I'm Prepared to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would not countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have entailed a lot of exercise and early nights. Even if I enjoyed those things, I wouldn't have been eager 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 new, 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 turned out they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor 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 meaning to and without going anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, between 45 to 60. One travel company stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people travelling alone, and 70% of those are females. They have families, 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, biking, kayaking, all the things that partners are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. If anyone is also tired 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 discreet to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My stepmother, who is completely 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 occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.