What can me and a good friend do for fun (in the daytime) that doesn't cost a lot of money?
December 24, 2011 6:31 AM Subscribe
What can me and a good friend do for fun (in the daytime) that doesn't cost a lot of money?
So I've been seeing a friend more often recently and am enjoying spending more time with him and vice versa. Because I live with my parents and he lives alone in a flat in a town, I go to him when we spend time together. We live in the UK and are both 22 years old. It's awesome just to chill out and relax in the evenings and what not, but we've been running out of ideas for things to do during the day together. With a low budget, and my car (a few pounds for petrol isn't an issue for me), can someone recommend some low cost things we can do together.
Here are some notes that may help give an idea what kind of place we live in/enjoy doing so far:
He lives in a small-ish town, with little to do in the town itself. We live about an hours drive from a beach. We could drive to woodland areas, but it rains pretty much every day at the moment, which doesn't help. So far we've done stuff like going bowling, gone to a city for the day, fishing, watching comedy and films, going for walks etc. I'm not the fittest person ever, but I am an energetic person - I'm still working on finding out how energetic he is; that is, we haven't done much together in the way of heavy/cardiovascular exercise (I go for it quite a bit when I do) and I don't know if he'd be up for that.
Also, he has an Xbox 360 with two controllers (I suck at shoot 'em up games), but I don't know if there are any good two player (two player within the same room, not online) that we could play together. Does anyone know of some good ones we could get?
So I've been seeing a friend more often recently and am enjoying spending more time with him and vice versa. Because I live with my parents and he lives alone in a flat in a town, I go to him when we spend time together. We live in the UK and are both 22 years old. It's awesome just to chill out and relax in the evenings and what not, but we've been running out of ideas for things to do during the day together. With a low budget, and my car (a few pounds for petrol isn't an issue for me), can someone recommend some low cost things we can do together.
Here are some notes that may help give an idea what kind of place we live in/enjoy doing so far:
He lives in a small-ish town, with little to do in the town itself. We live about an hours drive from a beach. We could drive to woodland areas, but it rains pretty much every day at the moment, which doesn't help. So far we've done stuff like going bowling, gone to a city for the day, fishing, watching comedy and films, going for walks etc. I'm not the fittest person ever, but I am an energetic person - I'm still working on finding out how energetic he is; that is, we haven't done much together in the way of heavy/cardiovascular exercise (I go for it quite a bit when I do) and I don't know if he'd be up for that.
Also, he has an Xbox 360 with two controllers (I suck at shoot 'em up games), but I don't know if there are any good two player (two player within the same room, not online) that we could play together. Does anyone know of some good ones we could get?
How about cooking together, something complex but not expensive. Asian food often requires a lot chopping but the ingredients aren't pricey. Or make pickles, beer or limoncello.
Try geocaching, there are a number of trails and resources.
posted by shoesietart at 7:26 AM on December 24, 2011
Try geocaching, there are a number of trails and resources.
posted by shoesietart at 7:26 AM on December 24, 2011
For xbox games I liked playing the logo ones with my husband (like Lego, Indiana Jones).
posted by saradarlin at 7:28 AM on December 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by saradarlin at 7:28 AM on December 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
We used to go for coffee, go to a local caf for cheap breakfasts, visit friends, have people over, go to the cinema (often cheaper at the first show each day). You could also look into libraries, museums and art exhibits near you - check like the local tech or FE college or whatever they are called now, there are always little art shows, etc. Do you have a leisure centre for swimming? Have you flipped through your local paper to see if there is anything?
Also: Play cards. Make brunch together. Make a picnic lunch and eat it in the car on the top of a hill. Start a geocache in your little town!
posted by DarlingBri at 7:29 AM on December 24, 2011
Also: Play cards. Make brunch together. Make a picnic lunch and eat it in the car on the top of a hill. Start a geocache in your little town!
posted by DarlingBri at 7:29 AM on December 24, 2011
Along the lines of geocaching, letterboxing. Birding - pick up a basic field guide and maybe borrow a pair of binoculars.
During bad-weather days, board games. After a small-ish investment, a game like Dominion or Settlers of Catan can chew up a whole lot of time. Some of them work better with 2 players than others (or have specific 2-player versions) so take a peek at the reviews on boardgamegeek.
A great non-shooter Xbox game for 2 players is Portal 2, btw. The cooperative game requires the 2 of you to work out the solutions to the various puzzles and then solve them together.
posted by jquinby at 8:59 AM on December 24, 2011
During bad-weather days, board games. After a small-ish investment, a game like Dominion or Settlers of Catan can chew up a whole lot of time. Some of them work better with 2 players than others (or have specific 2-player versions) so take a peek at the reviews on boardgamegeek.
