I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks back, I received an message about a media tour I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I liked those things, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to wonder what that would actually 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 doctor and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. 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, kayaking, all the things that couples are least likely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick of taking 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 discreet to mention it.

The real puzzle 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 European 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 came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.