I'm Prepared to Join the Brave New World of Women Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Solo

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email about a media tour I would never countenance. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early nights. Even if I enjoyed those things, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to think what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, 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 adventurous the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are big into hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My father's wife, who is completely 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.