thing about this screen is the price it quotes for you in the “Total package price incl taxes & fees” section actually is the total cost of the holiday including flights accommodation and resort transfers. There aren’t any hidden fees on subsequent screens as I find so often happens on many other travel websites, and you’ll struggle to find cheaper ski holidays anywhere!

Once you’ve found your perfect ski holiday, just hit book, enter your payment details and your information pack and tickets will be in the post! Quick go yes yes!

I think one of the things that puts people off booking a ski holiday with is you don’t find out which ski tour operator you are going with till after you book. Please don’t worry about this, they only deal with the major ones, and as soon as you’ve booked you holiday, your ski tour operator will send you their information pack with information about purchasing lift passes, gear hire and any other offers they have.

When we booked our £150 Austrian adventure, we were a little nervous that it was so cheap, and slightly apprehensive that we didn’t know which operator we were going with. The accommodation we selected was listed as “Snow Houses”.  We booked anyway, and thank goodness we did. Our tour operator turned out to be Inghams, and our “Snow House” turned out to be the fantastic Goldener Lower 3 star hotel which was two minutes walk from the Gondola. We bought our ski passes and equipment hire from our Inhgams rep on the bus on way to the hotel and hit the slopes two hours later. Since then, we’ve booked lots of ski holidays with , and they have always been fantastic. After we came home from our first Austrian ski holiday, we checked out how much the cost of the same holiday would be going direct through Inghams with an “Early Bird Discount” for next year, and they were asking £600! We had exactly the same holiday as everyone else on our Ski Bus, but for around £450 cheaper. Thank you , your rock!

The other thing I really like about is that unlike most ski tour operator’s websites, you don’t have to choose your destination when searching for a deal, which means it’s very quick and easy to see how all the different ski destinations measure up in terms of price. Second up,

They are a fantastic ski company and we’ve had some great deals with them for far below what most people expect to pay for a quality ski holiday. They are extremely organised, their resort reps are brilliant, and they have a good website for deal hunting

Click the link above to go directly to their ski holiday page and use the search box that appears on the right hand side of you screen. It looks like this:

If you want to find deals in January, set your departure date to 17th Jan and click the flexible (+/-14 days) checkbox. This way you’ll be searching for all their available holidays in January from the 3^rd onwards. Select a country you are thinking of skiing in, leave the resort drop down box set to “any resort” and the ski accommodation dropdown box set to “Any Accommodation”.  Then select your airport, number of adults and hit search. If you’re like us, you’ll probably want to come back to this page and repeat this search for different countries to get an idea of the different prices of the different locations.

You’ll then be presented with a list of holidays. Change the “sort by” drop down to “price” and hit “Go”.

As I mentioned earlier, if you are going as a couple then listings with “self catered” or “apartments” in the title will likely be more expensive than the price listed in the search screen, as you will be paying a supplement as there are only two of you.

When you see something that interests you, click on the “more about” link to get a short summary of the hotel or apartment. Click the “full accommodation details link” to open a new window where you can see more pictures and read more details about the hotel or apartment. If you like what you see, to get an idea of the final price you’ll pay, you’ll need to go back to your original window and progress through a few more booking pages to get to the optional extras screen. Here you can choose to add lift passes, ski lessons and equipment hire and get a final quote for your price. It’s worth getting to this screen as you get a discount for booking online, and this isn’t mentioned till you get here.

Once you have this final price, write it down and search for another holiday. I’d recommend checking out ‘ holidays in Arinsal, Andorra. Andorra is a duty free tax haven, so you’ll save money that way. Also, Andorra has a well developed ski infrastructure with good lifts and resorts with lots of runs so you won’t get bored. The Hotel Palarine is the one to go for. It’s a lovely little hotel right next to a mountain stream. It’s slightly outside the main town, but it’s only a 6 minute walk in, and there is a regular ski bus if you are feeling lazy. On a couple of occasions the owner of the hotel dropped us into town in his car, lovely chap! The deal is for half board accommodation so you save lots on food, and their food is great.

Before making your final decision, it’s worth researching the resort itself, and seeing if it has what you want, as they vary quite a lot in character, and how much equipment hire and the lift pass will cost as again this varies quite a lot from resort to resort. For instance, you’ll see that Bulgaria is cheaper than most resorts and because of the exchange rate you save a lot of money, but we’ve heard the ski infrastructure is still developing, so there aren’t that many runs in some of the resorts and you’ll be on drag lifts a lot. You’ll also see that “Pas de la Casa” in Andorra is cheap, but unless you want in your face Ibiza Uncovered style madness, and your other half’s bottom being pinched by hordes of random stag and hen parties, I wouldn’t recommend it. I guess it depends what you’re looking for really, but it’s important to do your homework.

In another article I’ll go into how we compare different resorts before choosing, and also how we paid £20 for ski jackets and ski pants when we didn’t have any ski clothing! We’ll also be telling some stories about our actual holidays in some of the resorts, and why you might like to try them out too!

Writing this has fired me up to deal hunt…I’ve just seen a great deal to MayrHofen on for £250 and also are offering the half board deal at the Palarine hotel in Arinsal again for a great price. Think I might have to flip a coin and book our next ski epic!

Happy hunting!

Technorati Tags: Budget Ski Holiday, Budget Ski Holidays, cheap ski holiday, cheap ski holidays, Ski, ski holiday, ski holidays, Skiing, Travel

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