I am Ready to Join the Brave New World of Females Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks back, I received an email about a media tour I would not consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. Although I enjoyed those things, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. 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 retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have busy social lives, they have partners, 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 daring the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that couples are least likely to be in agreement on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick of taking teenagers to the world's marvels, just to watch them be on their phones and answer 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 stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this constantly, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.