Hit the Road, Gals: Book Review

With a "sat nav app" on the smart phone in our pocket we can instantly plan a route to anywhere in the world. The same phone can book our flight, our ferry, our hire car, our hotel room in minutes ... and allows us to keep in touch with loved ones at home while we travel. We are seconds away from being able to speak to, or even video call our nearest and dearest, 24 hours a day.

 Hit the road, gals!  by Bridget Ashton (The Book Guild, 2024) is a wonderful book that transports us back in time to the very different world of the 1960s. Bridget (who many will know by her married name of Gubbins) writes beautifully about a time when spontaneous, domestic road trips with friends depended on road maps and chance, and when other international (less spontaneous) trips were planned using atlases and involved luck, tenacity, determination, the kindness of strangers and sometimes a refreshing naivety and innocence. This book follows Bridget and a group of friends on their many adventures and we get to know the personalities of these fearless young women and even about their love interests (and disinterests).

As an all-year-round cold-water swimmer up here in Northumberland, I loved the recollections of skinny dipping in the sea after a night of dancing at ‘The Rex’ in Whitley Bay on New Year’s Eve.  Reading the book, we become attached to this group of free spirits, and I felt a sense of sadness when their adventures came to an end. Modern technology has made the world a smaller, more accessible and convenient place. However, this book reminds us that for those of us with a lust for life, a taste for the unexpected and a spirit of discovery and adventure, it is still possible to leave our smart phones at home and to be steered by friendships, maps, whims and chance when we ‘hit the road’.  

                    Lyndsay Robinson