I am Prepared to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks ago, I received an message about a media tour I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have involved 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 liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, 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 turned out they meant the other 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 clear all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, 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 big into trekking, biking, 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 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 discreet to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. 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 mock her for this constantly, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.