I'm Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I enjoyed those things, 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 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 physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, aged 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 households, they have hectic 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 adventurous 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 in agreement on in their interest. If anyone is also tired of taking 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 discreet to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, 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 often, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.