I am Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks ago, I received an email about a media tour I would never countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I enjoyed those things, 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 wonder what that would actually be like: being somewhere new, 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 emerged they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the woman traveling alone, 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 hectic social lives, they have partners, 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 doing it alone. People are big into trekking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be in agreement on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick 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 stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get detained 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 trace of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.