Ben Bentley and family join the growing army of people spending their holiday at home.

Ben, Kate and Martha Bentley at the Stiperstones

It takes a while for me to realise that I’m even on holiday.

Because the question most holidaymakers ask en route to their vacation destination – “Are we nearly there yet?” – hardly applies to the ‘staycationer’ who by default is already there before he even sets off.

I love holidays. Better than chips, birthdays or Christmas, or all three at the same time.

But this year, like many people, our family has had to tighten its collective belt, and the only way to have a break is to have a staycation. That is, have a holiday at home, around Shropshire and Mid Wales, possibly with a day on the beach with a bucket and spade, just to tick the holiday must-do box marked: “Bury dad up to his neck in sand.”

Poppy Bentley outside the motorhome

As Visit Britain reports a staycation phenomenon, with tourism in the UK up this year by 13 per cent, the Bentley family – myself and Mrs Bentley along with our two kids, Poppy, 6, and Martha, 18 months – jumps on the bandwagon, or rather its upmarket relative, the motorhome, to see what all the fuss is about.

Our plan is . . . well, no plan really. A fistful of English pounds and just follow our noses wherever the whiff of adventure leads us.

And in our motorhome – which we gratefully borrow from Salop Leisure in Shrewsbury – I discover that where there’s a whim, there’s a way.

In an age of preparing, planning and accounting for life’s every ticking second, living in the moment without a thought for tomorrow is strangely liberating.

Our whim takes us firstly to an orchard in Little Hereford, near Tenbury Wells, where fun consists of a rolling-down-the-grass-bank competition and my realisation that for this particular hobby I’ve brought the wrong jumpers.

At our home for the day, Westbrook Park on the banks of the River Teme, we collect fallen apples and watch sheep being sheared. A fisherman kisses a barbel and throws it back. We stare at the scenery and my eldest daughter makes several new friends.

Total cost – not counting the nominal pitch-up fee, approximately nothing.

As the rain takes hold, the staycation set take the biscuit in the motorhome. From left, Poppy and Martha Bentley with staycation cousins Olivia and Emily Burke

Next day we tootle up to Wentnor, near Bishop’s Castle, and the Green Caravan Park, the scene of a camping adventure last year. This year, instead of fumbling with tent flaps we are poshing it up in our motorhome with its all mod cons.

In the persistent drizzle, we watch campers putting up their tents and pretend not to gloat.

When the rain stops we head off up the Stiperstones – just to look at the raw rural beauty on our doorsteps. Again, the old bobby dazzler of a landmark takes our breath away. We play tag, pick bilberries and scamper up rocks. Total cost? One grazed knee.

Then it’s a short hop down the road to Abermule, near Newtown, where along the River Severn we spend an afternoon doing a spot of old-fashioned walking (call me Victorian, but I ban the use of mini-scooters).

Staycationing is all very well, but soon the question comes: Is a holiday a holiday without seeing the sea?

“Beach, beach, beach,” chants my daughter Poppy and an hour later we are parked up on a clifftop overlooking the sea at Clarach Bay, near Aberystwyth.

We avoid the temptation to partake in “crazy crew party prize bingo” at the on-site clubhouse, and instead go rock pooling.

I forgot to mention – I buy the Shropshire Star! The shop at the site sells the Star so holidaymakers, many of whom are from our county, can get all the latest news while en vacance. Total cost? 38p.

The adventure continues along the coast at Gwerniago Farm camp site near Machynlleth. From here we have a day at Aberdovey, where it’s lifeboat week and free kids’ activities are organised on the harbour.

I nearly take a pensioner’s eye out with an extremely poor display of juggling, before my daughter tells me the activities are supposed to be for smaller people.

You don’t go to Aberdovey and ignore the crabs. That’s what I tell my kids, recalling heroic crabbing feats on this very harbour when I was a lad. They groan, but I persist, purchasing a crab line and persuading a bloke in Londis to give me a bit of bacon for bait. For the next hour we watch a bushel of grade one “Jimmies” throw themselves onto our line.

Total cost? A quid for the crab line; proceeds to the RNLI for lifeboat week.

Back at the camp site, the kids spot a rope swing in a tree and make a bee-line for it as several more hours pass without us spending a penny other than out of necessity at the loo block.

Then suddenly, led by my daughter, our motorhome is inundated with a gang of kids demanding free Rocky bars. Word goes round faster than a Twitter tweet and our emergency Rocky supply is decimated in minutes. As it was in the olden days before parents had to worry about their children running free in the wilds, the kids play until it’s so dark they can barely see their hands in front of them.

And that’s the thing about the sites we stayed at. All were family friendly, enabling parents to sit back and watch their children run free, just being kids, exploring, picking up grasshoppers and gaining a sense of independence among their peers. It reminds me of my own childhood, long forgotten now that I’m a parent scared to lose sight of my children for a second.

For a week we go without watching TV (well, almost), the internet, and a hairbrush. And we find that the term “staycation” is not a figment of some tourism PR girl’s imagination. We find dozens of people from Shropshire holidaying close to home. Pat and Ken Tomkins, from Oswestry, are our neighbours at Westbrook Park site in Little Hereford.

“You can’t beat this area for holidays – we have so much here that we don’t really need to go far to be on holiday,” says Ken.

On our Shropshire and borderlands staycation we spend hardly anything, have a ball, and, most crucially, plug in to a long-lost sense of adventure where making your own fun is the best fun of all.

And despite the failure of the barbecue summer to materialise, thus making it one of the best adverts for a holiday abroad, I will be back.

Come to think of it, as staycationers we were never really away.