I am Ready to Join the Brave New World of Females Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks ago, I received an message about a media tour I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. Even if I enjoyed those activities, 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. Clearly, it would be amazing. 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 TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going 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 very interested in trekking, biking, paddling, all the things that partners are unlikely to be in agreement 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 arrested 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 vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.