I am Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Holidaying Solo

A few weeks ago, I got an message about a media tour I would not consider. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Although I enjoyed those things, 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 wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be incredible. 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 hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the most rapidly expanding travel group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company reported that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, 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 doing it alone. People are very interested in trekking, biking, paddling, all the things that partners are least likely to be in agreement on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired of dragging 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 get here. My stepmother, 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 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.