The Seven Wonders of Solo Travel

This time next week I’ll be setting off on a solo travel adventure that could (hopefully) last eight months, and take in at least five different countries. 

It could be more, it could be less, but that’s one of the joys of solo travel - you’re free to make your own rules and follow your heart wherever it takes you.

Solo travel is definitely a growing trend and now accounts for 18% of all global bookings, with the number having doubled since the pandemic.

I made my first solo trip abroad several years ago, when I unexpectedly came into a few hundred £s. At the time I owed a few thousand £s on my credit card so I could - and some might say should - have put the cash towards paying off my debt, but the way I saw it, as I hadn’t been expecting to come into the money I should spend it on something unexpected - and fun! So I booked a studio apartment in Montmartre, Paris for a week.

The apartment looked out onto the Place du Tertre, the famous square lined with restaurants and cafes where artists sit painting at their easels all day and most of the night. 

It was a magical week, during which I feasted on baguettes, croissants and cheese and pretended that I owned the apartment and lived on the square. I also filled a notebook with writing ideas - many of which ended up being woven into my novel, An American in Paris, a few years later.

Although I initially had a couple of nervous and self-conscious moments being in Paris on my own, such as trying to find the guy who was supposed to give me the apartment keys, made even harder by my lack of French vocabulary, and dining on my own the first night in a local restaurant, I soon grew to love it.

But then the pandemic happened and all of our lives and worlds shrunk to the size of our lockdown abodes, and I didn’t go abroad for three years. It took a trip to Jamaica with my friend almost a year ago to jolt me awake again and remind me of how much I love to travel. 

This very newsletter was born out of my desire to rediscover my wanderlust and wonderlust, and hopefully inspire others to do the same, and in February this year I embarked upon my most ambitious solo trip to date - a month on my own in a town I’d never been to before, Eureka Springs, nestled in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas.

I saw this trip as a trial run. If it went well I planned to return home and work my butt off until September, then leave the UK to travel solo for a few months.

My trip to Eureka Springs went brilliantly and by the end of the first week there I knew that the life of a solo traveller was definitely for me. I returned home on a mission to make my dream of more travel a reality and now, six months later, I’m ready.

So, what is it about solo travel that I love so much? And why might you love it too? I had a think about it and came up with the following Seven Wonders of Solo Travel to share with you. So make yourself a cuppa and settle in…

Wonder Number One: Freedom

I kept a journal while I was in Eureka Springs and on just about every other page I wrote about the overwhelming sense of freedom I was feeling. When you travel with another person or a group you will obviously have to compromise at some point to make sure everyone’s needs and desires are met. When you travel solo you can do exactly as you please. If you want to visit the local haunted hotel in search of an Irish ghost who likes to supernaturally flirt with the ladies, no-one is going to moan or roll their eyes at you. Equally, if you fancy spending a day doing nothing but watching the Help! I Married a Mormon! channel, breaking only to grab a quesadilla from the local taco truck, you won’t have to feel guilty for being a slob with poor taste in TV. (Please note: I did both these things while travelling solo in America, and a great deal of fun they were too!)

Wonder Number Two: Character Building

One of the down-sides to solo travel is that if something goes wrong or feels scary you don’t have anyone to share the burden with. But I’ve found that this can be one of the huge advantages too. Recently, when I travelled to Ukraine on my own, I had a slightly hair-raising moment while I was waiting at a bus station in Slovakia and needed to use the bathroom. The dark and slightly sinister bus station looked like the perfect setting for a thriller, and the Women’s toilets were situated in a dimly lit basement that looked like the perfect setting for the scene in the thriller where our hero, an intrepid solo traveller named, let’s say, Chivon, meets a messy and untimely end. I contemplated not going to the bathroom but I knew that my poor bladder had hours on a bus to come, while attempting a border crossing into a war zone, so down to the basement I went. Not only did this end up strengthening my courage muscle but it gave me one of the best anecdotes of the trip, when I met the twelve year old chain-smoking boy-man who worked down there as the toilet attendant. There’s no doubt about it, solo travel increases your courage and builds your character, and you return to your normal life feeling emboldened.

Toilets of terror

Wonder Number Three: Adventure

When you travel solo, everything feels like more of an adventure, and you in turn start to feel like an intrepid explorer. When you’re on your own, a simple trip to the local grocery store for the first time can feel akin to embarking upon an Indianna Jones style quest. And if you take a wrong turn, no-one will criticise your sense of direction, or lack of. You simply figure it out and course correct and feel a real sense of achievement in doing so. I’ve also found that this heightened sense of adventure in turn makes you more adventurous as a person. When I travel on my own I’m way more likely to talk to new people or try new things. In 2017 I went on a solo trip of sorts, to Sharjah in the UAE to give some author talks. Once I’d got over the initial culture shock of desert life I went out of my way to talk to anyone and everyone I met. As a result I spent a fascinating afternoon with a woman I met on a beach who was a renowned world expert on stories and had made it her life’s work to try and trace traditional stories like Cinderella back to their origins, living and travelling with nomadic tribes. Before we parted ways she told me how the Berber tribe believe that we’re all born with a story inside of us, and the purpose of our life is to try and find out what that story is. When I asked her what she meant by this, she smiled enigmatically and told me that, ‘I’d know it when I found it.’ This set me off on a quest which, three years later resulted in my novel, Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. This is NOT the kind of thing that happens to me in my everyday life, but my solo adventures always seem to be full of such magical serendipity.

