Solo travel should make all church members think

With Spring almost sprung, it’s high time for small talk to turn to travel: ‘Are you going away this year?’ The real question, though, is are you going alone? 2024 is, according to Forbes magazine, the year of the solo traveller. The Association of British Travel Agents reported that 16% of trips booked last year were solo – up from 6% in 2011 – and the trend looks likely to continue.

I have one old friend who is a serial solo-tripper. He waxes lyrical about the ease of travelling on his own: he can decide where he wants to go, how long he wants to stay there, what to eat, and when. A recent article in The Guardian celebrating the rise of the older female solo traveller picked up on many of the same benefits: ‘It’s a midweek morning and I’ve just woken up in a hotel room in Madrid on the first day of a mini-break. The day stretches deliciously ahead: shall I go first to the Prado, or the Reina Sofía museum? Shall I have brunch and a late-afternoon main meal, or tapas here and there? … The fact is, I can do exactly what I want, when I want, because I’m holidaying alone.’

A few days later I read the approving response in the letters pages and wondered if I was missing out on something. But my controlled experiments in solo travel – 36 hours alone on the South Downs Way, and two nights in a European city tacked onto the end of a work trip – have so far proved less than invigorating. I want to find my own company inspiring, but it turns out that my inner monologue is not all that interesting, and it doesn’t take long for the decision fatigue to set in. It’s ok. But I’d rather have someone else present to help make decisions. And, most importantly, to laugh at my jokes.

It would be easy, from the vantage point of a Christian column, to deride the rise of solo travel as symptomatic of a lonely society that applauds independence and individualism, even selfishness. But maybe it’s not quite so simple. After all, one of the things many solo travellers say they like most is the opportunity to strike up conversations and make new friendships – whether that’s chatting with a waiter, or joining one of the booming industry of group tours for solo travellers. Sociologists have observed for decades that our network of ‘weak ties’– casual acquaintances – are as important for our wellbeing as our ‘strong ties’ of friends and family, if not more so. Genuine social interaction with strangers makes us happy. Many of us have forgotten how to do it, but not the solo travel enthusiasts. They’re testament to the fact that engaging with the people who happen to be physically near us – those whom we might call our neighbours – is actually good for our sense of wellbeing.

The Bible affirms that observation. When God set humanity on the task of exploring and subduing the world, He declared that it was not good to go it alone. But the Old Testament’s vision of human flourishing goes far beyond the nuclear family unit. And the life-to-the-full that Jesus came to give us is one of loving God and loving neighbour. In a culture where our friends and colleagues live for the next Instagram-worthy trip – solo or otherwise – Jesus reminds us that real living is this: not seeing the world, but seeing the person in front of us, and moving to meet their needs.

And maybe the rise of solo travel gives us pause to think about our churches, too. Our churches are not meant to be just another set of weak ties, but strong ones: a family. I asked a church friend about his solo travel reflections and while there was a lot that he liked about it, he admitted a ‘nagging feeling that it’s not my choice, it’s just no one would want to go on holiday with me’. Another single friend remembers talking to someone about holidays. She said that she’d like to go on more exciting trips, but didn’t have anyone to go with. This was met with a rousing encouragement from the other person: ‘Don’t let that stop you. Get out there and see the world!’ But what I really wanted in that moment, my friend then added to me, was for them to say ‘Come on holiday with us’.