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EVERY week our Holiday Hero NEIL SIMPSON takes an in-depth look at a brilliant holiday topic, doing all the legwork so you don’t have to. This week: Britain’s best holidays for travelling on your own.
SOLO travellers should be spoilt for choice this summer as tour firms have added a host of minibreaks for small groups to their post-lockdown range.
Forget sharing rooms with strangers, punitive single supplements and tables for one – these imaginative itineraries bring together likeminded lone travellers with their interests and needs put first.
This includes a four-night Classic Yorkshire break with One Traveller that aims to include lunch at the original Bettys Tea Room in Harrogate and a chocolate masterclass at York Cocoa House.
After tasting York’s ‘dark gold’ at the class, guests can work off the calories on a guided walk round the city, a boat trip on the River Ouse and a tour of Harlow Carr, the 58-acre Royal Horticultural Society garden on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Base is the Grade II Middletons Hotel in the heart of York. From £890 (onetraveller.co.uk).
If you prefer train travel, the Scottish Highland Railways tour for solo travellers from Newmarket Holidays is worth a look. The four-night break includes three scenic railway journeys, starting with the 80-mile ride from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh with views out to the Isle of Skye.
Guests also experience the Strathspey steam railway and cross the 21-arch Glenfinnan Viaduct on the West Highland Line. From £765, including flights from Bristol, Luton or Manchester (newmarket holidays.co.uk).
Looking ahead, the company also offers a four-night Christmas In The Highlands break from £779.
Different culinary treats are on the menu with one of the new tours from Saga. Its four-night Splendour Of The Peak District holiday, for over-50s only, includes a ‘make your own pudding’ session in Bakewell and a chance to take in the spa waters in Buxton. It also includes a tour of Chatsworth House and gardens and a leisurely guided walk through Lathkill Dale looking for orchids, butterflies, woodpeckers and water voles. From £619 (saga.co.uk).
The perfect pub lunch is promised at the Fox & Hounds in the Oxfordshire village of Christmas Common at the start of a new Solos Holidays break in the Chiltern Hills. You’ll be joined by a qualified Blue Badge tour guide who will lead the group across rolling fields and past flint-walled, thatched cottages in one of Britain’s most under-rated beauty spots.
The walk goes past the Getty family’s Wormsley estate, and you’ll see the waterside pavilion at Garsington, famed for its outdoor operas performed on summer nights, and follow in the footsteps of Elizabeth I, who travelled along the medieval ‘London Waye’ to nearby Woodstock. The two-night break is from £359 (solosholidays.co.uk).
Cornwall is set to be popular again this summer and solo travellers can join in the holiday fun with the new Falmouth Bay & St Ives tour with Riviera Travel.
Guests will get to cross the causeway to St Michael’s Mount, explore the Lost Gardens of Heligan and head to the cliff-edge Tintagel Castle. There are visits to Falmouth, Padstow and Mevagissey, plus a tasting session at Healeys traditional Cornish ‘cyder’ farm.
Better still, everyone has plenty of room to spread out as they travel. Riviera’s social-distancing policies mean its coaches will never be more than half full and tours are limited to 25 guests.
From £899 for four nights (riviera travel.co.uk).