How to travel on a budget: Hotel offers, cheap flights, and rail discounts

Going cheap: fly to Oslo for £10 (Getty)

Whether you're visiting Norway or New York, it's possible to cut costs by being a little flexible. If you're not precious about when you travel, Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to yield the cheapest flights, according to Airfarewatch dog.com. Skyscanner.com lets you search for flights by “cheapest month” to “everywhere”. Take the results with a pinch of salt, however, because sometimes the fares displayed are not “live”, that is to say they are no longer available when you try to book.

The best live deal we found was a £10 return from Stansted to Oslo with Ryanair, departing 10 November – a Tuesday to Tuesday break, with early take-off times.

It's also possible to find discounts on rail travel, particularly in advance. Eurostar (eurostar.com) tickets for Paris, Lille and Brussels usually go on sale six months ahead, while Disneyland Paris, the South of France and the Alps may be available 10 months ahead. The cheapest fare from London St Pancras to Paris is £36 one-way; again, at off-peak times, for example 4.22pm on Saturday 5 December, returning on almost any train the following Tuesday.

For accommodation bargains, try Couchsurfing.com or NightSwapping.com. With the former, you stay with other users on the basis that you'll host another Couchsurfer. On NightSwapping, the system is more formalised: when you host you receive credit to use on booking a stay. You can also buy “nights” for €7 to €49.

It's possible to find hotel discounts with tools such as Lastminute.com's “Top Secret Hotels”. Hotels use this to sell unsold rooms for around a third less than the list price; the catch is that you don't find out the hotel name until you've booked, just a few features and a rough location. Currently there's a double room at a three-star Midtown New York hotel for £225, room only, for 21-23 November (list price: £311). You can sometimes work out where you might be booking by Googling the information you've got, but the mystery can be part of the fun.