Travel Weekly Mature Travel Lunch: Author Kathy Lette was guest speaker at an event supported by
Kathy Lette: ‘Women my age have money, time and a huge appetite for new experiences’
‘We want adventure before de M
ature travellers want to experience “adventure before dementia” as the
sector craves more active holidays as opposed to fly and flop, according to Kathy Lete. Te Australian author, who
penned the novels Puberty Blues, Mad Cows and How to Kill your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints) championed the joys mature women can experience while travelling. She said: “In all of my novels,
and everything I write, I always champion women because it’s still a man’s world. It’s been 100 years since Emmeline Pankhurst led the suffragete movement and we still don’t have equal pay, we’re still geting concussion hiting our head on the glass ceiling – and we’re supposed to clean it while we’re up there. “I’ve just turned 60, and at this
big birthday milestone my bucket list is longer than War and Peace, and if I don’t start having adventures, fun and
16 14 NOVEMBER 2019
I’ve just turned 60, and at this big birthday milestone my bucket list is longer than War and Peace
mischief now, then when? I imagine a Zimmer frame could seriously cramp a girl’s style on the black ski run.” Lete said some people say the
name of over-50s specialist Saga stands for ‘Send A Granny Away’, but was quick to add that she and her peers are in “granny age” and were “not old and decrepit.” “For my grandma’s generation
and my mother’s generation, turning 60 was practically a death knell, it signalled time to retire, collect your bus pass and disappear into a beige fog of doily kniting and jam making, a case of send in the crones,” she said. “We have talked a lot about the older market and talking down to
them, but they are my age. Tey are feisty, funny, flirty and dirty. “We 60-year-old women have not
passed our use-by date. Instead of thinking about all the things I should stop doing, I can’t stop thinking about all the things I haven’t done – skydiving, bungee jumping, wing walking, mud wrestling and walking on the moon.” Lete suggested that mature
women “don’t want a chequered past,
Kathy Lette
we want a chequered present”. She added: “Te UK population is
top heavy with older people. We are in the middle of a middle-aged revolution. Eventually, the sheer fact of wealth being concentrated in the older age bracket will mean that advertisers, businesses and the world-at-large will have to shiſt from the veneration and adoration of youth to appreciate the fiscal punch of thriving sexagenarians. “A survey I saw discovered that
87% of solo travellers are women and not all of them are single. Some are in a partnership, but they don’t share the same passion for travel; basically, women my age are allowing that ageing angst to fly under the anxiety radar. Tey have money, time and a huge appetite for new experiences. Either on top of Mount Kilimanjaro or under a stud muffin at a whipped cream orgy in Copenhagen.” Lete said many people in her
generation believe “age is completely irrelevant”, and said: “I travel with my girlfriends a lot. I just did a cycling
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