The Rise Of The Solo Female Traveller

As she set off alone to travel the Scottish Isles in 2016, Rolly Law couldn’t quite believe what she was doing. Like many women of her generation, the self-confessed “’fraidy cat” had married young and devoted the ensuing decades to her family, her teaching career and the family farm. Overseas travel had never been on the agenda.

“If someone had said to me, even a decade ago, ‘Why don’t you go to France alone for the school holidays?’, I would have thought, ‘What? How? Why?’,” Rolly, now 64, admits, “It’s just not something I would have ever considered.” But when she was widowed five years ago, Rolly began to make up for lost time. A trip to Italy with her daughter was followed quickly by a study tour of France with a friend. The world, once a huge and daunting labyrinth, now seemed imminently navigable. Before she knew it, Rolly was booking solo trips to Scotland, then Iran. “I discovered that I actually can do this,’ she says, “And this is great!”