Stop trying to make friends and start doing things alongside people instead — that's the honest answer. After 50, friendship grows out of repeated, low-pressure contact around a shared activity, not out of cold small talk. Which is why the right kind of holiday, with a shared table and a shared plan for each day, produces more genuine connection in a week than a hotel bar manages in a fortnight.

Why is it harder to make friends after 50?

Not because you've lost the knack. The machinery that used to do it for you has been switched off. Work supplied colleagues, the school run supplied other parents, sport supplied team-mates — and then, one by one, those collision points close down. Retirement, children leaving, friends settling into couples' routines. Making friends was never really a skill you had; it was a by-product of structures you were inside. Lose the structures and even the most sociable people find themselves short of new faces.

Recognising that changes the question. Instead of 'how do I get better at talking to strangers?', it becomes 'where can I put myself inside a structure again?' Holidays turn out to be one of the best answers available, provided you choose the right sort.

Why does structure beat small talk?

Because friendship needs repetition and material, and small talk supplies neither. A pleasant chat by a hotel pool is a one-off: you may never see that person again, and the conversation has nowhere to go beyond where-are-you-from. Compare a week's walking with the same dozen people. You see the same faces at breakfast, on the trail, at dinner — seven days of repeated contact. And the day generates its own conversation: that climb, that view, the state of someone's boots, whether today's picnic spot beat yesterday's. You don't need to arrive charming. The structure carries you until the conversation does.

There's also the pace of it. At a long table or on a path, silences are comfortable in a way they never are at a drinks reception. You can walk beside someone for twenty minutes saying nothing and it counts as company, not awkwardness.

What does a week of built-in company look like?

Casa Agara, in Cantabria's Cabuérniga valley, was set up around exactly this. It's an 18th-century stone casona inside the Saja-Besaya reserve, running hosted weeks since 2023, where guests join as individuals. Days are shared: guided walking (Walkwise runs the walking weeks), riding on the beach at low tide, surf lessons about forty minutes away, painting or yoga on other weeks. Evenings are one long table — dinner cooked at the house, much of it from the garden, house wine, beer and spirits included — with the same people at the table each evening, so a chat begun on Tuesday is still going on Thursday.

Two details do a lot of quiet work. First, the hosts: Rob and María live at the house with Chispa the dog, and they make the introductions, so day one never has that standing-at-the-edge-of-the-room feeling. Second, the escorted days: because the walking is led, nobody has to organise anyone, and the group mixes naturally on the trail instead of forming fixed pairs. Here's what a typical day looks like in full.

What if you're not naturally outgoing?

Then the structure matters even more. Quieter guests often do better on hosted weeks than the life-and-soul types, because nothing requires performance: you can contribute to the dinner-table conversation as much or as little as suits you, walk in easy silence, and slip off to a quiet corner with a book without anyone minding. We've written for introverts specifically about how sociable these weeks really are, and about where to find the quiet corners at the house.

Do holiday friendships actually last?

Some do, some don't, and it's worth being straight about that rather than promising a new best friend by Friday. Groups often swap numbers; a few keep in touch or book the same week the following year; others part warmly and that's that. We've looked at how often people genuinely stay friends. But even the friendships that stay on holiday leave something behind: the reminder that you can still connect with strangers, which makes joining the next thing at home — the walking group, the class, the choir — considerably less daunting.

How do you actually book onto a week like this?

You book a place on a scheduled week as an individual, the way most guests do. Every Casa Agara week goes through Spice Escapes, Casa Agara's exclusive booking partner — over 45 years of hosted holidays, ATOL 9046 — and you can read about them here. There's no forced single supplement: share a twin with a same-sex room-mate at no charge (the supplement is covered if no match is found), or take your own room for an optional supplement. Getting there is straightforward — about an hour from Santander airport on a direct UK flight, or Brittany Ferries to Santander if you prefer the sea.

See which weeks still have places, or put a question to Rob and María if you'd like a sense of how a particular week is shaping up.