I am Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Solo

A couple of weeks ago, I received an message about a media tour I would never countenance. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of exercise and early nights. Although I enjoyed those activities, I wouldn't have been desperate to spend a week with other people who liked them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to wonder what that would really be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate 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 Gladiator, and is incredibly 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 female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator reported that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling 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 doing it alone. People are big into trekking, cycling, paddling, all the things that partners are least likely to be in agreement on in their interest. If anyone is also sick 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 puzzle is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is totally modern in every way, would get detained 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 trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.