I Took My First Solo Trip at 26 and Finally Understand the Appeal of Holidaying Alone

I have a question for you: at what point did trying to feel “well” quietly become exhausting? Somewhere between infrared saunas, sound baths and suspiciously expensive “nervous system reset” packages (all things I happily threw money at), rest started to feel remarkably structured, like something that needs to be scheduled, and increasingly, purchased.

Stephen Bartlett has faced backlash this week after touching on the subject on his podcast, sharing that two glasses of wine "destroyed his life" for three full days. A slew of writers have slammed the podcast host for making health optimisation seem "joyless," reflecting on when self-care became exhausting in and of itself.

And, honestly, I understand their point. That's why, in a world that feels relentlessly performative, I found the idea of disappearing somewhere beautiful more appealing than ever. Particularly for women, wellness retreats have become the socially acceptable version of escape: curated spaces promising stillness, safety and self-connection within controlled environments.

But recently, I started wondering whether we’ve slightly overcomplicated the whole thing.

Because what if the feeling so many of us are actually searching for - the ability to hear our own thoughts again - doesn’t necessarily live inside another curated routine disguised as rest?

On my quest to answer that question, I travelled alone to Furore to stay at the Grand Hotel Furore - a fragmented cliffside village on the Amalfi Coast often described as “the village that never existed.” Suspended between rock and sea, it felt less like a destination and more like a disruption; a place that quietly removes you from the structures you usually move through.

What caught me off guard was that I hadn’t really gone there looking for solitude. If anything, I think I was searching for a version of wellness that felt less rigid. Less like another routine to master. Instead, I discovered something far more uncomfortable: how difficult I actually found being alone. Somewhere between adulthood, burnout, and the low-level expectation to always be available, I realised I’d become very good at being independent, but not very good at sitting in my own company.

We’re also living through an odd moment where even solitude feels performative. Scroll online for long enough, and you’ll find endless “come spend the day with me” videos: beautifully framed videos of alone time that somehow still feel designed to be witnessed. Maybe that’s why solo travel feels so appealing right now. Not as escapism, but as one of the few remaining opportunities to exist, briefly, without a perfected structure.

Maybe that’s why solo travel feels so appealing right now. Not as escapism, but as one of the few remaining opportunities to exist, briefly, without performance, structure or expectation.

And somewhere between the silence, the sea and the stillness of Furore, I started to wonder whether the real route to rest isn’t another wellness routine at all, but the act of removing yourself entirely from systems that stop you from experiencing it in the first place.

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What I’ve always loved, and slightly relied on, is connection. I’m a natterer by nature. I liked shared tables, shared stories, and the easy rhythm of the company. Which is why I noticed something unexpected on this trip: when you travel alone, connection doesn’t disappear; it simply changes shape.

It took me around 24 hours to understand what being alone actually feels like. The silence, I stopped trying to fill it.

Perched high in the cliffs, the Furore Grand Hotel felt suspended between mountain and sea: the kind of place that forces you to slow down. By my second morning, I had. I woke early, ignored emails, and sat outside with coffee warming my hands while watching the fishing boats float by.

I noticed my behaviour shift - less performative, more incidental. I spoke to people I might previously have moved past, simply because my head would be elsewhere. I also gave myself a strict no-headphone rule. No mediation, no productivity podcast on my walk around the grounds, no soundtrack turning the Amalfi Coast into a curated montage. This wasn’t that kind of trip. For once, I craved my own thoughts arriving unedited.

That shift, away from fixed roles and familiar identities, is part of what makes being alone somewhere unfamiliar feel so different to everyday life. Speaking to Dr Alka Patel, longevity doctor and solo travel advocate, she described something that reframed it entirely: “Solo travel offers something many traditional recovery routines rarely do: identity without role.”

That stayed with me. Away from home, you’re no longer the organiser or responder. You are simply a person in a place, noticing what you are drawn to when nobody else is setting the agenda. “You are simply being,” she says. “That is rare.”

And importantly, she adds, solo travel is not only about stillness. “It can be restorative because it is not always quiet or static.” Which, strangely, is exactly what I kept coming back to in Furore: not isolation, but looseness.

Can travelling alone help regulate the nervous system?

