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

A few weeks back, I got an message about a media tour I would not consider. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to think what that would really be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, they have hectic 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 daring 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 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this often, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.