I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Females Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Solo

A couple of weeks ago, I received an message about a media tour I would not consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I liked those things, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be amazing. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 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 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 daring the travel, the more people are undertaking it alone. People are very interested in hiking, biking, kayaking, all the things that partners are least likely to be aligned on in their interest. 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 discreet to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to get here. My father's wife, 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 occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.