Bridget Ashton Libros

Much as we all love Hay-on-Wye’s bookshops, what was life like in Hay before they arrived?Bridget Ashton, a well-respected local historian, lived here as a child. In this compelling account, she sets out to recall, from the perspective of her girlhood self, what Hay was like in the 1940s and ’50s – with trains, a half-ruined castle, and a cinema (we all know what happened to that). ‘The Beeman’s family’ lived in Market Street, off Castle Square. How did they come to be here? What was family life like in those frugal times? This is the framework for a profound evocation of rural childhood in the post-war years.

Where were you in 1966? Most of Bridget's friends, in their early twenties, were settling down with jobs and/or husbands. She, on the other hand, was wandering the highways and byways of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia: behind the Iron Curtain.

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.