I'm Ready to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks back, I got an message about a media tour I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. 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 really 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 turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor 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 traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have families, 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 undertaking it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be in agreement on in their interest. 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 totally 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 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.