I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks ago, I got an email about a press trip I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. 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. Plainly, it would be amazing. 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 Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, they have busy 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 daring the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into trekking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick 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 tactful 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 arrested before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I tease 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.