Well-travelled professional male, late thirties (well, okay, early forties),
surprised to find himself back in the singles scene, just realised that the
liberating pleasures of eating pizza in underpants, watching near-limitless
televised sport and not having to spend another minute with dull relatives
are counterbalanced by one significant downside — who is going to go on
holiday with me? Who indeed?
When the chaps and chapesses with whom you shared countless free-and-easy
holidays are now daddies and mummies, with whom does the single sort fly
away? It’s scarcely a minority issue — the size of the single population
living in the UK has increased by a huge 50% in less than two decades. An
estimated 48% of the population are single. The sudden emergence of a
girl-shaped hole in my own duvet added to the statistical weight, and left
me wondering how to avoid single-room supplements, solo dinners and pitying
looks on my next jaunt overseas.
But how about making a virtue of necessity? What if, via an electronic short
cut, you could track down a travel companion while simultaneously engaging
in a little evaluation of the opposite sex? Don’t panic, we’re not about to
fumble into the nether regions of sex tourism, merely probing the
possibility of combining a destination with an assignation. Sort of put the
end within the means. All of which leads us to the world wide web.
The last thing that the fast-growing website www.companions2travel.co.uk
(slogan “New friends, new places”) would like to be seen as is a dating
site. Indeed, the many testimonials from the site’s members list not one
incidence of prospective travellers e-mailing each other, chatting on the
phone and unceremoniously booking a wedding chapel in Vegas, let alone a
room in one of the city’s numerous motels.
None of that, however, made the e-mailed nod and wink from the friend who
initially passed the site’s details to me any less painful. “They say it’s
just a platonic thing,” he sniggered, “but I’ve heard it’s a rampant hotbed
of singles eyeing each other up.” Clearly, married life had corrupted him
badly: he thought he’d discovered Easypickings.com.
Inwardly, I screamed: is this what modern social interaction has come to —
shopping online for the ultimate package deal? However, I quickly decided to
put my singular prejudices aside and, in the selfless interests of
professional investigation, signed up, so I could check out the talent.
Anyhow, they had an offer on, so it only cost a tenner.
As this section’s Confessions of a Tourist regularly attests, travel can be a
great aphrodisiac. It jumbles your chemistry, gets your juices fizzing.
Well, you can put that sort of nonsense out of your head right here, because
scrolling through the pages of C2T’s prospective travel partners is most
definitely not (the website’s owners may be glad to read) romantic foreplay.
“Travel is my most favourite thing,” chirped Ms Sarah Brown, a clerical
officer from Cleethorpes with, Lima be warned, designs on Peru.
“It is the people that maketh the country, methinks,” said Anna from
Birmingham. She wanted to go to Niagara Falls with someone; the temptation
to find a weak point in the safety railings would, I have to confess, be
just too much.
Dave (all names and details here are changed, except, unfortunately, mine) is
a 20- to 30-age-band accountant who kindly forewarns: “I’ve been known to
enjoy a few beers once in a while!!” Exclamation marks and emoticons lurk in
unexpected corners; they are nature’s way of saving you time and money.
At the last count, C2T’s membership had surged to nearly 8,000 potential
partners, but my initial anticipation of finding someone I would happily
tolerate as far as the check-in made me wonder if a sandwich board in the
departure lounge at Gatwick would be a quicker option.
According to the site’s rules, you can’t e-mail anyone to sound out their
travel aspirations before you’ve submitted your own “profile” to common
appraisal. You don’t have to be a paid-up member to cruise the members’
pages, but all e-mails are passed securely via the website’s server, so your
own personal e-mail is never (unless you voluntarily disclose it) revealed.
What should I say? Tell it like it is, I decided. “I work in the travel
industry and am often visiting far-flung (and not so distant) places as part
of my research. Given that I usually work alone, I spotted this site and
thought it would be interesting to take someone along, to make the miles
more interesting.”
Okay, aside from the sinister use of the word “interesting”, for intellectual
appeal, I sounded somewhere halfway between the Gideon Bible and the Corby
trouser press. But I didn’t want to drive them too crazy just yet, seeing as
so many applications would inevitably lead to heartbroken rejections.
I braced myself for the electronic flood. It was more of a trickle. Some were
easy to ignore, coming as they did from men. Others were... well, call me
shallow, but “pulse-slowing” would do it. Emily, unusually, had a picture on
her page, and looked hot enough to melt the bed in minutes. Our initial
e-mail exchange led, perhaps a little hastily, to a telephone conversation
in which I swore I could hear tumbleweed drifting between us. My pulse was
flatlining.
I was prepared to pull the plug and subscribe to Sky Sports when I met Amy.
Okay, “met” is a tenuous word when our dialogue was typed. But she made me
laugh at once, her incisive observations and succinct tips on how not only
to survive but to enjoy solo travel signalling someone who wasn’t looking
for a companion to complete her travels so much as to add to them. Just like
me, I heartily reassured myself. Our subsequent conversations were
tumbleweed-free, leading to the mutually agreed idea that we should meet for
a day, just to be sure.
Only a doe-eyed fool would strike on the idea of meeting in Clovelly, the only
place in England (unless you know better) with the word “love” subtly within
its name. But as a convenient midpoint between our homes, it seemed only
natural that our cars should nudge noses at the fishing village’s clifftop
car park.
I arrived early, my nerves hardly assuaged by the fact that my hairstyle,
within a minute of standing in the Devonshire breeze, was a scale model of
the county’s trademark coastal tree. We walked, we talked, we talked some
more and, to borrow an electronic term, clicked, swapping stories of luggage
lost in Lithuania (hers) and homicidal maniacs outsprinted in Caracas
(mine). When it came to teatime, a saunter down the slippery cobbles to the
New Inn’s cosy lounge seemed more than inviting.
“A table for two?” the woman asked us. “Of course,” laughed Amy. “Two is just
fine.” So far, we have yet to book the holiday, but we’re having fun looking
at the brochures.
Membership of www.companions2travel.co.uk
costs £25 for a full year. You can also look for solo travel companions at
www.thorntree.lonelyplanet.com
