I am Ready to Join the Brave New World of Women Vacationing Without Their Family – and Holidaying Alone

A couple of weeks back, I received an message about a media tour I would never consider. It was long haul and it was about fitness, so it would have involved a lot of physical activity and early bedtimes. Although I liked those activities, I wouldn't have been eager to spend a week with other people who enjoyed them. But even as I was deleting it, I started to think what that would really be like: being somewhere different, without anyone to accommodate 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 doctor and used to be a TV Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in hindsight, that should have been clear all along.

So, without meaning to and without traveling anywhere, I've arrived in the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, between 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 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 undertaking it alone. People are very interested in trekking, cycling, kayaking, all the things that couples are unlikely to be aligned on in their enthusiasm. 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 tease her for this often, I must have had a vestige of it myself, to be this old before it even came to mind to travel solo. Now I just have to go somewhere.