The short answer: go anyway, but change the format. Choose a holiday where the company is built in — a hosted group week that you join as an individual, with shared meals and a shared plan for each day — and 'no one to go with' stops being a reason to stay at home. Here is how that actually works.

Why does having no one to go with stop so many people?

It creeps up on you. Friends pair off, or their knees give out, or their diaries fill with grandchildren. A partner dies, or leaves, or simply hates travelling. One year you realise the person you always went to Portugal with can't come, and the brochure sits on the kitchen table until it quietly goes in the recycling.

What stops most people isn't the being alone as such. It's the specific gaps a companion used to fill: someone across the table at dinner, someone to share the view with, someone to split the planning, someone who'd notice if you didn't come down for breakfast. Solve those four things and the rest of solo travel is genuinely fine.

You'd also be in growing company. ABTA found that 16% of UK travellers took a solo holiday in the year to August 2023, up from 11% the year before. Travelling without a companion is now entirely unremarkable — we've written before about why it isn't weird at all.

What are your realistic options?

A big escorted coach tour. Company of a sort, but a new hotel every night and fifty faces are hard to turn into conversation. You can be surrounded and still eat alone.

A singles holiday. These carry a dating undertone that most people who simply want a holiday find off-putting.

Full DIY solo travel. Wonderful for some, but it solves none of the four gaps — every dinner is a table for one, and all the planning lands on you.

A hosted group week. One house, one long table, a dozen or so guests who all arrived as individuals, and hosts whose actual job is to make the week work socially. This is the format built precisely for people with no one to go with, and it has decades of history behind it — Spice Escapes, Casa Agara's exclusive booking partner, has more than 45 years of hosted holidays to its name and ATOL 9046 protection; here's how the partnership works.

How does joining a hosted week actually work?

You pick a scheduled week and book a place on it, exactly as you'd book any package — except you're booking for one, and so is nearly everyone else. At Casa Agara, an 18th-century stone casona in Cantabria's Cabuérniga valley, the weeks run to a rhythm: breakfast together, a day out walking in the Saja-Besaya reserve or riding or trying a surf lesson forty minutes away, then a home-cooked dinner at one long shared table with house wine, beer and spirits included.

Rob and María, the hosts, live at the house with Chispa the dog. They meet you at the start, seat the table so conversation comes easily, and keep an eye on how everyone is settling in. The weeks are escorted as well as hosted, so the logistics — routes, plans, what happens if the weather turns — are somebody else's job. All four of those gaps a companion used to fill are covered by the format itself.

Will everyone else be in couples or cliques?

The honest answer: most guests come alone, some come with a friend or a sibling, and the occasional couple books on too. It doesn't split the group the way you might fear, because the shared table and the shared days keep mixing people together. By Wednesday nobody remembers who arrived with whom. We've written more about who actually turns up on these weeks.

What about the single supplement?

This is where the format shows its colours. There is no forced single supplement at Casa Agara: you can share a twin room with a same-sex room-mate at no extra charge, and if no room-mate can be matched, the room supplement is covered rather than passed to you. If you'd simply rather have your own room, you can take one for an optional supplement — your choice, not a penalty. The full workings are here.

So what's the actual first step?

Pick a week whose dates suit and see who has space. Getting to the valley is easier than its scenery suggests: about an hour from Santander airport with its direct UK flights, an hour and a half from Bilbao, or Brittany Ferries from England to Santander if you'd rather bring the car and skip the flight altogether.

And if the sticking point is nerves rather than logistics, that's normal too. Nobody on these weeks is a veteran adventurer; they're people who wanted a holiday and didn't have anyone to go with, which by the first dinner turns out to be the thing everyone has in common.

The scheduled weeks are all listed here — and if you'd like to sound out whether a particular week would suit you, drop Rob and María a line.