R is for Road Trips feels like another Iceland post, since that’s what I’ve just done! Road trips are a travel classic and yes, you can do them solo. I know when you say those words you’re picturing two girls, probably blonde, in an open-top car, cruising an open road in California, somewhere around early evening but first, only California road trips look anything like that and second, it’s so much easier in many ways to do it on your own.
In reality, you’re probably going to be in a very ordinary car with a roof and a plasticky dashboard. It might rain, and not in that semi-tropical warm laughing-in-the-rain way. Your legs will ache and there won’t be enough toilets along the way. And that’s fine! Not everything has to be Insta-beautiful. It’s about the journey and maybe the destination, not the magazine photos or perfume ad.
My own road trip this summer was in a white Hyundai i20, with a wet tent spread over the back seat, the contents of three bags all mixed up in the boot and sharing-size crisp bags on the passenger seat. I had two very long driving days, I drove through mountains and meadows and expanses of lava field. I passed glaciers and black sand beaches and lakes that had so many bugs I thought I’d hit a patch of heavy rain. I stopped at gravel patches and roadhouses and seaside villages. I pitched my tent in the shelter of the car and I sat in the back of the car to eat bread and butter between geothermal wonders.
There are great things about road tripping solo. I set the pace. I decide when and where I stop. I choose the music. I don’t have to worry about travel sickness – and that’s a big one for me. I can make as much mess in the car as I want.
On the other hand, I have to do the navigating as well as the driving – and I forgot my map. There’s no one to split fuel costs or parking fees with. Come to that, there’s no one to split the cost of hiring the car with. If my legs start to hurt, tough. There’s no one to take over the driving.
Swings and roundabouts. Oh yeah, I have to figure out left-hand-drive roundabouts on my own. There are definitely good things about a solo road trip, just as there are bad things. You can do it alone and you can enjoy it alone and you can enjoy it for the fact that you’re doing it alone.
But if you do road trip solo – or even not – here are a few things to think about.
Local road laws
Because this is solo female travel, I’m going to assume you’re road tripping away from your home country. Check out the local laws. What are the speed limits in towns and on open roads? Do you need to permanently have your lights on? Do red lights actually mean stop? (I hear in the US this isn’t a certain thing. In Europe it absolutely is.)
Insurance
Is the basic bog-standard rental insurance enough or do you need to upgrade?
Navigation
Do you know where you’re going? If you use your phone for directions, where can you put it so you can see it? Would a paper map be useful in case you find yourself in a service blackspot?
Fuel
What fuel does your car take? How far can you drive between refills? Where’s the next fuel station? How do you know how much fuel to put in? How do you open the fuel filler flap? (Seriously. Last summer I attempted to lever it open with a knife before discovering there’s a switch under the seat.) For the Americans out there: in Europe, 99,999 times out of 100,000, you pump your gas yourself.
What if something goes wrong?
Keeping my fingers crossed for you that it’s something minor but you need to think about it. This summer, the “low tyre pressure” warning light came on half an hour after I picked up the car, which meant I had to find a fuel station with a (working, non-broken) air machine, find the car’s manual in the glovebox, find out what tyres I had to figure out what the tyre pressures should be and inflate all four because the light didn’t tell me which one was the problem. There were phone calls home to my dad at 9am on a Sunday, although in my defence that was because the pump was broken and not because I couldn’t figure anything out myself.
How long will it take?
You’ve probably got a deadline – a time to return the car or to be on a plane or to be back at work. Consider the distance you want to drive against the time it’ll take to drive it. Remember that although road trips are a classic and always look chilled and beautiful, at some point your right knee and ankles will probably start to protest.
How do you pay for parking?
In Iceland, there’s either a machine in the car park or you pay online within 24 hours. On the other hand, in the UK you often need coins, which I rarely have handy. Be prepared. Do you pay on arrival, guessing at how long you’ll stay, or do you pay on departure for how long you were actually there?
Can you drive it?
I’m getting more comfortable driving left-hand-drive but it still doesn’t come naturally to someone who’s been driving right-hand-drive since 2002. The thing I never quite get used to is that the pedals don’t feel like my own Panda’s pedals. My car has a very stiff brake and if I treat a hired car’s brake like I treat my own, I’m going to smash both my nose and the windscreen, so I take some time to practice in the car park before I get on the road.
When you’ve thought about all that, when you’ve planned your trip, when you’re sitting in the car, I hope you have a great solo trip. Road trips mean such freedom and if you’re doing it yourself, you’ve got even more freedom – so free you could just fly away. Drive safe.