I am Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if I liked those things, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to think what that would actually be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator 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 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 trekking, biking, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick of dragging 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 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 tease her for this constantly, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.