Solo Traveler

Freedomtoroam

Tired of others dictating your holiday plans? Fancy getting in touch with your inner self and really meeting the locals? Then it’s probably time to go solo. We meet three travellers who do just that

Anna Czajkkowski flew to Austria on Ryanair for a trip with Speedbreaks.co.uk, a company that specialises in group holidays for singletons

Anna (right) meets
fellow singlet

“I wasn’t originally intending to go on a ‘singles’ break, but I was trawling the internet for activity holidays and Speedbreaks.co.uk came up. As I was single at the time I thought, ‘why not?’ It was a great deal in an amazing place and I felt I had nothing to lose. Even if it was just a load of desperate people, so what? It was also a hassle-free way of organising my trip – it’s difficult to do things like white-water rafting on your own, as you often need a group.

“I went to Zell am See in the Austrian Alps, having flown first to Salzburg. We stayed by a lake in a small town in the mountains, which was gorgeous. I was worried about the whole singles aspect at first, but everyone was lovely. After the first night when we all went out for dinner (and drank plenty of Austrian beer), it felt like we’d known each other for ages. And it wasn’t all about getting together with someone. There was some flirting going on but everyone seemed to get along as mates, too. It’s amazing how such a random bunch of people can get on so well in such a short space of time

“It helped that we were so busy every day. The first day we did white-water rafting, which got everyone talking, then the second day was canyoning – one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. We all had to don wetsuits, clamber over rocks and jump into pools. Towards the end we were jumping off 2.5m ledges. It was a real sense of pushing people to do something out of their comfort zone, and we all felt great when we finally took the plunge.

“Another thing we did was mountainbiking. The instructors were fantastic; very encouraging, but always making it suitable for all fitness levels. At one point, we cycled up a winding path on the mountain and the challenge was to see who could go the highest without stopping and cycling back down. One of our group, an Irish guy called Henry, decided to come down without using his brakes, and came off at one of the bends. So then we all had to cycle to the hospital. I suppose you could say it was a bonding experience.

“I would definitely do something like this again; if you like mountains, fresh air and warm weather, it’s perfect. Even better if you’re a fan of beer and sausages. The experience of holidaying with strangers was really good fun and I am still in touch with some of the people that I met.”

solo traveller Mike sees no
shame in dining alone. Mike Peake on dining alone in the south of France

“It was Hallowe’en and I had arrived in the small French bastide town of Carcassonne flying Ryanair. Only one restaurant appeared open, so I sat down alone at a table set for two and tried to make myself invisible. I had come prepared, of course, but as I opened my book – Andy McNab
– I realised that my actions couldn’t have screamed ‘lonely English tourist’ any louder.

“The waiter ignored me for a full hour, so when I did eventually catch his eye I ordered three beers all at once. ‘Trois bières, monsieur? Maintenant?’ Suddenly his pity at my lonely plight turned to something approaching apprehension. Don’t serial killers dine alone?

“Ah, the joys of solo dining. Think of it as a chance to indulge yourself. You can peoplewatch (a sport endorsed by www.solodining.com ), read blockbusters and order the most expensive thing on the menu
– ‘large lobster, please and will you pop a Chateaubriand in its mouth before tossing it in the pan?’ When I dine alone now, I make sure it’s brilliant
– I chew properly and everything.

“There’s nowhere better for the lone chomper than Italy and Spain, where a tubby waiter always makes you feel welcome and you’re often plonked on a communal table with other diners who’ve come up short in the companionship stakes. I’ve even heard stories about people becoming all buddy-buddy halfway through and tasting each other’s food, but that all sounds a bit prelude-to-an-orgy to me.

“To some people, dinner for one will always be unthinkable – my old boss used to cajole his deputy into joining him for sushi, even though the hapless underling never ate a thing. He just sat there and watched the big cheese throw raw fish into his mouth – a bit like a lame bird in the penguin house. Their loss, I say

“He who hath dined alone has also mastered the art of the rapid toilet break, lest his food be whisked away and the table reset. And, as Andy McNab will tell you, you just never know when that may come in handy.”

Tim Moore captures the spiritof adventure alone in northern Spain

kiss my mule! Tim
Moore walks (and rides) in
the Spanish Basque country
with his very own donkey'I’ve done an awful lot of travelling alone, though not all of it by choice. Try as I may – and oh, how I have done – it isn’t easy to convince potential companions that tackling the Alps by pushbike could be a giggle, or that northern Spain is best viewed from behind a very lethargic donkey’s over-active backside. But it’s this reluctance that qualifies me to offer an unvarnished overview of life as a solo wanderer.

“The most obvious benefits are logistical: there’s a great joy in travelling light and fast, like some lone tourist commando. Reprieved from the endless faffing about of group travel, you’ll be whistling down the road, showered and breakfasted, half an hour after you woke up. In a group, you’re a holidaymaker. Alone, you’re an adventurer. You can, on a whim, embark on some ridiculous yomp up the mountains without anyone to whinge or hold you back or make you listen to reason. You can spend a whole day in a museum, or asleep in a park. Habits that no fellow traveller would ever tolerate can be indulged to unsightly excess. In my case, extreme thrift – I once arrived alone in Malta on a value for money flight via Ryanair with £21 to my name, yet by systematically looting the breakfast buffet and placing my recreational emphasis on walking, I landed back at Luton a week later with two quid to spare.

“But with freedom comes responsibility. Miss a train or lose a wallet and there’s noone else to blame. And if a problem shared is a problem halved, then by the same token, a joke shared is one that is more than doubled. My wife and I guffawed shamelessly at the translated menu that gave us “the Six Edible Snails from Bourgogne”, but I was alone for both “Handles in Syrup” and “Rape on a Plank, Sailor-Style”, and dared not even giggle. Laughter is no friend of the lone traveller – if you’re doing it, they’ll assume you’re about to burn the place down, and if they’re doing it, you’ve probably forgotten to put your trousers on.

“Yet solo travel rewardingly obliges you to commune with people that you otherwise wouldn’t have. With companions, you’re always in a little bubble of home. Without them, you’re unavoidably in there, down and dirty with the locals, living among them and learning their ways.

“Of course, this isn’t always a good thing. When I was introduced to the retired Norwegian policeman who was to share my cabin on a voyage up the fjords, I was delighted – it had been a week since I’d had a conversation with someone who wasn’t selling me food or tickets. But Sergeant Lars didn’t speak for two days and when he did, it was to deliver a midnight rundown of witnessed atrocities through the locked door of our tiny room’s lavatory. ‘I have seen many sad things,’ he intoned intensely. ‘One boy kill his mother with hammer… I photograph the body… so much blood.’ Wish you were here? Sometimes it’s not so much a solo traveller’s gloat, as his cry for help.

Networking sites forsolo travellers

www.companions2travel.co.uk
Want to go on holiday but can’t get your mates off the sofa? Log on here, where 15,000 people are trying to find like-minded travelling companions to head off with.

www.speedbreaks.co.uk
This company arranges holidays for singletons and specialises in short breaks — ideal if you find that you don’t like the people you’re with. Holidays include sailing in Croatia, wine-tasting in Burgundy and tennis in Hampshire.

www.thelmandlouise.com
This one is especially for girls looking for travel partners. Members are invited to regular events and group trips, and even get discounts on holidays thanks to the website’s partnerships.