I am Ready to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks back, I got an email about a press trip I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if I enjoyed those things, I wouldn't have been desperate 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 please 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 arrived in the fastest-growing travel demographic: 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 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 daring the travel, the more people are undertaking it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are least likely to be aligned on in their interest. 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 tactful to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, who is completely modern in every way, would get detained before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this constantly, 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.