I am Prepared to Join the Emerging Trend of Women Leaving Their Family – and Traveling Alone

A few weeks ago, 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. Although I enjoyed those activities, 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 actually be like: being somewhere new, without anyone to accommodate except myself, without anything to do except exactly what I wanted. Clearly, it would be incredible. So I said “yes” and it emerged they meant the different Zoe Williams, the one who is a physician and used to be a Gladiator, and is incredibly fit already, and yes, in retrospect, that should have been obvious all along.

So, without meaning to and without going anywhere, I've entered the fastest-growing travel group: the woman traveling alone, aged 45 to 60. One tour operator stated that nearly half (46%) of their bookings 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 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, biking, paddling, all the things that couples are least likely to be in agreement on in their interest. If anyone is also tired of taking teenagers to the world's marvels, just to watch them be on their phones and answer questions such as “how much longer do we have to be here?”, they are too discreet to mention it.

The real mystery is why it’s taken so long to get here. My stepmother, who is completely 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.