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

A couple of weeks back, I got an message about a media tour I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have entailed 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 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 accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. So I said “yes” and it turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have partners, 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 undertaking it alone. People are very interested in trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of taking 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 totally modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a Belgian restaurant on her own, and even though I mock 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.