I'm Prepared to Join the Emerging Trend of Females Vacationing Without Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks back, I received an message about a media tour I would not countenance. It was long haul and it was about health, so it would have involved a lot of exercise and early nights. 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 really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to please except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Plainly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without traveling anywhere, I've entered the most rapidly expanding travel demographic: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are women. 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 daring the travel, the more people are doing it alone. People are very interested in hiking, biking, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely 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 mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My father's wife, 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 tease 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.