I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Females Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks ago, I received an message about a press trip I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, 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 amazing. 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 TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, they have busy social lives, they have spouses, 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 very interested in hiking, cycling, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. 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 detained 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 trace of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.