Wonder Number Four: Friendship and Connections

In my experience it’s so much easier to make new friends and form meaningful connections when you travel alone. I think a major reason for this is that other people find it easier to approach you if you’re by yourself, and I know I’m way more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger when I’m on my own. One of the best ways I’ve found for meeting new people is when I’m eating out on my own, which can be daunting at first, but this is where a good book can come in really handy. Not only is a book great company, but it can also be the perfect conversation starter. The first weekend I was in Eureka Springs, I bought a book from the local bookstore called, If You Could Live Anywhere. I was drawn to the book not only for the title but because it had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the cover, and I already knew that I wanted my next solo adventure to be in Paris. That book proved to be an excellent conversation starter before I’d even left the store. As soon as I handed it to the store owner to pay, she started telling me about how she’d lived in Paris for a while in the 1960s when she’d been part of the Beat generation. A fascinating conversation ensued, and I told her about my own Parisian travel dreams. Before I left, she gave me a piece of paper with her address on it. ‘I want you to send me a postcard when you make it to Paris,’ she told me. ‘Just write, “I MADE IT!” on it and I’ll know it’s from you.’ Next week, some six months later, when I arrive in Paris on the first leg of my upcoming solo travels, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

The following day in Eureka Springs, I took the book out for lunch at a local diner and when the woman serving me saw it we launched into a lengthy talk about travel, sharing our dream destinations with one another. I ended up going back to that diner about three or four times a week and by the end of the month I was sitting up at the bar with the locals I’d got to know, and my server felt like an old friend. On my last day there, I gifted her the book in the hopes that it would inspire her own travel adventures. I hope when she reads it she has a smile as she thinks of the connection we shared.

Wonder Number Five: Reflection

Obviously, solo travel also involves a lot of time spent on your own, and because of this I’ve found it to be the perfect opportunity to reflect on my life, to process things that have happened, and to identify what needs to change. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m far away from home I tend to get a much better perspective on things, a kind of bird’s eye view, and without other people to interrupt my flow I’m able to do some seriously deep thinking. By the end of my solo week in Paris a few years ago I realised that it was time for me to relocate in the UK, and I finally realised a long held dream of living by the coast. By the time I returned from America this year I knew that the time had come to leave the UK to do some longer term travelling. In this way, solo travelling can feel a little like going on a retreat. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get a fresh perspective on your life, away from the hamster wheel.

Wonder Number Six: Revitalise

In our day-to-day lives, our senses can all too easily become numbed from over-familiarity. But whenever I travel somewhere new I feel my senses sparking back into life, and they’re even more heightened when I travel solo, probably because there’s no-one there to distract me from the moment. I still have a vivid memory of eating a crepe on my own in Montmartre, revelling in the crispy edges and the delicious hazelnut centre. Likewise, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more fully alive than when I was walking solo along a winding track in the Ozarks earlier this year. There was nothing or no-one to pollute the song of the birds or the whisper of the breeze through the trees and I felt completely present. More recently, when I crossed the border into Ukraine in the dead of night, unable to understand a word anyone was saying as soldiers swarmed around our coach, I remember having the certain feeling that, although things might feel a little scary, I was really, truly living. After months of plodding and slogging on autopilot it felt exhilarating. 

Wonder number Seven: Joie de vivre

One night, midway through my solo month in America, I lay on my bed crying tears of joy. I truly couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d felt so light and free from responsibility. Even as a kid, due to certain family circumstances, I hadn’t ever felt able to fully relax. But now, here I was, a grown-ass, 52 year-old-woman, lying on a bed in a cabin in the mountains, watching a galaxy light project magical patterns on the ceiling, and in that moment, nobody needed me to be strong, to take charge, or to provide for them. Nobody needed anything from me. I was surrounded by stunning nature, in a town full of welcoming, warm-hearted people and I was in complete control of my destiny. The joy I felt was overwhelming. I’m not saying that it’s wrong or bad to be needed by another - in fact, I’d say the opposite - but to be able to carve out a pocket of time and a place where you can feel completely free from other people’s demands or expectations, and free to be your true self, is such a sweet and unexpected gift, and something that maybe only comes from solo travel. One definition for joie de vivre is ‘exultation of spirit’ and that certainly sums up how solo travel feels to me. My spirit is well and truly exulted!

I hope this week’s Wonderstruck has made you consider taking a solo trip of your own and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, so please feel free to reply or comment.

Have you travelled solo before? Would you like to? And if so, where did, or would, you go? Of course, it doesn’t have to be for months like the solo adventure I’m about to embark upon. You could start small by taking yourself out somewhere new for the day or even for just a solo lunch or dinner. Go on, I dare you!

Until next week…

Siobhan