What is this website for?

Just Add a Picnic is for anyone who would like to get out and enjoy some time with family or friends and not have to pay a fortune for it. There are so many fantastic free days out right on our door steps that get overlooked or are best kept secrets. Just Add a Picnic wants to share all these amazing places and help everyone spend less on having fun.

So pack up your picnic and find your next great day out.

Why start the website?

As a busy family of 5 we found that we always went to the same parks, beaches and museums again and again. We would use the usual websites to find new places to go out, but the places that were advertised were expensive. We, like most families, can’t afford to spend £100 every weekend on entry, travel and treats just for a day out. We discovered that our friends and family had great suggestions for local parks and beaches, and they hadn’t heard of some of the places we loved to visit. So that’s the idea behind Just Add A Picnic, it’s about sharing all your favourite free places to visit so that you might find some new locations too.

Who has been involved?

Just Add a Picnic has, so far, been started and written by myself with the help and support of my husband.

I also attended a brilliant course with Mum’s in Tech who helped me understand the project and product management aspects of tackling a website like this and bringing it to fruition.

Deneb Solutions Limited are our main sponsor and kindly host the website for us.

You can get involved

We need the help of everyone to build a website like this and really make it flourish. There are a number of ways you can help us out.

• e-mail us at suggestions@justaddapicnic.com if you find something on our site that’s not quite right, from spelling mistakes to out of date information, or even a better photograph you have taken and are willing to share.

• Read the Add Locations page and e-mail us the information we need to share one of your favourite places to visit. Remember it must be FREE to visit (we don’t include parking charges in this).

• If you’re a fellow coder check out our website from GitHub and build your own location page, we will then check and review it, and hopefully it will be included in the website.

• Help us with the code. We are currently using Jekyll to build and manage our website. I am completely self taught and so my understanding is limited. If you know a way to program a search feature that will allow our guests to search through the posts (locations), or you have a fantastic idea that you could program for us and improve our site. Use the e-mail; suggestions@justaddapicnic.com to get in touch, or check out our GitHub repo and see what you can do.