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

A few weeks ago, I received an email about a media tour I would never countenance. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Even if I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere different, 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 hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, 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 women. 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 adventurous the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples are least likely 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 get here. My stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get detained 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 vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.