Rhea Alton, husband Simon, dog Norman and friends Tom and Vickie Warren, all from Shrewsbury, have embarked on a mission to enjoy a ‘holiday on a shoestring’ around the UK in a motorhome. Rhea updates us on their trip at the end of day five.

This morning we got up early and packed up – which took all of 15 minutes as everything was in cupboards and ready to go – and headed to Pevensey Castle then on to Pevensey Bay for a paddle and a sit in the sunshine.

A visit to Pevensey Castle

After a bargain £4.50 lunch of sausage roll, quiche and pasty we hit the open road once again and headed in the direction of Bognor Regis.

The journey over was really nice as we followed the coastline and the sun shined the whole way – it’s also really comfortable to drive in the van as the front two seats are huge and in the back it is just like sitting on a small couch with a table in front of you. It can be fairly bumpy for the people in the back but carsick Norman has not been adversely affected so far . . . fingers crossed.

As the sun continued to shine we decided to head straight to West Wittering, a huge sandy beach near Bognor Regis, named as one of the top 50 beaches in the UK by the Times recently – and we agree, it is really really nice.

We sunbathed, played ball with the dog, swam in the sea and, of course, got ourselves an ice-cream at a cost of £6 to the budget.

The weather held out all day and we were sad to leave the beach at about 4.30pm but we wanted to catch a farm shop to buy some goodies. Unfortunately the one we had seen on the way had already shut but we spotted one as we arrived here at the Lillies campsite in Barnham that we plan to pop to tomorrow morning.

We decided on risotto with bacon, onion and mushroom last night, so the curry is to be tonight. Unfortunately when I did the shopping I got the curry sauce in a jar rather than the paste so although we have all the ingredients to cook up a storm all we really need to do is add the chicken to the sauce and make some rice, which is probably a good thing as it has gone 6pm and we are all hungry after a day of sea air.

Playing with Norman the dog on West Witterings beach

Last night’s budget stood at £134.87 so with today’s expenditure it is now £124.37, or at least it would be . . . if we hadn’t had to buy more beer. The sunshine can be a disadvantage in some ways! So today’s beer bill was £17 Bringing us to a remaining budget of £107.37.

Simon is warming to the motorhome holiday every day and Horizon Motorhomes do a “try before you buy” scheme which means if we did want to buy one they would knock the price of this holiday off the price of the motorhome . . . could be the way forward!

To be honest, I didn’t think we were going to be able to keep within the budget so it is going better than I expected.

Our estimations for petrol and the campsites are also on track, with £24 for the first site, £55 for the second, £17 at today’s and only one more to go tomorrow, and we have only put in £40 of petrol to top up the tank so far.

It is possible we may come in under budget . . . but we shall see.