I'm Ready to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would not consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would actually be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, 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 Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going 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 undertaking it alone. People are big into hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of dragging teenagers to the wonders of the world, just to watch them be on their phones and field questions such as “how much longer do we have to be here?”, they are too tactful to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock 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.