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

A couple of 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 involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. Even if I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, 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. 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 TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have spouses, their world is absolutely full 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, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are least likely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick 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 stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this constantly, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.