Throughout 1974 I hitch-hiked far and wide across Europe... from the crisp mornings of Rome in February to the cloudless skies of the Peloponnese. I walked through the fragrant orange groves south of Barcelona at three in the morning looking for a place to bed down; one night, Czech border guards locked me in the waiting room of a station on the Austrian border.

In Spain, the iron-fisted rule of the ageing Franco had dragged on for nearly thirty years. I pondered one of Spain's deep and impenetrable mysteries: the ubiquitous Guardia Civil in his dark-suited uniform and black plastic three-cornered hat, trudging alone down a blazing hot country road clutching his briefcase. Documents of state? Or a cut lunch?

On a balmy night in Granada, the Easter Holy Week, Semana Santa, got underway, the bars jumping with people from all over. After midnight, a hush descended as the procession bearing the Virgin's image began inching through the streets, applauded solemnly, and escorted not only by white-robed, hooded Inquisitors, but by goose-stepping troops in full dress uniform.

Crossing into Portugal I savoured the euphoria following the March 1974 revolution, which swept away the colonial delusions of the Salazar regime. At Sagres on the south-western tip of Europe, the youth hostel was once the School of Navigation whose graduates inaugurated Portugal's golden age of discovery.