The great European adventure trail

Abstract

Hitchhikers sometimes reflect on their road days as being the 'freest' moments of their lives. Arguably the most unburdened cohort of roadside travellers was the immediate post-war generation, able to explore places which to their parents were just names on a map. In doing so, they glimpsed an optimism and sense of internationalism forged out of new roadside alliances with the young of other nations also looking beyond the era of war and austerity. This chapter assesses the broadening social as well as geographical horizons of a handful of diarists and authors whose perspectives steadily challenged the liberal democratic assumptions of freedom that the new Cold War politics tried to impose upon them. Rather than seeing liberty as a quality defined by the 'political contract' between State and citizen, we see the evolution of new narratives of freedom – firstly questioning the sexism of hitchhiking culture and then the assumptions of post-war consumerism as an end in itself – with some choosing to broaden their political horizons on the so-called ‘Hippie Trail’ in the 1960s.