I'm Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks ago, I received an message 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 desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to think what that would actually be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be incredible. 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 TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding travel group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations 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 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 big into trekking, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely to be in agreement 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 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 reach this point. My father's wife, who is totally 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 often, 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.