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

A few weeks ago, I got an message about a press trip I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Although I liked those things, 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 accommodate 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 different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely 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 group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have households, they have busy 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 daring the travel, the more people are undertaking it alone. People are big into hiking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples are unlikely to be in agreement 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested 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.