I'm Prepared to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Holidaying Solo

A few weeks ago, I got an email about a press trip I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to wonder what that would actually 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 other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel group: the female solo traveller, 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 women. They have families, they have busy 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 trekking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also sick 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 tactful to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to get here. My father's wife, who is completely modern in every way, would get arrested 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.