When nobody else will go with you, or you don’t want to go with anyone, then you go solo.
It doesn’t make you Johnny No Mates, in fact you leave with more friends.
Our friends at Travel Department www.traveldepartment.ie like to do their homework before setting on programmes for us. Obvs!
And so they have conducted a survey into ours and our UK neighbours’ habits.
Irish people are three times more likely than the British to go solo.
And four out of five solo travellers are female.
Wendy, or Mrs Always Right, a nickname she revelled in and one I think she gave herself at the bank she managed, is one such solo traveller.
Who I, another solo traveller, met ten minutes into my Camino.
When I asked if she wanted me to take a photograph of her at a bridge.
We went on to spend the next four days with each other and a range of international friends we picked up along the way.
And that despite me swatting a wasp she alerted me too onto her foot and stinging her.
Just 12kms into the 100km CaminoWays http://www.caminoways.com trek… A pilgrim’s prayer.
While I only spent a couple of days with Elke I almost hugged her when we first met.
A friend in need
I had been three days on the Via Francigena http://wwwviafrancigena.com, had got lost obviously and hadn’t come across a human being for three days.
Other than at my billets. Until I met Elke.
We broke bread together, washed our feet in the stream and arranged to meet one another above Rome.
Which inevitably I missed and found myself in another grove. Still I got there and this is how… https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/small-roads-lead-to-rome/
Even when you are supposed to be on a couples holiday you can sometimes find yourself going solo.
I had been invited out to Barbados with Tropical Sky http://www.tropicalsky.ie to stay at Club Barbados http://www.theclubbarbados.com.
And while the invite was for me they had given me the option of a plus one at our own expense.
Which I had put to the Scary One at the time but which she returned to a week before I left… my mistake for not having it written down in triplicate.
Of course everywhere I looked there were couples. on the dance floor, in the swimming pool, on the terrace, at the bar, and the turtles in the sea.
Still, again, there is no such thing as a stranger in the Caribbean, only a friend you haven’t met yet.
And there was Andy, Ben, Jena, Patsy, Geraldine, Ruby, Bubba, Maradona (no, not that one), Lyndon and a host of others.
Here’s how a Scotsman in Barbados got on… https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/my-kiss-with-rihanna/
Go solo with Travel Department. They have new 2020 Solo Traveller tours on offer.
These include a Danube River Cruise, a Bavarian Winter Break, a Milan City Break, a 12-night South Africa adventure, including a safari, and a Nile River Cruise.
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