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

A few weeks ago, I got an email about a media tour I would never consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I enjoyed those things, 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 actually be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged 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 hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have spouses, 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 doing it alone. People are big into trekking, biking, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be in agreement on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of taking 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 tactful to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My father's wife, who is totally modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I tease her for this often, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.