I am Ready to Become Part of the Brave New World of Females Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks back, I got an email about a media tour I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early nights. Even if I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager 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 different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. They have families, they have hectic 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 partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their interest. If anyone is also sick of dragging 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 puzzle is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested 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.