St George's Community Players actor part of launch performance at the Morpeth Book Festival

In the 1960s, armed with sixpenny Esso road maps and thumbing rides from friendly lorry drivers, Bridget Gubbins and some of her friends journeyed through Wales, Scotland and onwards to London.

Venturing abroad, they found themselves enchanted by the romance of France, navigated Spanish landscapes fraught with both beauty and danger, fended off proposals of marriage on the back of a lorry travelling through the Atlas Mountains and revelled in the soul-stirring folk music of Ireland.

Written in her pre-married name, Bridget Ashton, Hit the Road, Gals recalls these adventures. The launch performance is taking place on day one of the festival – Saturday, March 23 – from 12.30pm at Morpeth Sports and Leisure Centre/Library.

A synopsis for it states: ‘Morpeth student Bridget Ashton (now Gubbins) has persuaded her mother to send a letter to Miss Hipwell, her college principal, who is shocked by what she reads.

‘Miss Hipwell has called Bridget in to her office: “You mean to say your mother is allowing you to go thumbing lifts along the roads, hitchhiking lifts from goodness knows who!”

‘Miss Hipwell is being played by Pam Cassells, a well-known actor in St George’s Community Players.’

The two-day festival, which is taking place at three different venues, is being organised by the Greater Morpeth Development Trust in an association with the Northumberland Library Service.

The line-up of acclaimed authors includes the woman who will be launching the festival, North East crime writer Mari Hannah whose most well-known character is DCI Kate Daniels, and Dan Jackson, author of the best-selling The Northumbrians: North-East England and Its People: A New History.

Among the other speakers is Alistair Moffat, an award-winning writer and historian and a former television executive and Edinburgh Festival Fringe director.

Other local writers and poets taking part include Sarah Elliott, Marrisse Whittaker, Lisette Auton, Colin Youngman and Jo Lyons, and there will also be readings, story-telling sessions and fun-and-games for children.

More information and the various festival tickets are available at www.ticketsource.co.uk/greater-morpeth-development-trust