Travel: San Francisco

The Golden Gate bridge, cable cars and trams, Alcatraz, Haight-Ashbury, the Pacific Ocean, a night of baseball with the San Francisco Giants . . . you can't put a price on memories like these.

But what makes them especially dear is knowing how little they cost.

We used to go camping, thinking that was about as cheap as it gets. House swapping, in fact, is even cheaper.

After eight exchanges, which all turned out brilliantly, we are evangelists for a simple but smart way of holidaying.

This year it was San Francisco, where a fortnight cost about the same as seven nights in Benidorm. Beyond the annual subscription to an exchange agency, the main expense was getting there and back.

It's not just about the money. House swapping brings experiences money can't buy, and tourists rarely enjoy.

We found early on that we behave differently on an exchange holiday. We do the tourist stuff at a leisurely pace. We feel like locals, with "permission" to potter around enjoying someone else's lifestyle for a couple of weeks.

Apart from our first swap, we have never proactively sought an exchange. We just renew our annual membership of Homelink and await the best offers. Others choose a destination and send out offers, but maybe our natural laziness leaves us looking forward to what opportunity the next message might bring.

For those who do their own looking, Homelink listings can be searched online. There are thousands of homes in towns and cities, in countryside and at the seaside all over the world, though most are in western Europe and English-speaking nations like Australia and the United States.

Starting with Rome in 2004, swaps have taken us to the Los Angeles suburb of Monrovia, a 19th century city centre apartment in Madrid, a resort near Valencia, another second home near Venice and a flat in an historic building in lovely Lerici on the Ligurian coast.

We also loved a winter break in the Jura mountains, walking above ski slopes and using forest footpaths to cross from France into Switzerland.

This year it was San Francisco, where we stayed in a beautiful house - a 1923 "craftsman bungalow" with a veranda at the front - in a classy Bay Area suburb.

We had the run of the house, with all its home comforts (we never had a fridge-freezer or washing machine when we used to go camping) plus our hosts' BMW.

We used public transport for travel into the city, with the option of roaming wherever we fancied inland.

The BMW took us to the Napa Valley, where the non-driving over-21s of the family made the most of a wine- tasting hosted by a genial Sheffield-born ex-pat at the randomly chosen Dutch Henry winery, and into the hills behind the Bay Area to walk among the redwoods.

Naturally, we spent time in San Francisco, a short ride away on BART - nothing to do with the Simpsons but the Bay Area Rapid Transit commuter system.

A seven-day Muni passport, giving access to the entire city with unlimited use of buses, underground, trams and cable cars, cost $26 (16.85) each. The hills of San Francisco are as steep as in the movies, so the ability to jump on and off public transport made sightseeing so much easier.

One word of warning: when it comes to weather, San Francisco is cool, mostly. Cloud sits low over the city and it can be genuinely chilly, even in summer. You can tell the tourists, as they wear shorts and T-shirts, whereas our hosts left a cupboard full of warm clothes.

We enjoyed simple pleasures locally - a superb farmers' market, free opera in the park in Berkeley, the biggest ice creams we'd seen at Fentons' famous creamery, and Friday night at the spectacular 1920s Grand Lake Theatre cinema, complete with Wurlitzer performance.

For us, one bonus of house swapping is that it makes us carry out a major house clean at least once a year. When we used to go camping, we would turn the house upside down before going away, so we would return to a home that was still a tip.

These days, we return to a house even cleaner and tidier than when we left. Usually, the only signs that someone has visited are one or two unfamiliar items in the fridge and the odd kitchen implement in the wrong drawer.

We used to worry about leaving the house unoccupied for a fortnight, pessimistically expecting to find it burgled, boarded up or burnt down on our return. Not any more.

Curiously, we haven't spoken to some people who swap with us, let alone met them.

Some have met us at the airport or station to hand over keys or give us a lift, but others are only names on e-mails, so neighbours are more likely to get to know them than we are.

This year, we met three of our hosts' delightful neighbours, one of whom was also a house swap veteran. He gave us useful tips, warning us we might get a ticket for leaving the car facing the wrong direction.

House swapping really is an excellent way to holiday on a budget. Another family's home will be more comfortable than a hotel apartment.

But once you start swapping it becomes addictive. Our elder daughter, now 23, still insists on holidaying with us. Catch the bug and there's no going back.