I am Prepared to Become Part of the Emerging Trend of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A few weeks back, I received an email about a press trip I would never countenance. It was overseas and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I liked those things, I wouldn't have been eager 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 TV Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without intending to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the female solo traveller, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their reservations are now people going alone, and 70% of those are women. They have families, they have hectic social lives, they have partners, 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 undertaking it alone. People are very interested in hiking, cycling, paddling, all the things that partners 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 reach this point. My stepmother, 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 mock her for this constantly, 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.