Slowcation: a holiday that focuses on rest, relaxation and a slower pace of life.
We know now that it’s better for us to slow down, breathe and take time over things, and over life.
Surely a holiday is the most important time or place to do that. And yet, we still dash to the airport, rush on board to get the overhead locker (why is there never space in the one above your seat?) and then we have the joys of rushing for a connecting flight followed by the tense wait at the luggage carousel.
There is a way to avoid all of this.
It’s time to consider a new concept - the Slowcation. And there’s nowhere better to practice a Slowcation than in your own UK holiday home.
What is a Slowcation?
Slowcation is not just about the slow pace of travel. It’s a mindset that seeks to explore a place in depth, with an emphasis on authenticity and spontaneity. It's a chance to enjoy the scenery, meet the locals and indulge in the magic of travel without strict schedules and stress.
Hello?! That’s pretty much the thinking that’s been leading many people to own their own UK holiday homes for some time. A holiday home on a designated holiday park, in a great location, gives you exactly what the definition of a Slowcation is. It is absolutely a chance to enjoy the scenery, meet the locals and indulge in the magic of travel without strict schedules and stress.
The more you visit your holiday home the more you get to know and appreciate everything that surrounds it. From Lincolnshire to the Norfolk Broads, from Yorkshire to the Waveney Valley, the UK has so much to offer. And you can soak it all up as slowly as you like.
Slowly does it
why we want more gentle holidays
The research keeps delivering similar findings. A more gentle approach to sightseeing is on the rise. Why? Well, we’re beginning to realise that life is demanding and it has its consequences. We feel tired. YouGov’s findings indicate that one in eight of us feel tired all the time.
It seems that the attraction of tearing around to ensure that you take in every location on your suggested sightseeing itinerary is fading - fast. It’s the slow walk around a (possibly) familiar territory that appeals now.
It has to be said, again, that owning your own UK holiday home gives you every opportunity to do just that. You can take it easy and, only when it suits you, have a leisurely stroll or maybe cycle ride around your holiday home’s locality.
Bimbling on the Broads is easy to do with a holiday home at Tingdene Waveney River Centre or Tingdene Broadlands Park & Marina
So is it really that simple to slow down?
It can be that simple to slow down. It’s becoming more apparent to us all that the fast pace of life isn’t necessarily conducive to happiness. It’s a lesson that those of us fortunate enough to have we all learned during the pandemic lockdowns will still be thinking about to this day. Slowing down can simply be getting outside and breathing fresh air. This year, WWF UK launched Prescription for Nature, with resources to encourage us all to get outside and improve our mental health.
Ultimately, it’s the simple things that can matter most. Picture yourself in a Tingdene holiday home on the Yorkshire coast. Why not create pictures of your surroundings? Not just pointing your smartphone at everything you see. Take a sketchbook, a watercolour set, or a scrapbook. Maybe even an old-school camera! Savour everything the surrounding area has to offer by slowly creating pictures and memories.
Suppose you’re on a Tingdene holiday park near the Norfolk Broads. They’ve inspired countless writers. You don’t have a deadline, so write a journal. It’s slow, and therapeutic. Studies show writing can be relaxing and stimulating. It can be cathartic and creative, and it can be good for your mental health.
Use mindfulness as a tool on your holidays
Be mindful of all the benefits and bonuses that come with slowing down and savouring the scenery, and why not use the slowed-down time frame to practice some mindfulness? This list of recommendations from Psychology Today for a calmer approach to life looks like a checklist of exactly the sort of things you can do in your own holiday home. It mentions the idea of writing too.
The beach is within easy each from many of our Tingdene Holiday Park locations
Here’s another checklist.
Five mindful benefits of having your own UK holiday home
1. A holiday home means you can set your own pace in your own place
A holiday at your own holiday home can remove the stress zones.
You know where the stress zones are; they start in your own home with the planning, online searches, reviews to read, and paperwork to sort. And they develop into even more stressful situations as you drive to the airport. Be more mindful of your need to de-stress and be kinder to yourself and your family and invest in owning your own UK holiday home. Because with your own holiday home in the UK, you simply pull together a few things you need and set off at your own pace to drive to your own place.
2. You know what to expect with your own holiday home
Deal with high expectations; don’t let them make you low.
That next target, that next goal at work, that next plan for upgrading your home—they're all forcing you to live up to high expectations. And then you book a holiday and fret for months that the journey, the resort and the hotel will live up to your high expectations! Stop putting yourself through that stress.
When you own your own UK seaside cottage or caravan holiday home, you shape your holiday into what you want it to be. The expectations don’t change or make more demands on you with every trip. You set off knowing that your place will be there, as welcoming and friendly as always. You arrive knowing that everything is going to be fine, just fine.
Tingdene Mablethorpe Chalet & Caravan Park - just a short walk away from the beautiful sandy beaches of the Lincolnshire coast, the perfect place for getting fresh air and practicing mindfulness
3. Your own holiday home means your own kitchen
Think self-care, not self-catering.
No matter how much we all like to be waited on, somehow a hotel or a package holiday can make you feel that you have to stick to the rules. There’s a structure, a feeling that there’s a timetable to obey. And no matter how wide or varied the choice, somehow it’s their choice of food. Not yours.
When you own your own UK holiday home, you’re so much more in control of what you eat and when you eat it. Managing what you eat is a bonus. Who doesn’t like that extra ice cream, that tempting dessert, when you’re on holiday? But who likes those extra pounds when you get home?
Choosing and cooking your food, or eating out where and when you choose, can all feed into a mindfulness-conscious holiday. And where better to do that than in your own UK holiday home?
4. There’s less need to organize with your own holiday home
Stop working at it; play instead.
Even when you’ve stopped working, getting ready to go on holiday can still require serious logistical and organisational skills. Does anything get done without a list? The fact is, getting ready to go on holiday can feel like work. Don’t waste time with work, make time to play. If it’s an impromptu kickabout or simply sitting down to play a board game do it. You’re allowed. It’s good for you.
One of the great things about owning your own UK holiday home is that you can do what you want when you want. Everything is just where you left it last time. Holidays are about charging your batteries, and playing instead of working does that like nothing else.
5. You can truly relax in your own holiday home
Sometimes just sit. Because you can.
When it comes to mindfulness, one of the easiest and simplest, yet seriously beneficial, things you can do is to just take some time to sit. Sit and read. Sit and meditate. Sit and talk. It’s all about taking the time to stop and rest.
There’s no doubt that the idea of having your own UK holiday home can be a great help, a catalyst even, in adopting mindfulness as part of your life. And most definitely it can help you use mindfulness to take the stress out of what should be the stress-free times - the holidays.
Your own holiday home is the perfect place to curl up with a book and take some time to yourself
So start with quitting the build-up. The research, the planning, the online bookings, the airport. It’s time to stop worrying, slow down, and go to your very own holiday home. Same route, same destination, same chilled start out.
When you’re there, remind yourself that you are allowed to stay chilled. You can meditate, talk, get some fresh air, and be mindful of your need to recharge your batteries. You’ll be much happier.
Now, this isn’t a return to high-expectation goal setting. But the fact is you can make this happen, and you can do it with less stress than you imagine. You can acquire your own UK holiday home, and the really interesting thing is that you can do it with Tingdene and save yourself any stress at all.
Tingdene Holiday Parks has a brilliant selection of locations, lodges, caravans and chalets on offer across the UK. And, with Tingdene staff here to help you, at the early stages of buying and in the days when you have a holiday home at a Tingdene Holiday Park, you’re never alone and never without help and support.
It’s definitely time to slow down, and a UK holiday home of your own is a golden opportunity to make it happen.
