I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks back, I got an email about a media tour I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if I enjoyed 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 actually be like: being somewhere different, 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 emerged they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated 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 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 trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that partners 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this constantly, 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.