I became a midlife solo traveller as a mother of three

I remember the first time I got on a plane after having my first child, who was then about one. It was 2010, and we were off to a wedding in Barcelona. I was nervous about leaving my son, but giddy with excitement at the thought of an uninterrupted conversation and a lie in. A weekend of drinking and dancing in the glorious Spanish sunshine whizzed by. I returned, hungover, but greatly revived from the change of scene.

Two more children followed and most of the following decade was taken up with nappies and night feeds or spent in (shudder) soft-play centres or on school runs. But if my thirties were all about the children, most of my late teens and twenties revolved around my travels.

I probably took more than a dozen memorable trips pre-kids. They included a visit to the glorious Plettenberg Bay after falling in love with a South African during my first week at university; an Amtrak rail journey from Vermont to Virginia after graduating (with an ex who everyone said looked like Elvis); a solo adventure to New Zealand via Sydney and Singapore, on which I discovered I was probably the worst waitress in the Southern Hemisphere.

I visited ancient ruins in Italy, Greece and Tunisia and took countless excursions in Europe – from the touristy (the Venice Biennale art exhibition) to the gritty (seeing the horror of Auschwitz firsthand).

So, I’d be lying if I said that, in my thirties, I never felt a pang of envy for my child-free friends who were travelling extensively, or living abroad.

Women make up 71 per cent of solo travellers, according to a trends report from luxury travel agent network Virtuoso. Many guided tour operators seem to appeal to those in, or close to, retirement, while backpacking is still beloved by teenagers and 20-somethings.

However, research by Abta, the travel association, found that the biggest year on year increase in solo trips in the 12 months to August 2023 was among those aged 35–44, where solo traveller numbers more than doubled. Companies such as Flash Pack, G Adventures and Intrepid are part of the industry attracting solo travellers in the thirties, forties and fifties. The surge in solo travel helped to reignite my wanderlust.

After having three kids in five years (it seemed like a good idea at the time), I had pressed pause on my more extensive travels and it wasn’t until I turned forty that I started to travel again. Instead of having a big party, I went to New York with a girlfriend and spent my fortieth birthday walking the Highline, eating a chopped salad in Chelsea Market and walking around the profoundly moving Ground Zero. Next, I took a trip to Chamonix for a woman’s retreat, then to Malta to celebrate a friend’s fortieth.

The fact my youngest is now 10 and my husband (one silver lining from the pandemic) is able to work from home more has given me a new-found sense of freedom and flexibility. I decided I really wanted to make the most of it, so I pledged to make travel a priority. I never like to be away for more than a week at a time though, and usually FaceTime the children a few times while I’m gone.

In the last year, I’ve been fortunate to visit eight countries: the US, Barbados, the Maldives, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Denmark and France.

More than half of these trips were work related and (lucky me) child-free but several, including visiting the marvellous Lego House in Denmark, a family holiday in Turkey and a trip to the first certified autism-friendly city in the US – with my middle one, who is autistic, and my 80-year-old dad – had more of a family focus.

While the novelty of hopping on a plane without having to pack for my kids and plan things around them still hasn’t worn off, I really enjoy taking them along, too, now that they are a bit older.

Some of the highlights from 2024 include navigating the sloping streets of San Francisco in a self-driving robocar with my 12-year-old and taking in the rocky canyons and breath-taking scenery of Sequoia National Park in California (not, I hasten to add, in a robocar) with my son and dad in tow.

Seeing all three of my children – Charlie, 15, Eddie, 12 and Jemima, 10 – enjoy the playground in the sky in the Lego House in Denmark, which looks as though it’s built from actual Lego bricks; jumping off the boat and swimming in the Aegean Sea in the bucolic Butterfly Valley in Turkey, and looking joyful as we walked through the gates of Disneyland Paris – are memories I will always treasure.

The solo trips I’ve taken are equally memorable, but in a different way. It’s a selfish kind of pleasure, which I probably appreciate even more since becoming a mum – free time I’ve squandered, which I will treasure for many years to come.

Gazing out along the platoon on a little island in the Maldives to find a school of dolphins swimming below, a submarine trip 100 feet under the sea with the turtles in Barbados and riding one of the legendary Lusitano horses across the hills of Lisbon will be the sort of snapshots I’ll cherish when I’m sitting in my armchair, looking back on the edited highlights of my life.

I’m able to soak up and appreciate these new places all the more when I’m not chasing around after the children and dealing with their day-to-day needs.

Yet one thing I have learned about from the last year of travel is all the bits you don’t see on social media or in holiday snaps. So much of it revolves around airport queues, visas and working out exchange rates. You never see pictures of passport or security queues amid the sunsets and beaches, do you? Or pictures of people panicking about how long it takes to get to the right gate and arriving at the airport to be told they need to have a visa.

I’ve also been stung a few times by low-cost airlines’ prescriptive luggage requirements and packing too many books, as I always seem to overestimate how much time I’ll have to read. No one will be surprised to learn, either, that travelling through airports solo is considerably easier than navigating them with three kids in tow.

And, perhaps most importantly, I’ve learnt that all though nothing beats the feeling of going somewhere for the first time, there really is, as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz says, no place like home.

I hope I have encouraged a love of travel in my kids, who have been blessed with Irish passports, for the years to come. And I hope, in this age of helicopter parenting, I’ve helped to show them that the big wide world is meant to be embraced, not feared.