Two people, both travelling on their own, both wanting the same two things: not to be lonely, and not to have to organise everything themselves. One books a cruise. The other books a hosted walking week. Both are good answers — they just answer a slightly different question. The real one isn't "which is better"; it's what you want your days to be made of.

What a solo cruise does well

A cruise is a floating hotel that solves the hardest parts of travelling alone in one move. You unpack once, then wake to a new port most mornings without touching your bags. There's company on tap — many lines lay on solo get-togethers, shared dinner tables and hosts whose job is to make sure nobody's left out — and there is always something to do, from the theatre to the top-deck pool. If you like being on the water, want to sample a string of places without the effort of moving between them, and enjoy having entertainment laid on until late, a cruise earns its keep. For a lot of solo travellers it's the gentlest possible way in, and there's nothing second-rate about choosing it.

What a hosted walking week is built around

A hosted walking week starts from the opposite end. Instead of many places seen briefly from a big ship, it's one place, on foot, in a small group. You stay put in a single house, walk out of the door into the hills each day, and come back to one long table where everyone eats together. The walking is the spine of it — waymarked GR routes and old drovers' tracks climbing from the valley floor into beech woods and open tops, at Atlantic temperatures cool enough to be out all day without wilting. The scale is the whole point: not a few thousand passengers, but a dozen or so guests and a couple of hosts who know your name by the second morning. Where a cruise is broad and busy, this is narrow and deep.

So which one actually suits you?

Ask what you want to come home with. A cruise measures a good day in ports and views collected; a walking week measures it in miles under your boots and how well you slept after. If it's the feeling of having seen a lot — several ports, a coastline, a run of new places — the cruise gives you a breadth no land holiday can match. If it's the feeling of having properly rested, moved your body, and got to know a handful of people and one patch of country, a walking week does that better. Picture your ideal evening on each — a show and a late bar, or a tired, contented dinner with people who climbed the same hill — and you'll usually know which one is you.

Isn't a cruise the easier way to go solo?

In one sense, yes — the logistics vanish, and that matters. But "easy" and "alone-friendly" aren't quite the same thing. On a big ship you can be surrounded by thousands and still be a stranger to all of them; the company is there, but you have to go and find it in a crowd. A small hosted house works the other way round. There's nowhere to get lost. One table, a dozen people, a host doing the introductions so you're never the newcomer hovering at the edge — the company comes to you. Both handle the dreaded table for one. They just do it at very different scales, and only you know which scale you relax in.

A walking week in the green north

Casa Agara is where the hosted version happens: an 18th-century casona in the Cabuérniga valley, in the green, Atlantic north of Spain, inside the Saja-Besaya nature reserve, about an hour from Santander airport. Half board is included — breakfast and a home-cooked dinner every day, vegetables from the garden, and the house wine, beer and spirits poured as you like them. Rob and María host, with Chispa the dog usually underfoot. Days are yours: walk the GR routes and drovers' tracks from the door, or swap the hill for the surf coast, a horse, a yoga mat or an afternoon by the river.

You can join a scheduled per-person week on your own or as a couple, with no forced single supplement — twin-share with a same-sex room-mate at no extra charge, or take an optional room of your own for a clearly-priced supplement. Those weeks are booked through Spice Escapes, Casa Agara's exclusive booking partner, ATOL protected under licence 9046 and more than 45 years into running hosted holidays — so the booking is as looked-after as the week. If the small-and-deep version sounds more like your kind of rest than the big-and-broad one, tell Rob and María your dates and they'll help you find the right week.