I am Prepared to Become Part of 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 consider. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. Although I enjoyed those things, 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 new, without anyone to accommodate 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 physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. 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 undertaking it alone. People are big into hiking, biking, paddling, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of dragging 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 discreet to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My father's wife, 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 mock 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.