I'm Ready to Join the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A couple of weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would not countenance. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. 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 deleting it, I started to think what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly 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 woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are females. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have partners, 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 adventurous the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are least likely to be aligned 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 answer 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 reach this point. 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 often, 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.