I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks back, I received an message about a press trip I would not countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have involved 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 hitting delete, I started to think what that would actually be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please 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 different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. 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 undertaking it alone. People are very interested in trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their interest. If anyone is also sick 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 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 European restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this constantly, 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.