I am Ready to Join the Brave New World of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks back, I got an message about a media tour I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder 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 amazing. 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 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 females. They have households, they have busy 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, biking, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be in agreement on in their interest. If anyone is also sick 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 father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I tease 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.