The entire A-Z of Solo Female Travel series has pretty much assumed that your travel is going to be a bit outside your comfort zone – South East Asia, South America, Europe etc. But today I’m coming a bit closer to home, to contemplate travel in the UK and the USA, which are the two countries the majority of my readers are in. And by “travel in the UK and the USA”, what I really mean is travel within your own country, with minimum cultural and language differences.
There are two prongs here, to travel in your own country. The first is using it as practice for travels further afield and the second is for learning to appreciate what’s on your own doorstep.
Practice for solo travel
I recently opened a new Ranger unit and while we were out geocaching (doesn’t work so well in the dark when most of us, including the leader, are novices), I was chatting to my girls. One of them has aspirations to travel – in three years, age 17, she’s going to take her sixteen-year-old friend to Tokyo – and she wants to go and see some of the amazing things around the world, including the Northern Lights and the bioluminescent beaches. But she’s also realised that she knows nothing about travelling, or not on her own, anyway, and so she was telling me about how she planned to learn it and figure it out by travelling around the UK.
I think I’ve advocated for that sort of thing throughout this series. It’s not the only way to learn to travel – it’s certainly not the method I used at the beginning. Depending on where you count my travel beginning, I either ran off to Italy unsupervised aged 14, used my spare time while living and studying abroad or I went off to Helsinki on a whim in November on three weeks’ notice. But if you either don’t have that impulsive streak or you have better control over it than I do, then starting in the UK or USA is a really good way to get to learn the practicalities and about yourself.
In fact, learning about yourself is maybe the most important part of figuring out the art of solo female travel. Who are you? How tough are you? How smart are you? Can you solve problems? Who do you become when you come across a problem? You don’t need to go to the other side of the world to learn who you are when you’re on your own. When you learn other skills, you don’t immediately leap into the extra-hard difficulty level – you start with the basics and work up. It’s exactly the same thing. Whatever it is you want to do, start small and work up.
Never been on a plane or navigated an airport by yourself? Take a flight to the other end of the country for the weekend. The only real difference between a short internal flight and a transatlantic flight is the amount of time sitting in that seat staring out at blue sky. Oh, there’s some admin involved in flights between different countries – do you need a visa or a landing card etc – but you’ll sort most of that out in your own time at home. At the airport, it’s just about handing over your paperwork when requested, that doesn’t take practice.
Stay in a hotel or guesthouse or B&B by yourself. Camp by yourself. Entertain yourself in a new place for a few days. If you can do that in the UK or USA, wherever you live, you can do that in another country.
Appreciating what’s on your doorstep
I don’t think I did a blog post on it because there wasn’t really anything worth saying but back in May, I went off for a weekend camping seventeen miles from home. For me, camping is about not being at home and spending some time just not doing anything in particularly in the outdoors and I can do that just as well seventeen miles away as seventeen hundred or thousand miles away. Because what’s on my doorstep is a lot of countryside and peaceful outdoors – admittedly, within earshot of a wedding party and a dual carriageway.
I’ve not been to the USA but let’s take the UK as a microcosm of what I’m talking about. How many of your country’s big cities have you been to? How many National Parks? Which beaches have you been to? What monuments or important buildings have you seen? I bet there’s a long list you haven’t done. Last weekend, on my way back from Dartmoor, I went to Exeter for only the second time in my life (and the first was a uni visit in which I didn’t see anything of the city). Exeter is less than two hours away for me. I’ve never been to Birmingham. Never been to Cambridge. Only touched on Cornwall. I still have a list of more than 30 cathedrals to cross off.
I know, it’s just not as exciting or glamorous to explore your own country. If you’ve got a few days, why not use them to go abroad? You can do your own country any time – which just means you’ll never do it. Now my parents are retired, they’re off on as many holidays as they can fit between my dad’s bus days but every time Mum brings up the subject of Scotland, which I don’t think either of them have ever seen, it’s always “Oh, but we could go to Germany instead” and so they do. Christmas markets? Well, they could go to the big one at Birmingham… but Innsbruck! Vienna!
And honestly, we all know it’s often cheaper to go abroad. A two-hour flight for £100 or an eight-hour train, which will be delayed or cancelled and you won’t get a seat anyway, for £400? It’s a no-brainer. Driving yourself means sitting on clogged-up motorways and navigating road closures and for the price of the fuel, you might as well get on that plane again. I know the climate is in a really bad place and that hopping on planes isn’t helping but until overland transport gets some major fixing, people – including myself – will keep using planes. I keep looking at going to Paris – I have an absolute fixation on Disneyland Paris despite knowing that it’s everything I dislike – and time and time again, it’s half the time and a quarter of the price to fly rather than take the Eurostar.
That’s a diversion. I’m trying to sell you the UK here! UK-types, try to look at our little island like the Americans do. It’s green, it’s quaint, it’s full of pretty villages and medieval towns, it has so much history, it’s so beautiful. US-types, try to look at your vast nation like we Brits do. America, the world of the future, it’s got unmissable cities and eye-popping scenery and it’s big and it’s amazing. Remember when you were in primary school and the rich kid said on the first day of term that what they did in the holidays was go to America? And we were all in awe that they got to go to this amazing place that’s almost like another world, a magical world?
We’re too close to our own countries, too aware of their problems, to appreciate how amazing they are and the range of experiences and adventures they can offer us. Why do we need to go to Disneyland Paris when we’ve got Alton Towers? What have the Himalayas got that Eyri hasn’t? Why not go to Winchester Cathedral instead of Notre Dame? Malham Cove instead of the Grand Canyon. Cornwall instead of Miami. Bournemouth instead of the Costa Del Sol. Bath instead of Rome. I know, you want to go to all those places and the UK can’t actually replace them – or their weather. But there are so many things in the UK you could see and do if you set your perspective in a slightly different direction.
I’ve got two, maybe three more trips left in 2023. The two definites are to Cornwall and the New Forest. I might have a weekend in the vicinity of Portsmouth, mostly to cross off two cathedrals and make use of the annual Docklands ticket I bought last December with the fond hope that I’d go two or three times in 2023. I’ve already had sixtrips away in the UK this year – I walked the South Downs Way in March (well, a day and a half of it), I did the aforementioned camping trip 17 miles away, I had a weekend adventuring on Purbeck, I took my Rangers to camp, I went to the Fringe and I went to Camp Wildfire. That’s all come out of the pandemic – previous to that, to my travels being curtailed, it more often than not simply wouldn’t have occurred to me to spend time in the UK.
Actually, I like to use my UK trips to chill more than I would in another country, especially if I’m going somewhere fairly local. Part of travel is about seeing and doing new things but part of it is about stepping out of your life, having a break from the routine of work and home and your regular commitments. I once spent a long weekend in a shepherds hut ten miles away. Just three days of sitting in the sun, turning myself lobster-red in the hot tub and walking in the countryside, without any of the stress of packing a suitcase you can lift by yourself and navigating two airports, neither of which are within two hours of where you’re starting or finishing.
The same applies to the US, only your distances are bigger. Your country is bigger than my continent. Visa-free, passport-free, language-barrier-free, visit the many and varied sights, escape the everyday, have adventures, have a break. It’s all right there on your doorstep.
Go forth and enjoy your own country!