A great non-shooter Xbox game for 2 players is Portal 2, btw. The cooperative game requires the 2 of you to work out the solutions to the various puzzles and then solve them together.
posted by jquinby at 8:59 AM on December 24, 2011
Even if you don't consider yourselves very much creative types, arts/crafts can be a fun thing to do while just hanging out and maybe listening to music, and you can keep the cost really low... these are all things I've had success with, with both male & female friends:
- drawing/sketching
- collage-ing (old magazines + scissors + glue + something to collage)
- watercolors
- learning how to knit
- If either of you have a camera, maybe try for some interesting photo shoots out in the woodland areas (bring some strange objects with you, imagine you're making album art for your favorite band or something)
- If you have a camera that records video, take some little clips about whatever interests you and start your own YouTube channel, exploring the woods / reviewing different frozen pizzas / making music videos / whatever.
Also, I don't really like video games but get really into things like Guitar Hero / Rock Band / DDR, since they feel more about socializing to me than actual gameplay. Those are all years old by this point, but on the off chance you guys haven't overdosed on them yet.
posted by mokudekiru at 9:48 AM on December 24, 2011
- drawing/sketching
- collage-ing (old magazines + scissors + glue + something to collage)
- watercolors
- learning how to knit
- If either of you have a camera, maybe try for some interesting photo shoots out in the woodland areas (bring some strange objects with you, imagine you're making album art for your favorite band or something)
- If you have a camera that records video, take some little clips about whatever interests you and start your own YouTube channel, exploring the woods / reviewing different frozen pizzas / making music videos / whatever.
Also, I don't really like video games but get really into things like Guitar Hero / Rock Band / DDR, since they feel more about socializing to me than actual gameplay. Those are all years old by this point, but on the off chance you guys haven't overdosed on them yet.
posted by mokudekiru at 9:48 AM on December 24, 2011
Indoor things: cooking; trying out new crafts; playing card games or board games; learning to read Chinese characters; pair-juggling with beanbags; crossword puzzles; jigsaw puzzles (really; the librarian at my college used to put out a huge jigsaw in the run-up to exams each year, to help students de-stress, and it turns out communal jigsaw-puzzle solving is actually quite fun).
Out of the flat, while the weather's bad: Go to the local tourist information office and pick up leaflets; if there's a guidebook to the area, even better. There might be interesting places nearby that won't involve you getting rained on. I'd be looking for museums, galleries, climbable towers (church towers are sometimes open to the public, for instance), interesting buildings, quirky shops (you don't have to buy anything), aquariums and perhaps zoos (which often have some indoor sections).
Outdoors, when the weather improves: go through those leaflets again for interesting touristy things; take cameras and go looking for wildlife, or scenery, or sunsets; look for trees to climb or ruins to explore; fly a kite, play with an Aerobie or try pair-juggling with clubs; and nthing geocaching.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 10:26 AM on December 24, 2011
Out of the flat, while the weather's bad: Go to the local tourist information office and pick up leaflets; if there's a guidebook to the area, even better. There might be interesting places nearby that won't involve you getting rained on. I'd be looking for museums, galleries, climbable towers (church towers are sometimes open to the public, for instance), interesting buildings, quirky shops (you don't have to buy anything), aquariums and perhaps zoos (which often have some indoor sections).
Outdoors, when the weather improves: go through those leaflets again for interesting touristy things; take cameras and go looking for wildlife, or scenery, or sunsets; look for trees to climb or ruins to explore; fly a kite, play with an Aerobie or try pair-juggling with clubs; and nthing geocaching.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 10:26 AM on December 24, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks for your answers. After looking it up, I still don't get what geocaching is, but all of the other ideas are something to start me off with.
Cheers,
Sockpim.
posted by sockpim at 1:26 PM on December 24, 2011
Cheers,
Sockpim.
posted by sockpim at 1:26 PM on December 24, 2011
Geocaching is basically just GPS-assisted treasure hunting.
People hide the boxes ("caches") in odd places and publish the GPS coordinates that get you reasonably close - within a few meters. Then you have to find the thing. The caches I've found have a collection of little trinkets inside. Take one with you and leave one behind. Others have a stamp and inkpad that you can use to stamp your own cache notebook as proof you were there. Sometimes the caches have to be found in a sequence based on clues, and so on. Other caches are virtual - you have to visit a particular spot, answer questions that could only be answered based on actually going there and then 'confirm' your find with the person who established it (through e-mail or the website, most often). I managed one of these for several years.
