5 Tips for Females Travelling Solo

Rabbie
Posted on 25 Aug 2023

Solo female travel can be empowering, liberating, and bring independence to the explorer. But not without its initial hurdles. As safety is the top consideration for women to think about while exploring new territories alone, you’ll want to plan your trip well before embarking. That’s where we can help. With years of experience within our team, travelling as solo females, we have curated our ultimate guide, which may include factors you hadn’t even considered yet. All that's left to do is say yes to the experiences solo travelling can bring you.

Table of Contents:

• 3 Tips to Staying Safe as a Solo Female Traveller
• Our 5 Steps to Travelling as a Solo Female

3 Tips to Staying Safe as a Solo Female Traveller

Touring as a solo traveller can bring a rich, new perspective to life which you may not have experienced otherwise. But if you’re a female exploring alone, we must talk about safety. Here we explore our 3 solo travel tips for staying safe while alone.

General Safety

Whether you're a frequent traveller or you’re planning a solo trip for the first time, general safety considerations include:

• Keep your documents safe: Passport, insurance, flight details, all important documents you don’t want to misplace. Keeping them safe in a secure folder helps to reduce the risk of them falling out of your bag, or worse, preventing others around you from taking them under your nose.
• Email / photocopy important documents: Along the same premise as keeping your important documents safe, it's always best to email yourself, and a loved one, a copy. Just to be on the safe side.
• Keep technology fully charged: A phone without battery is not very useful when travelling solo. Our advice? Invest in a reliable power bank. Not only are these extremely portable, but they also help to keep your phone charged while using map and GPS apps.

Staying Safe While Meeting New People

Meeting like-minded travellers is all part of the solo female travel experience. However, a certain level of caution should be taken.

• Follow your intuition: They call your gut your second brain for a reason. If a situation doesn’t feel right to you, leave when you can. Whether it’s someone acting strange or a certain place feels a little off, listen to your instincts.
• Don’t say you're alone: Another way to stay safe as a solo female traveller, is not to say you’re alone when first meeting someone new. This can instantly make you a target as they know no one is around to help. Instead, always indicate you’re waiting for someone or a friend is coming to join.
• Be polite, but firm, when saying no: Saying no doesn’t have to be rude, instead you’re setting boundaries, which is very important as a woman travelling alone.

Another top tip - researching the best solo travel destinations prior to your trip can also help ease your worry of being alone as a woman. Feeling comfortable to explore a new country by yourself should be a luxury everyone gets to experience.

Staying Safe While on Public Transport

At some point when travelling alone, you’ll turn to a means of public transport, whether a bus, train, or even flight. But what considerations should you think about?

• Don’t leave luggage unattended: You’ll hear this called several times over the destination's intercom, but leaving luggage unattended, even for a second, can make you a target for thieves. As annoying as it might seem, always take your bags with you.
• Lock luggage: It's always a good idea to invest in a small padlock for your case and/or backpack while travelling alone, as it can provide the reassurance you need, that no one but you can access your valuables.
• Avoid empty carriages / platforms: Being a woman alone can already set you up as a target, so to increase your safety, wait for your transport near other groups of people and/or near the supervising staff within the station.

While this handful of tips for solo female travellers may seem extreme, we’d rather prepare you and you don’t have to use them, rather than being unprepared and left vulnerable.

To discover more about the transportation systems in the UK, we have a guide for England’s train stations and Scotland’s train stations.

Our 5 Steps to Travelling as a Solo Female

With safety considerations securely locked into your thoughts, now comes the fun part. Planning your journey to the best solo female travel destinations. Having experienced the process ourselves, we’re confident that our five top considerations may also provide useful information to you. Let's begin!

Research, Research, Research

While being spontaneous is fun, and sometimes a necessity with solo travelling, researching your trip is always wise. Not only can it get you excited about the places you’re going to and the cultures you get to experience, it can help determine which locations are the safest for women travelling on their own.

You may also have to think about having the right documents to enter each country. For example, our guide to solo travelling Europe outlines different countries you may want to consider visiting, but prior to booking double check the visa requirements. The same goes for solo travelling the UK. We’d hate for you to miss out on your favourite Outlander tour, just because you hadn’t researched prior to your trip.

Consider the Country's Cultural Differences

Alongside researching which destinations you want to visit as a solo woman traveller, considering the cultural differences is important. For example, visiting Scotland could be a completely different experience to touring Italy. Being prepared for anything can help ease your worry and allow you to enjoy your solo travels as a woman. Things you may want to be aware of include:

• Covering up certain body parts (head, shoulders, knees etc)
• Removing footwear before entering a building
• Understanding different communication styles / authority
• Tipping culture

Reassure Your Loved Ones

Staying connected and reassuring loved ones while on your solo female trip may be one of the best pieces of advice we could give. Yes, they will worry about you, even if you call every night. It's only natural. Whichever countries you choose to explore, you can easily purchase a local SIM card or portable WiFi hotspots to keep in touch with home. Is a European country first on your list? Discover what other tips you need to know before visiting Europe this year.

Don’t Overpack

From our experience, nine out of ten times, the items you pack and squeeze into your luggage will never see the light of day. It will get to the point on your solo female trip where you end up wearing the same outfit multiple days in a row. But you don’t care. You're having the adventure of a lifetime. Our best tips to avoid overpacking are:

• Have a checklist
• Put together outfits you could wear before you pack (bonus points if you can create multiple outfits from one item)
• Pack just one or two good (and comfortable) pairs of shoes
• Remember that while you’re away, there’s a high probability that you will buy additional items that you will have to fit into your luggage.
   

Stay Open to Being Flexible with Your Trip

Yes, we know we said researching and planning ahead is key before your solo trip, but an element of flexibility is also needed. Imagine this. You stop in your travel accommodation for a few nights and get to know a group of other travellers fairly well and they say “hey why don’t you join us in coming to…” Are you not going to go because you’ve got a rigid plan in place? No, you’d be curious to travel with them. And that can be the beauty of female solo travel, you don’t know who you’ll meet or where you may end up. But isn’t it exciting?

Prepare for Your Upcoming Alone Travels

Now feeling prepared to take on your solo female travel adventure? Great. Why not ease yourself into it by booking one of our small-group tours? You get to meet like-minded travellers while exploring the UK and Europe, all with the reassurance of a friendly, knowledgeable driver-guide. Where will you conquer first?