I am Ready to Join the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Holidaying Solo

A few weeks back, I got an message about a press trip I would not consider. It was overseas and it was about health, so it would have entailed a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Even if 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 think what that would actually 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 turned out they meant the other Zoe Williams, the one who is a doctor and used to be a Gladiator, and is extremely fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious 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 females. They have families, 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, cycling, paddling, all the things that partners are least likely to be in agreement 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 discreet to mention it.

The real puzzle is why it’s taken so long to reach this point. My father's wife, who is totally modern in every way, would get arrested before she’d go into a European restaurant on her own, and even though I mock her for this often, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even occurred to me to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.