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I stepped into a cat's cradle of belts and buckles of the harness that have to be adjusted around the groin and middle. It’s not a great look. I shuffled closer to the precipice I was going to leap from, yet absurdly, in my hyper-adrenalized state, all I was thinking was, does my butt look big in this?
10 years earlier, that thought alone would have held me back—my self-consciousness would have prevented me from seeking out adventure or thrilling experiences. While that feeling had clearly not dissipated entirely, I focused on controlling my breathing and being in the moment.
It was a 350-foot drop, the longest abseil in the world. I could just about make out the white horses of the endless, wild Cape seaboard, with the smudge of Robben Island and Lions Head in my eyeline. Every fiber of my being wondered what had made me, at the sensible age of 54, sign up to abseil Cape Town’s Table Mountain? Vertigo is not just a fear of heights, but a compulsion to hurl yourself off. This was my chance to do something I had waited to do all my life.
I obeyed the command and counted down from five, leaning backwards into the blue void. I was attached to planet Earth with a single rope-and-pulley system. I took the final step, released the catch, and glided quite smoothly down the rock face, before a hitch from above suddenly jerked me upwards, dangling over the abyss. I tried to focus on what I could see, desperate to soak it all up—I spied a rock hyrax scampering across a ledge, the sun bouncing off Camps Bay.
Time loses all meaning when you’re hovering in space. I felt giddy and giggly. I hadn't expected a jump to stir up the sense of exhilaration that had eluded me since I was a teenager; the smile that couldn’t be wiped from my face. I thought to myself, this is the ultimate in liberation; this sense of untethering. It is a little like falling in love—you feel so alive your heart could burst out of your chest and expand to fill the entire horizon.
That day ignited a desire. In the ensuing months and years of travel, I committed to keep pushing the boundaries. I wanted to try new things, hone unfamiliar skills, or tease out hidden talents.
Apparently, I am not the only restless midlife soul on the block, according to Journeywoman, the world's first solo travel website and directory for women that makes an unofficial community of 150,000 like-minded female solo travelers over the age of 50. Its CEO and editor, Carolyn Ray, is a passionate advocate of living the life of your dreams. When she turned 50, she abandoned her own lucrative office job, sold up, and downsized, determined to make traveling an integral part of her life. She tells me that the pandemic galvanized women to rediscover adventure travel.
By Ray's definition, adventure travel is not just an extreme activity, but any experience that has cultural content and community at its heart. Increasingly, single women's travel over 50 incorporates adventure not as an indulgence, or another check on a bucket list, but as a means towards adding meaning and purpose to travelers' lives—adventure is an integral part of their evolution as women.
Dr. Laura Marshall Andrews is the author of What Seems To Be The Problem?, a memoir about her pioneering approach to medical care. She offers foraging, gardening, courses with horses, and even advances her holistic approach to wellbeing by launching Wild Your Health retreats in Kenya’s Mara later this year. She believes that while being in nature is always healing, good mental health is primarily about social connection.
Travel, says Andrews, is the perfect conduit for engaging with other people in different worlds. Traveling solo does not mean traveling lonely; “Women, when they become unencumbered by children under the roof, freed from the constraints of family care, develop a physically braver self and a sense of exploration as they age,” she says. To mark her own midlife crossroads, Laura will embark on a 478-mile trek through Maasailand to Tanzania to raise money for a village clinic; the embodiment of female empowerment in Nikes, a figurehead for the more intrepid, purposeful spirit of womankind.
As I approach age 60, I find myself hitting a new re-energized stride. I signed up for Mariella Frostrup’s menopause maintenance week with Yeotown Health Retreats, on which a formidable group of fellow female hikers step out across Madeira’s Levadas and skip up vertiginous granite summits. Intimidating strangers turned firm friends over the course of the trip—women whose careers ranged from renowned actresses, to the head of a TV channel, and a celebrated floral architect. They were the greatest takeaway of that period of extreme exercise and healthy living.
Deborah Calmeyer, of boutique safari company Roar Africa, which specializes in single women's travel over 50, claims her female clients go on safari above all to immerse themselves in the unknown and connect to other women’s life journeys. “Out of the Female Empowerment trips I organize, one guest made a film, three have been invited to give TED talks, books have been written, and career paths forged—but the friendships made were undoubtedly the priceless essence of the experience.”
Now, I cast aside the youthful pleasures of lying on a beach and basking in the sun. Instead, I look forward to cycling up the hairpins of Northern Greece’s remote mountain hinterland with The Slow Cyclist. I will take the time—literally—to smell the roses and the wild wisteria. I go deeper into the culture of the place with help from knowledgeable guides. I follow in the footsteps of author and historian, Jason Goodwin—a kind Pied Piper for women of a certain age, who will walk in his shadow over hill and dale and into little hidden church apses in Rome, Istanbul, or Guatemala. I don’t have to travel very far to get out of my comfort zone for that whiff of freedom. Bedding down beside a medieval fount in an old English church or under the stars in a cloister at Iford Manor with the British Pilgrimage Trust is exhilarating enough.
Author Nezrine Malik, one of my guiding lights and an editor on a Silk Road Slippers writing masterclass that I joined in Marrakech to celebrate my recent 60th birthday (much more rewarding than the stress of throwing a party), expresses it well: “Women, more so than men, tend, somewhere along the way, to have sacrificed or relegated a personal ambition to serve the interest of others. Whether it’s in order to support parents, partners, or children, there’s an accumulation of dreams paused or even emotions repressed.”
These sorts of collaborative, creative trips are not just about the activity, they are also ultimately about something much bigger: reconnecting with that sense of self before life and the needs of others got in the way. Each time I experience something new, I reconnect to the faint, fond memory of myself as the curious, energetic, seeking person that I know I am.
This article originally appeared on Condé Nast Traveller UK.
