I am Ready to Join the Brave New World of Women Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks back, I got an email about a media tour I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. 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 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 doctor and used to be a 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 entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings 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 daring 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 enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of taking teenagers to the wonders of the world, 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 reach this point. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this constantly, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.