I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Brave New World of Women Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email about a media tour I would not consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early bedtimes. 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 different, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be amazing. 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 incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel demographic: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have households, they have hectic social lives, they have spouses, 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 doing it alone. People are big into trekking, biking, kayaking, all the things that partners are least likely to be in agreement 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 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 get here. My stepmother, 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 trace of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.