I met Edie and the hippies by chance: an incongruous group, clustered around a brightly painted cargo van in London's Sunday overspill. Four teenagers, long haired and barefoot in flowered smocks and bell-bottom jeans; one elderly woman, horn-rimmed spectacles and sensible shoes, in overcoat and salmon-pink flower-pot hat. All five were apparently installing a butane gas oven in the van, whilst simultaneously changing the rear off-side wheel. By the roadside, a chaos of camping equipment and personal belongings around four rucksacks and a shopping trolley. From a cassette player on the pavement, Melanie Safka sang Gus Kahn's Yes, Sir, That's My Baby.

Edie was 75 years old, recently widowed, with a married daughter in Australia. As a newly-wed of 21 she moved south from her birthplace and then, apart from holidays in Blackpool, spent all her life within twenty kilometres of her new home. "Bill were in France for the Great War, and Egypt in the next one, but I never got abroad. We always talked about travelling when he retired, but then he were ill for so many years and we just never done it." As a lifelong nomad myself, only here for a couple of days between one stopover and another, I try to imagine this...

Edie's daughter, Jasmine, emigrated to Australia with her husband in the assisted passage boom of the 1950s and they did well there. "There weren't time for her to get back here when Bill died; it were too sudden. We 'phoned her, and she came as fast as she could get a ticket, but by the time she arrived she just caught the funeral. She were right upset."

The cassette player has been switched off; the four teenagers drink what claims to be tea but has an altogether thicker, sweeter and muskier scent. Vicky softly sings Simon and Garunkel's America; Vince and Fleur strum quiet guitar; Steve's harmonica breathes a low counterpoint.

In the wake of Bill's death, Jasmine pressed Edie to return with her, to live with the family in Australia, but "it were too soon; I wanted time to make up my own mind, and to say goodbye". Jasmine reluctantly went home alone, but a cheque arrived for the cost of an air fare to Australia.

"Well. I thought about things. Of course, I'd like to be near Jas again, though I'm not sure I wants to live with her forever. And where's the point in going all that way without seeing anything, tell me that? I won't get another chance to travel, not at my age. So I decided to hitch hike." My astonishment must show on my face, because she rushes to qualify the statement. "Well, no, I'm cheating ... these four are heading for India, they'll take me as far as Turkey in their Magic Bus."

Without dropping a note, the four look up briefly and grin.

"But I'm paying for the petrol that far" she adds, defensively, "and after that ... everything's in my shopping trolley and I'm on my own proper. I've got the money from the air fare, and my little bit of savings, I can live on that while I hitch. Russia, Iran, India, south of Asia, then down through Indonesia, Borneo, Australia ... I reckon it'll take me a year. If push comes to shove, like, I've got the money from the house as well, but I want to keep that if I can."