I'm Prepared to Join the Brave New World of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Solo

A few weeks ago, I received an message about a media tour I would not countenance. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if 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 wonder 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 other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV 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 arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: 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 females. They have households, 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 adventurous the travel, the more people are undertaking it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely 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 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 European 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.