GOING SOLO

Travelling alone in France can make for an incredibly rewarding holiday experience. Helen Parkinson has a handy guide to make the most of your solo adventure

- Helen Parkinson

Whatever your age, a solo holiday can be a transformative experience. With no more compromises over where to go, what to do or where to eat – once you’ve had a taste for freedom, you might not want to go back!

Solo travellers make up 11% of the global travel market and according to online travel agency Booking.com, it’s Baby Boomers who are most likely to go it alone. A whopping 40% of 55-64-year olds took the plunge in 2019, finally putting to bed the myth of solo travel being the preserve of bushy-tailed backpackers.

Call us biased, but we think there’s no better place to go solo than France. Whatever solo travel means to you – from an escorted Riviera tour to bivouacking in an isolated National Park, or somewhere nicely in between – we’ve got your options covered.

Alone, not lonely

One of the privileges of solo travel is being able to get exactly want you want out of a trip, with no trade-offs. For some people, that could be making new, lifelong friends; for others, perhaps learning a new skill or simply being immersed in another culture. As well as the excitement of an impending voyage, travelling solo for the first time can also awaken a few worries, particularly of loneliness, but there are numerous solutions that will have you wondering why you waited so long to give it a go.