I'm Ready to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Loved Ones – and Traveling Solo

A few weeks ago, I got an message about a media tour I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed 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 enjoyed them. But even as I was hitting delete, I started to think 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 amazing. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel group: the female solo traveller, between 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations 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 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 hiking, cycling, paddling, all the things that couples are least likely to be aligned on in their interest. 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. 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 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.