60 years ago a woman travelled alone – finding a husband along the way

 In 1966, 21-year-old Bridget Ashton was fresh out of teacher-training college. ‘What was expected of us in those days was that we would get a job in a school,’ she says.

‘And then, of course, you were supposed to maintain your purity until you met some handsome young man who loved you enough to marry you.’

Yet Ashton had other ideas: ‘Adventure was more interesting to me than being a schoolteacher. This was the 1960s, not long after Jack Kerouac’s On the Road had been published, and travel was very fashionable.’

The plan she was hatching would introduce her to a very different life indeed. Over the next year or so, she would hitchhike behind the Iron Curtain – through what were then the Soviet Bloc countries of East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. 

Along the way, she would encounter armed police and military dogs; landscapes she’d never dreamed of; and a love story far more romantic than anything happening back home. She funded her travels by writing articles for the Newcastle Journal, and her diaries have now enabled her to document the trip in a memoir, Cold War, Warm Hearts.

It first occurred to Ashton that she’d like to see this (then almost forbidden) part of the world when she met a handsome Polish American in Hereford, where she was attending college. 

‘I thought, ‘Maybe Polish boys are all like him’ – my motivation was about as deep as that. I was very naive. I’d got a Teach Yourself Polish book from the library, and that was as far as my education went.’

She did understand, however, that British people were scared of all things Communist: ‘We remembered the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when Soviet tanks had crushed an uprising in Hungary, and nearly a quarter of a million people had fled the country.’

Ashton entered the Soviet Bloc via the border between West and East Germany, where she waited several hours and was questioned. ‘Visitors like me are tolerated, but it is difficult and unpleasant to enter,’ she writes in her memoir. 

She funded her travels by writing articles for the Newcastle Journal, and her diaries have now enabled her to document the trip in a memoir, Cold War, Warm Hearts. Pictured: Bridget in remote Czechoslovakia

Eventually she reached Berlin, and from there caught a train to Poland. Over the next few months she was fascinated by what she saw, particularly in rural areas. ‘In the hills, people still wore traditional costumes, and there was horse traffic. 

You’d go inside the churches, and the local women had created wonderful weavings and tapestries.’ In Yugoslavia, she remembers being stunned by the sight of the Golubac Fortress on the Danube River: ‘It was so spectacular, and the area hadn’t been developed at all. You had to roam over miles of brown hills to get there.’

Hitchhiking was not without its risks, even in those days, she says. ‘Occasionally, men would try it on. But virtually always, if you resisted and were polite and firm, you didn’t get trouble.’ She was never worried about being robbed, either. ‘People are mostly honest. Also, there was such a fear of the police in those countries. You wouldn’t do illegal things.’

In an era before easy access to international calls, she relied on letters sent to the nearest youth hostel to keep in touch with people at home: ‘I think the biggest risk was that people didn’t always know where I was.’

Bridget continued her travels, to Romania and Bulgaria, but she and Bill kept in touch – she returned repeatedly to Munich, where he was working. Bridget (centre) meets a family in lowland Romania

That was probably a blessing in April 1967 – having travelled to Czechoslovakia, Ashton had made friends with Petar, whose parents owned the youth hostel. ‘I could see the dome of a sweet little church sticking out from the trees – but the next morning, it wasn’t there.’ The pair decided to go and investigate.

As it turned out, the church had been blown up overnight – it was in a military zone. The young people inspecting the rubble soon attracted attention. ‘Along came two soldiers with machine guns and a big Alsatian dog,’ recalls Ashton. ‘We were put in a jeep and blindfolded, with this dog panting in our ears.’

They were driven to another location, where they had to walk along a line of armed soldiers. After they’d been held in a room for a few hours, mercifully a lieutenant realised that the inquisitive explorers ‘were just silly kids’. They were blindfolded again, driven back to the edge of the military zone and released.

Ashton’s fearless optimism got her into other predicaments. ‘In Czechoslovakia, I decided to buy a tent and sleep in the forest,’ she recalls. ‘But once it got dark I was scared – I knew there were bears and wolves around.

‘In the morning I got on to the road to hitchhike, and a car stopped, but I couldn’t speak – my jaw had frozen.’ Thankfully, the driver and his wife took Ashton home and let her thaw out. (‘It was the first bath I’d had since the previous autumn.’)

Did she ever regret any of it? ‘No!’ she says. ‘But I did get homesick sometimes.’ Luckily, at a hostel in Munich, in May 1967, she met somebody who would turn out to be very special: Bill, a young American who had come over on a cargo boat to see Europe.

Ashton continued her travels, to Romania and Bulgaria, but she and Bill kept in touch – she returned repeatedly to Munich, where he was working. ‘We were quite keen on each other, and by living together when I was in Munich, we were doing things that wouldn’t have been approved of by our parents.’

One day, in the autumn of 1967, they went to collect his post. ‘We got the biggest shock of our lives,’ she says. ‘He had a letter from

Over the next year or so, Bridget would hitchhike behind the Iron Curtain – through what were then the Soviet Bloc countries of East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. Pictured: Fleece spinners in Bulgaria

the US Army, calling him up for two more years of military duty in the Vietnam War. He’d already done his draft.’ In a moment of kindness that rather confirms Ashton’s view of human nature, the worker behind the counter saw the horror on their faces, and said he’d mark the letter ‘opened in error’ and return it. ‘After that, we got away as quick as we could.’

They made their way to the UK, where they married, to ensure that Bill wouldn’t be called up again – and they’re still together, 55 years on. They have four children, and live in Morpeth, Northumberland, where Ashton is a local historian and author.

The couple’s appetite for adventure has rubbed off on their children. One daughter went to Australia and the other took a solo hike across the Himalayas. Their eldest son travelled to the Baltic states after the collapse of Communism, and taught English at a Lithuanian university; his brother ‘went off to Israel when he was 17 and lived under a bridge playing his guitar’. 

Ashton shrugs when asked whether she worried about them. ‘If you’ve got a positive attitude and you make friends easily, life is no more dangerous under a bridge in Israel than it is under a bridge in Newcastle.’

She believes in the same no-frills travel she embraced in the 60s. ‘I like to be close to people – not living in hotels, not going in aeroplanes, but right down there, seeing what ordinary people’s lives are like. I want to learn what they eat and what their troubles are,’ she says. 

She discovered the realities of Communism by seeing it for herself, she adds, not by reading about it: ‘So I listened to both sides, and that was a good thing.’ 

Ashton is 78 now, but it’s not difficult to imagine her at 21, setting out on that life-changing journey. ‘To me, travelling is about enriching yourself by understanding how others feel,’ she says. ‘And that’s still what I want to do with my life.’

• Cold War, Warm Hearts by Bridget Ashton is in bookshops (Book Guild, £10.99) and at mailshop.co.uk/books*