It’s a jolly holiday with me…
Stonewater customer Andrea Preston is back with another great read.
A regular contributor to Here to Help, she’s sharing her thoughts and tips as we head into the spring and summer holiday season - perfect timing for anyone looking to make the most of the months ahead!
The holiday season is coming (hooray!), but for some, it’s not so appealing. I’m thinking of those who have no one to travel with. But does it have to be like that? Have they never thought of going it alone?
I started holidaying alone over 40 years ago. I loved walking, old buildings and ancient sites, reading and music. I knew no one who also enjoyed these things. I had two choices – holiday with friends and do what bored me, or not go at all. Life’s too short to waste doing what we don't enjoy, so option one was not viable. But option two? Why not?
I decided to try it. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t do it again; if it did, the world was my oyster. I was used to jumping in my little old Morris and chasing off to some weird and wonderful abbey ruin, and after I sold the car, I still made day trips. Going on holiday was pretty much the same. The only difference was that I had a bit more to carry. I soon learned the easiest, most comfortable way to carry it, too, where the best luggage storage was to be found on trains, and which seats have the best leg room.
Within a few years, I had stayed on the south coast and in the north-east and started on the West Country. As I became more competent – and confident – in reading timetables and maps and finding my way round towns and cities, I began to try different activities. Having joined The Ramblers in 1984, I learned as much as I could about map reading and navigation, and as soon as I had gained enough knowledge and experience, I left the group and took off alone.
40+ years on, I can say I have been to the north, south, east and west of the British Isles, including the Shetland Islands, Hebrides, Isle of Man and Isle of Wight, and I have two complete long-distance coast paths under my belt as well as a number of not-quite-completed routes, all tackled on my own and by public transport.
I’ve been to the top of cathedral towers, down dungeons, into caves and on every form of transport except camel.
I like a challenge and enjoy the unexpected, but I do have rules. I never go anywhere without:
1. ensuring I can get back,
2. ensuring I have somewhere to stay for each night of my holiday, and
3. ensuring that when I am moving from place to place, there is some means of transport.
So far, I haven't had to resort to taking a taxi because there was no train or bus.
I did once hijack a coach in northern Scotland to take myself, twenty German students and their tutor to Scourie and Lairg, but that was because the post bus turned up with only eight available seats. The driver was rather shocked when she was confronted by a man accompanied by an entire class of youngsters, all of whom needed to catch a train from Lairg in a few hours’ time. The tutor seemed at a loss as to what to do. I spotted a coach in someone’s front garden and trundled off to find out who owned it and if it was going anywhere. In fact, the owner had just lost the mail contract to the post bus, and he was delighted to take us all to our destinations (then make sure the local press knew all about it).
Because I was a seasoned solo traveller, I was able to find a solution to the problem, which proves what a confidence-building exercise solitary travel can be.
As with everything, there are advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are obvious – complete freedom to plan, go with the flow, decide to turn plans upside down and the chance to choose where to stay. Freedom to cram as much into each day as possible or just chill out. It is easier to keep within a budget, too.
Now that I stay in Airbnb properties, I often have cooking facilities, but when my chosen base was a bed-and-breakfast guest house, I would simply smuggle food into my room (speak quietly and carry a big rucksack). I might eat out on my first night, especially if there is a Wetherspoon handy and certainly if it’s one that I haven’t bagged, but expensive meals in restaurants every evening are not on the to-do list. I’ve made some strange concoctions using just a kettle. If the room hasn’t had anything akin to a table, I’ve sat on the floor and kidded myself that I was picnicking on the beach. It not only saves money, but it’s also fun.
The disadvantages are probably equally obvious – if things go wrong, it’s down to my own resources, though the problems are usually late-running or cancelled trains, in which case railway folk will always do their best to help, or non-working showers/heating/light bulbs in the b-and-b, in which case the obvious solution is to tell whoever owns the place.
On occasions when I’ve tripped over my own feet, there has been someone nearby to scrape me up from the floor. When I took a wrong path up a steep hill in Cornwall and ended up spreadeagled against the cliff with one foot on a stone and the other on a metal loop sticking out, two hefty Yorkshire lasses grabbed an arm each and hauled me to level ground before I slid down to the car park and made a big dent in someone’s bonnet.
Then there is the question of entertainment. I was an only child, brought up to make my own pleasure and not expect there to be someone at my beck and call to keep me amused. If I was bored, it was my fault, and I should jolly well find something interesting to do. (‘Interesting’ often meant taking something to pieces to see how it worked, but at least I’d got the message about boredom.)
When I started holidaying alone, there was no problem with what to do in the evenings. I would go for a walk, perhaps sit on a bench and read. I’ve taken some of my best photographs in evening light. Otherwise, there was my room, a small library which I always carry with me and at first my faithful Sony Walkman, later replaced by a Sony CD Walkman. I could buy an iPod, but why bother when I have dozens of CDs and the Walkman still works? And that’s another advantage of solo travel – lovely as my friends are, I think they would soon grow tired of me spending every evening attached to my earbuds, but I can't live without music. Most accommodation provides a TV, and with the addition of smartphones and tablets, it’s possible to watch a different movie every evening.
I don’t go out each morning with the intention of attaching myself to someone. (I don’t like anyone doing it to me either - I call it being barnacled; it's bad manners and very selfish). Sometimes I'll end up walking with a couple or small group heading the same way. Occasionally we've exchanged email addresses, though they rarely keep in touch. One chance encounter did turn into a friendship; in 1995, in Northumberland, I met a couple a little older than me who lived near Stafford. We became close friends and still write to each other.
Most writers are solitaries. We like and need our thinking time. I spend much of my bus and train journeys catching up with reading; the times when I’m walking alone are for hatching ideas for whatever I'm writing. If I’m paying for a holiday, I expect to get at least one novel out of it! But it's not just writers who need time to think. It does everyone good to go into exile from time to time and have a good old mind-clear-out. When I was having problems with my Stafford landlord, I planned all my letters while walking the Pembrokeshire Way round St David’s Head, and I worked out how I would tackle the problem.
If you’ve never tried holidaying alone, maybe 2026 could be the year when you give it a chance. As with myself, you only need to do it once. If it doesn’t work, at least you’ll have learned something. If it does work, you’re cleared for take-off to anywhere you choose.
Photograph copyright: Andrea Preston (South Devon coast path between Torcross and Dartmouth, which I walked in 2024).
Passionate about history or writing? Read more from Andrea in 'In the beginning...' and 'Scribble, scribble, scribble...'