I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks ago, I got an message about a media tour I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Although I liked those things, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, 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 turned out they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, 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 stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. They have households, they have busy 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 undertaking it alone. People are big into trekking, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are least likely 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 mystery 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 constantly, I must have had a trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.