I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Alone

A couple of weeks ago, I received an message about a press trip I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if I liked those things, 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 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 physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator reported 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 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 big into trekking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely to be in agreement on in their interest. 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 completely modern in every way, would get detained 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 trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.