I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks ago, I got an message about a media tour I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if 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 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. Clearly, it would be incredible. 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 clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel demographic: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are females. They have households, they have hectic 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 very interested in hiking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples are least likely 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 discreet 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 Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this often, 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.