I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks back, I received an message 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 nights. Even if I liked those things, I wouldn't have been eager 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. Clearly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it turned out they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have partners, 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 big into hiking, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of dragging teenagers to the world's marvels, 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 puzzle is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. 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 mock her for this constantly, 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.