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

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email about a press trip I would not countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I enjoyed those things, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to wonder 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 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 retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have families, 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 doing it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that couples are least likely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of taking 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 puzzle is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, 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.