A growing number of bookstores and libraries in Australia, across the United Kingdom, and Ireland are now stocking and displaying John Gardiner's book A Hitchhiker's Triptych.

The book is a memoir of a hitchhiking journey through England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland during the early years of the 1970s.

An adventure through a vastly different world.

Thousands of young travellers, back in the 1960s and 70s, would head to the side of the road, stick out a thumb and journey whereever cars took them.

It was an exciting, and sometimes dangerous, method of travel by young people with few funds, but a great sense of freedom.

Most had a great desire to learn as much as they possibly could, about the wider world.

In A Hitchhiker's Triptych, we join a six month journey, wandering down random roads, towards who knows where.

A journey of serendipity. Sleeping in crowded, basic, cheap, communal hostels, where a travelling tribe of wanderers go out of their way to look out for each other.

The occasional night slept in a field, or aboard an open-topped ferry steaming across the Irish Sea, under an ocean of stars. Freedoms this Boomer generation came to treasure.

The desire to discover secrets held by that distant horizon.

And a steely determination to learn what was around that next corner.

Such a different world, the 1970s. No internet, no mobile phones, no computers.

Communication with family and friends, far away, was by letter through the post.

So for weeks at a time, loved ones back home had no idea where exactly their hitchhiker was.

A letter arriving in the mail box from overseas was joyous.

It meant their hitchhiker was alive, and still travelling.

Return mail to the traveller had to be directed to a carefully selected post office in a major town.

The letters would be held by the post office for up to three months, to allow the traveller to finally turn up, present identification, and then claim bundles of cherished mail from loved ones back home.

A Hitchhiker's Triptych is striking a chord with readers in Australia, across the United Kingdom and in Ireland.

Boomers buying the book relate to the times they too hit the road, on hitchhiking adventures.

So common, hitchhiking, back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Later generations look back and marvel at a non-digital world.

How did they ever survive without mobile phones? What do you mean people didn't have personal computers? And is it true people in Europe back then asked what language was spoken in Australia?

No colour television in Australia in 1974? Really?

This is a good memoir. Well told. It paints wonderful world pictures of a time long lost to us.

A book which captures a vastly different time. Where sticking out a thumb beside the road almost always meant adventure, and new knowledge, just a little further down the road.

Join the journey. This is a book of great stories.

Dare I say a book future generations will find fascinating. I think this book could stand the test of time. Travel down through the decades.

It captures a snapshot in time. A look back into the freedom soaked, turbulent, yet far simpler, days of the 1970s.

It held my interest right through until that very final last sentence.

Review by: Peter Adams, member, Avid Readers Library Group, Birmingham.

Picture:

Author John Gardiner with Australian bookstore owner David McDowell. Strong sales across Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland.