Hit the Road, Gals

Description

Travel back in time to the vibrant 1960s, and join Bridget and her friends, students at the Hereford College of Education, as they dare to defy convention and hitchhike their way through an era of change.

Armed with sixpenny Esso road maps and thumbing rides from friendly lorry drivers, they journey through Wales, Scotland and onwards to London. Venturing abroad, they find themselves enchanted by the romance of France, navigate Spanish landscapes fraught with both beauty and danger, fend off proposals of marriage on the back of a lorry travelling through the Atlas Mountains, and revel in the soul-stirring folk music of Ireland.

Hit the Road, Gals captures a time when the roads were open, the spirits were free and a group of daring young women carved their own path through a world in transition.

Bridget Ashton is an explorer, mother, writer and photographer. Growing up in the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye, her family migrated to Northumberland in 1955. While at college in 1960s Hereford, she learned how to travel with only pennies in her pocket and in 1966 she spent a year hitchhiking behind the Iron Curtain. Later, she and her American husband brought up four children in Northumberland, where they still live.