Table For One.

The joy of solo travel.

There is still something romantic about travelling alone. Unfortunately, a romance that sometimes comes with practicalities. Of course the inevitable single-person supplement. The financial punishment for failing at the relationship game — or the acceptable tax for having completely mastered it, depending on your viewpoint.

Now you could use one of the increasing number of solo traveller organisations and websites, and they have their place, but joining one of these trips does not truly count. This isn’t travelling alone; it’s merely getting on the bus without a particular friend on the way to your first day of school.

Solo travel can bring not only joy but perks as well. Upgrades, although invitations to turn left have become increasingly rare, they are more likely when the airline only has to accommodate one of you. A single friend scored an upgrade to first class on a flight back from watching The Lions Tour in Australia, purely by raising her eyebrows and tutting about the farting, snoring and deeply inappropriate chat from her fellow returners. What the cabin crew didn’t know was that a few hours earlier she could be seen, holding her own, in the bar with them.

I treated myself to a post-break-up recovery trip, a luxury holiday to Holbox, Mexico. (I recommend lying in a hammock with a bottle of tequila watching pelicans diving whilst enjoying the attentions of a very handsome local man as a salve for the most wounded heart.) When I arrived, I was moved up to the honeymoon suite, complete with swing chair, which felt very much like the universe having a sense of humour at my expense. I later discovered my hairdresser had stayed in the exact same suite for his actual honeymoon, which I am glad I didn’t know about beforehand as unless booking room 100 of The Chelsea Hotel NY the anonymity of previous inhabitants is essential in any holiday stay.

Upgrades may be rare but the freedoms are many. Doing exactly as you want. No one to judge you for when you pack — last minute or suitcase out a month before. Or what - I have a friend who refuses to travel without a 5kg kettlebell and I defend her right to do so. You can book and enjoy your own seat with no arguing about whether you are making the most of your turn by the window. Alone you can arrive for last call or hours early for airport shopping. If you want to wander around buying make-up no cheaper than at home and hefty magazines, it is entirely your choice. The downside is that there is also no one to blame if you are late to the airport gate and the plane misses its slot.

You are freed from the trial of travelling with someone not operating at your level of airport competence — waiting with someone who has forgotten to remove their belt, or where they put their passport, does little for the blood pressure. Not having to engage with anyone else’s airport kinks is a joy. I once had a partner with whom I holidayed often. He used to like arriving at the airport separately so that there was the pretence that it was an affair. At the time this seemed quaint, amusing rather than alarming. In hindsight it should have been a spectacular red flag, especially when the practice continued for many years. That said, when recently asked what I missed about that particular relationship, it took a nanosecond to answer — his ability to navigate an airport.

Perfectly ordinary, but unfamiliar places can feel quite intimidating once you are the only person responsible for your wellbeing. That said, I have only felt scared three times in my life because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only one of those was when I was on my own and not travel related - it was in the 1980s, walking through a city centre park in the southwest of England in the terror hours. However, my biggest potential travel scrapes have happened when I wasn’t travelling solo. Once in a downtown part of LA in the early 1990s with a female friend, when a very kind scantily clad young woman suggested we shouldn’t be there and gave us a set of very explicit directions. The other was in Cuba, entirely of our own making, but so much fun and such an adrenaline rush it was undoubtedly the best part of the trip.

Then we come to one of the supposed tragedies of travelling solo - dining alone. It is certainly one of the things people worry about on your behalf. They shouldn’t as travelling with another person involves a surprising number of negotiations, particularly around food. There is often the feeling that a meal must become an event, which for someone with as complex a relationship with food as I have, can be daunting. When you are alone you can order exactly what you want, even if all you fancy is a bowl of minestrone. I often have to fight the temptation to order more food than I want out of embarrassment that the staff have to make an effort for a mere gazpacho or slice of tortilla. Equally, you can happily eat so much garlic it nearly takes your own head off, and have three flan de la casa without guilt or remorse. I make it a rule never to calculate the cost of wine by the glass v a bottle — that way lies hangovers and regret. Of course you often have to hold your ground and assure the maître ď that you are entirely continent and do not need to accept the table next to the loo.

