I am Ready to Join the Brave New World of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks ago, I got an email about a press trip I would never countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to think what that would actually be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have households, they have busy social lives, they have spouses, their world is absolutely lousy with people they could go on holiday with – and that’s why they (we) need a holiday on their own.

The more adventurous the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are very interested in hiking, biking, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their interest. If anyone is also tired of taking teenagers to the wonders of the world, just to watch them be on their phones and answer questions such as “how much longer do we have to be here?”, they are too discreet to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this constantly, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.