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

A couple of weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would not consider. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Although 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 deleting it, 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 different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator 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 doing it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are least likely 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 answer 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 father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock 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.