Sitting solo anywhere, but especially in a restaurant, can look melancholy if you’re not careful. You have to adjust your body posture so as not to look mournful. There used to be the joy of solitary smoking in restaurants it gave you something to do that looked intentional, even stylish. Now most of us just scroll, which is considerably less glamorous. A book is definitely a better look, but a whole communication can be conveyed by the title you carry, so choose carefully.

The same applies on beaches. Sitting alone staring out to sea can look contemplative, performatively maudlin or it can look like an invitation, depending entirely on your body language. This becomes particularly important on clothes-optional beaches, where even prolonged eye contact can be interpreted as an invitation. On one such beach I discovered naked men had a tendency to pop up from behind the dunes like meerkats, possibly alerted by the possibility of new conversation or a shared bocadillo, although I suspect, even in my salad days, I was not what they were looking for. Either way, a tango-style flick of the head in the opposite direction was all the discouragement needed.

But eating alone can be a joy and I have always been comfortable with it, and until recently very happy to sit at a bar alone too, although I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the latter. I am undoubtedly now entering a phase where I will engender mere curiosity and not expectation, and although sadly for entirely different reasons, will feel comfortable again.

I have been fortunate enough to met some truly wonderful people whilst on my solo travels. Sitting at the bar on a rooftop in Athens I struck up a conversation with an entirely wonderful young American woman. We drank for a couple of hours, went on to another couple of bars, spent the next day sightseeing together and rounded off our time with a meal at a fabulous restaurant that I would never have found on my own. Walking the Camino last year, I marched huffily past a group of loud Americans - trying to out walk their chatter - only to discover that we were sharing accommodation, where I was happily adopted into their group as we bonded over the grimness of our Bates Motel Style lodgings. Nothing brings people together faster than shared adversity

Although this was a delightful happenstance, there can be negatives to people seeing you are solo and sensing you are fair game - those who assume you want company. On the same Camino I had to rest and eat three meals that I didn’t want just to avoid walking with one particular young man. He even missed the Camino code of “I am just going to stop here for a while”, the universal signal that wild weeing was imminent and he should carry on.

Solo sightseeing is done at your own pace. There is no one to moan as you visit the tenth flea market nor to consult as you decide to have a Moroccan rug sent home. Similarly if you spend two minutes in a gallery and two hours in the gift shop - all entirely up to you.

I have never been tempted to undertake a ski holiday on my own, but that is because one of the joys of being divorced, for me, is never having to hurtle down a hill out of control ever again. Skiing alone would however, I imagine, free one from the tyranny of someone else’s need to be first up and last off the mountain.

Whatever you have chosen to do, you can later fall into bed fully clothed, watching anything on your laptop that your VPN will allow, and only retrieve your underwear from the bottom of the bed when you vacate the room. You can set your dating app preferences to travel mode — or not — as takes your fancy. And you can leave your vibrator on charge in any room of the Airbnb you desire.

Then there is the navel-gazing — contemplation — a lot of it. Travelling alone leaves space for this whether you want it or not. I know plenty of people who talk endlessly to avoid thinking, and others who use drink in much the same way. But long walks, train journeys, sitting on a bench watching a plaza coming to life all lend themselves to a certain amount of introspection. With no one to interrupt with “what are you thinking?”, like all aspects of solo travel you are also entirely free to direct your own thoughts. Not every trip has to be an educational journey to enrich the soul; sometimes the mental equivalent of the good old fly-and-flop is exactly what is required.

Sometimes what you want from a place is not a grand experience or a story to tell afterwards. Sometimes it is just the freedom to sit in silence somewhere unfamiliar, eat a bowl of minestrone, and not have to explain why that is enough.

You can travel and not engage, entirely be a tourist and not speak or meet anyone, but simply enjoy the ride. You can come away with lifelong friends and many tales to tell. Whatever you decide, you may discover that living slightly differently — and largely on your own terms — is not quite the hardship people imagine.