I'm Prepared to Join the Emerging Trend of Women Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Although I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would really 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 clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are females. They have households, they have busy social lives, they have partners, 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 daring the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into hiking, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are least likely to be in agreement 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 discreet to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to get here. 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 often, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.