Bridget Ashton is an explorer, mother, writer and photographer. Growing up in the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye, her family migrated to Northumberland in 1955. While at college in 1960s Hereford, she learned how to travel with only pennies in her pocket and in 1966 she spent a year hitchhiking behind the Iron Curtain. Later, she and her American husband brought up four children in Northumberland, where they still live.