The geocaching.org website will return a list of caches near you based on your location. Folks who are really into it make a game/hobby of 'collecting' as many confirmed caches as possible. It really is great fun.
posted by jquinby at 2:03 PM on December 24, 2011
People hide the boxes ("caches") in odd places and publish the GPS coordinates that get you reasonably close - within a few meters. Then you have to find the thing. The caches I've found have a collection of little trinkets inside. Take one with you and leave one behind. Others have a stamp and inkpad that you can use to stamp your own cache notebook as proof you were there. Sometimes the caches have to be found in a sequence based on clues, and so on. Other caches are virtual - you have to visit a particular spot, answer questions that could only be answered based on actually going there and then 'confirm' your find with the person who established it (through e-mail or the website, most often). I managed one of these for several years.
The geocaching.org website will return a list of caches near you based on your location. Folks who are really into it make a game/hobby of 'collecting' as many confirmed caches as possible. It really is great fun.
posted by jquinby at 2:03 PM on December 24, 2011
Buy yourself an Ordnance Survey Landranger map of your local area and study it. Really study it for a couple of hours. The detail that they contain when you look at them closely is unbelievably amazing. It's the best value purchase you'll ever make.
I guarantee you'll find at least half a dozen "ancient monuments" marked within a few miles of where you live. It may not be clear exactly what they are till you go looking for them, but hey, that's part of the fun.
Then you'll start spotting the little villages with church. school and pub still clustered around a village green and you'll think, "that looks good on the map", and you'll go there, and they very often are as pretty as you think they are going to be.
Then starting looking for the contour lines. Work out where the hills and the valleys are, and relate them to the roads. Chances are this alone will point you towards some cool drives with a great view at the end. But also look for hills with earthworks shown on them (the key will help you identify these) - these are almost always iron age hill forts a couple of thousand years old. Go visit, and put yourself in the position of the chieftan who in 44 AD watched the invading Roman army advancing across the valley below him and take up its assault positions...
If you're within an hour of the coast, forget the beach! The map will show you little coves, cliffs, caves, often with single track roads leading down to them, that you'd never have found otherwise.
And look at the place names, too. Pound to a penny you'll start finding places that you've heard of for some reason, that have some connection with a time or a person, that are worth a visit even if only to say you've been there.
The OS is one of our great, and often unsung, national resources, and its maps will give you a lifetime's worth of creative, cheap entertainment.
posted by genesta at 2:57 PM on December 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
I guarantee you'll find at least half a dozen "ancient monuments" marked within a few miles of where you live. It may not be clear exactly what they are till you go looking for them, but hey, that's part of the fun.
Then you'll start spotting the little villages with church. school and pub still clustered around a village green and you'll think, "that looks good on the map", and you'll go there, and they very often are as pretty as you think they are going to be.
Then starting looking for the contour lines. Work out where the hills and the valleys are, and relate them to the roads. Chances are this alone will point you towards some cool drives with a great view at the end. But also look for hills with earthworks shown on them (the key will help you identify these) - these are almost always iron age hill forts a couple of thousand years old. Go visit, and put yourself in the position of the chieftan who in 44 AD watched the invading Roman army advancing across the valley below him and take up its assault positions...
If you're within an hour of the coast, forget the beach! The map will show you little coves, cliffs, caves, often with single track roads leading down to them, that you'd never have found otherwise.
And look at the place names, too. Pound to a penny you'll start finding places that you've heard of for some reason, that have some connection with a time or a person, that are worth a visit even if only to say you've been there.
The OS is one of our great, and often unsung, national resources, and its maps will give you a lifetime's worth of creative, cheap entertainment.
posted by genesta at 2:57 PM on December 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
if it makes you feel better, it took me one year and three explanations to understand Geocaching. Basically, it is a treasure hunt using GPS. You take small water-tight containers, like Tupperware from the pound shop or those take-away containers. You mark the container as a geocache. You put small objects inside with a notebook. You hide them, noting the coordinates of the stash using your smartphone's map or a handheld GPS unit. You can create geocaches even in the most urban environment; you can do your town, you don't need to do woods or anything. And if you don't have a smart phone, you can even geocache without one as long as you are 100% sure where you have hid each item. Then you create a free account and log your caches at geocaching.org.
I promise you that you can fill not one, but many many mornings putting this together, for pennies per cache if you use take-away containers!
posted by DarlingBri at 1:04 AM on December 25, 2011
I promise you that you can fill not one, but many many mornings putting this together, for pennies per cache if you use take-away containers!
posted by DarlingBri at 1:04 AM on December 25, 2011
Seconding the OS maps. I purchased mine in Bedfordshire in 1979, and they are on such good stock that they still look brand new. I used colored pencils to document "discoveries" that we enjoyed finding, and they bring back great memories, especially now that so much once walkable farmland is new housing tracts. Comparing the old documents to current Google maps is mind-boggling.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:00 AM on December 25, 2011
posted by halfbuckaroo at 6:00 AM on December 25, 2011
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posted by mdonley at 6:36 AM on December 24, 2011 [1 favorite]