I'm Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email about a media tour I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Although I enjoyed those things, 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 actually be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. 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 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 most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have spouses, their world is absolutely full 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 very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick 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 tactful to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is completely 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.