A Sunday of Your Own: The Art of Travelling at Your Pace

Imagine a Sunday away with one appealing possibility ahead of you, whether a small exhibition, a path you would like to follow or a table by the window where you could sit longer before deciding what comes next.

For a woman accustomed to arranging, anticipating and keeping things moving, that can be an unfamiliar freedom, offering a day with enough shape to feel inviting without needing the experience to become a story before you have enjoyed it.

Give pleasure a place in the plan

The language of achievement can travel with you into a holiday, until a walk must count towards a distance, a book must teach you something and an afternoon becomes valuable for its supposed effect on your future productivity.

In a 2021 paper on beliefs about leisure, Gabriela Tonietto and colleagues found an association between viewing leisure as wasteful and enjoying it less, while experiments showed that prompting this belief could reduce enjoyment of activities pursued for their own sake.

Although those studies concerned particular everyday activities rather than a prescription for travel, they offer a useful question about whether you would still choose a second hour in a garden, a swim or an afternoon film purely for its pleasure.

Your answer can give a personal preference enough weight to influence the day, leaving room to take enjoyment seriously without asking an ordinary holiday moment to demonstrate a more impressive purpose.

Try a loose shape for the day

Keep the arrangements that matter, including a train departure, a restaurant reservation or opening hours somewhere you hope to visit, while experimenting with leaving the sequence of smaller pleasures around them undecided.

In their research on the calendar mindset, Tonietto and Selin Malkoc found that precise scheduling could make leisure feel more like work and reduce enjoyment, whereas rough scheduling without specified times did not show the same effect.

For a traveller, writing “the exhibition after breakfast” instead of assigning every hour can make room for a conversation or a change in the light to influence what follows, once genuinely necessary bookings have been checked.

This remains an experiment in your preferences rather than a rule for spending time well, with room to discover that more structure makes a particular day easier or more appealing to you.

Allow one chosen thing to be enough

An entirely empty day may feel as demanding as a full one when you are somewhere unfamiliar, particularly if the freedom to choose leaves you spending much of the afternoon wondering what to do next.

A 2021 study by Marissa Sharif, Cassie Mogilner and Hal Hershfield found that more discretionary time did not continually correspond with greater subjective well-being, with findings depending partly on how time was spent.

Because that research concerned daily life and experimental scenarios, it does not establish an ideal number of free holiday hours, although one chosen visit, meal or easy walk may offer a centre around which to leave time available.

Make attention a choice, too

Photographs, messages home and a map in your pocket can all have a place in the day, whether you prefer sharing pictures in the evening, leaving an afternoon unrecorded or enjoying a message to a friend as part of it.

Travelling alone creates room to notice those preferences and change your mind without negotiating someone else's disappointment, while a guided visit, shared lunch or conversation with your host can provide company when it appeals.

Our reflection on being haunted by hurry explores what happens when pace becomes habitual, while the art of arriving slowly considers how different choices can begin with the first evening of a stay.

A Sunday of your own can be quiet, sociable, active or wonderfully ordinary, allowing the things you enjoy to shape the hours as you discover which balance of freedom and intention feels right.

If you would like to explore a stay with room for the kind of Sunday you enjoy and the pace you prefer, write to hello@sunday-stories.com.