I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early nights. Although I liked those activities, 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 think what that would actually be like: being somewhere different, 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 Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company 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 spouses, 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 big into hiking, biking, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be in agreement on in their interest. If anyone is also tired of dragging teenagers to the world's marvels, 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 father's wife, 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 mock 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.