I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Females Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks ago, I received an message about a media tour I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of exercise 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 deleting it, I started to think 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 incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, 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 adventurous the travel, the more people are undertaking it alone. People are big into trekking, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of dragging teenagers to the world's marvels, just to watch them be on their phones and field 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 father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this often, 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.