I'm Prepared to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks ago, I got an message about a press trip I would not consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Even if I liked 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 think what that would really be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate 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 different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear 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 travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. 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 hiking, biking, paddling, all the things that couples are least likely to be in agreement on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick of dragging teenagers to the world's marvels, 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this often, 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.