I am Prepared to Join the Brave New World of Females Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email about a press trip I would never countenance. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. Although I liked 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 really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please 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 different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the woman traveling alone, 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 females. They have families, they have busy 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 adventurous the travel, the more people are undertaking it alone. People are very interested in trekking, biking, kayaking, all the things that partners are least likely to be in agreement 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 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 reach this point. My father's wife, who is totally modern in every way, would get arrested 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.