On my second morning, the hotel arranged for me to hike the Path of the Gods with a local mountaineer. It was just the two of us, moving through abandoned mountain paths above Positano, with nothing between us but rock, cliff air, and the occasional donkey.

Nico, my guide, spoke about how locals live for simplicity. “Your glass of wine goes down like the sunset,” he said, half-amused, half-serious. “The best we can do is breathe and reboot.” What Nico was really describing wasn’t just a slower lifestyle; it was something closer to nervous system regulation in practice.

Then there was “controra” - the suspended afternoon rhythm he mentioned casually. Not productivity, not even structured rest, but a cultural pause: people gathering around kitchen tables, eating slowly, existing without urgency. My nervous system had never been treated with such hospitality - I was weirdly homesick for a lifestyle I’ve never actually lived.

That gap is exactly what Dr Patel points to when she talks about modern recovery. “Slower solo travel gives the nervous system something many women rarely experience: fewer inputs, fewer demands and enough space for the body to believe it is safe,” she explains. “When life stays permanently “on”, the body adapts, holding the nervous system in sympathetic activation, the mode linked to vigilance and performance.” Many of us assume regulation comes from meditation and other wellness overhauls, but it turns out it actually responds just as strongly to context: a slower morning, a quiet train journey, a walk without headphones.

Research into allostatic load (the wear and tear on your body caused by stress) supports this, showing that reduced stimulation allows the body to shift into “rest and digest”, linked to rest and repair.

Seen through Nico’s lens, controra becomes more than culture. It becomes a regulation embedded in daily life. And somewhere on that path, I realised what I was responding to wasn’t escape, but the absence of demand. Just space.

What being alone taught me about rest

After the novelty of being alone wore off, I almost slipped back into old habits. I reached for my phone before I’d properly opened my eyes. I even hovered over calling my mom for the sixth time just to fill the silence (sorry, Mom).

​But there was nothing to interrupt in Furore. Unlike a wellness retreat - with its breathwork schedules, curated meals and structured stillness - there was no programme here. No version of rest I was being instructed to optimise. Instead, there were landscapes, coastlines, walking paths, and villages below. Nothing is packaged as transformative, but everything quietly offers space. And that was the difference. Not being guided into rest, but being left alone long enough to notice it.

Psychologists have long pointed to the restorative effect of natural environments, the idea that our brains recover more easily when attention is allowed to drift softly, rather than constantly directed or scheduled. Which, standing above the Amalfi coastline with nothing demanding my focus (and a faint, slightly absurd guilt for exactly that), suddenly made a lot of sense.

Psychologist Dr Tara Quinn-Cirillo points to this tension. “Many people experience guilt around resting. We are constantly expected to do more, be more, hold more.”

She describes travel as a “fire break”, a disruption to ingrained patterns that allows perspective to return. “When we are in new surroundings, we essentially can break the overwhelm and burnout loop. Also, learning new things, such as finding new places, learning about new cultures and routines, is good for our neuroplasticity.”

That feels especially relevant now, in a culture moving away from rigid wellness routines and structured, well-planned self-care, towards something looser. In Furore, that shift wasn’t abstract. It was practical. Not reaching for my phone felt uncomfortable. Letting discomfort settle instead of interrupting it, in the end, allowed me to feel more rested than I had ever before.

Final Thoughts

My relationship with burnout is complicated. My relationship with being alone, it turns out, is even more so.

Before this trip, I wouldn’t have said I struggled with solitude. I function quite well on my own. But in reality, I actually rarely stayed there for long. I was always reaching out - calling, messaging, filling space.

What I found in Furore wasn’t a curated version of “self-discovery”; I didn’t come back from my solo trip a different person, like the internet would have you believe. I found a break in everything familiar long enough to notice what was underneath it.

I had been treating rest like something to manage. To optimise. Something I “must” do correctly, and honestly, I thought the only way to achieve this was by splurging on the most promising retreat. But my nervous system wasn’t asking for that; It was asking for space. What Furore, Nice, and the Grand Hotel gave me wasn’t transformation. It was a pause long enough for nothing else to compete with my attention.

And what alone means to me now is simpler than I expected: not absence, not escape - but the first moment in which nothing else is asking anything of you. Even briefly.

MC UK'S SOLO TRAVEL ESSENTIALS