When painter Molly Smith and her husband, Reginald A.R. Joseph Smith, first came to Bermuda, the Island had only one tarmacked road and the train was still running.

In the six decades that the Smiths have lived on the Island they have seen Bermuda change dramatically. The train is gone. The cart tracks are replaced by busy roads with traffic whizzing by. And gone too is much of the open space and countryside that first greeted them.

That is one of the reasons Mrs. Smith and her husband decided to put together a book of her watercolours, sketches, recipes and recollections called ?Discovering Bermuda with Paintbrush and Bike?.

?Bermuda has changed tremendously since we first came here,? said Mrs. Smith. ?We came here when the first cars were being imported in 1946.?

In fact, Mr. Smith came to the Island to work in the Bermuda office of the Austin Motorcar Company. Mrs. Smith worked for many years in a law office. The couple have been married for 63 years, most of those years spent in Bermuda.

?We saw Bermuda in the horse-and-carriage era,? said Mrs. Smith. ?I do feel concern about the loss of open space. I wanted to catch Bermuda before it changed anymore. The book is set during the 1980s.?

Mrs. Smith decided to start painting when she retired, because she was looking for an interesting hobby to fill her time. Instead of a hobby she discovered a real talent and a late life calling as a painter.

?Discovering Bermuda? mainly focuses on watercolours painted in the east end of the Island. There is a watercolour of Banana Manor, there is another very still painting of a crane on a pond, and another of a garden gate bordered by a profusion of flowers.

Some of the paintings will be familiar as they have been used as Christmas cards for local charities.

?Architecturally, my favourite place to paint is St. George?s,? said Mrs. Smith. ?For seascapes I enjoy the coast of Somerset on the South Shore. Anywhere on the Island will do for botanics, vegetables and plants and trees.?

The book is published by the Bermudian Publishing Company Limited in conjunction with the Bermuda Bookstore.

While quality is sometimes lost when art is placed on the printed page, this is not the case with ?Discovering Bermuda?. No pains have been wasted on ?Discovering Bermuda? and the result is a beautiful book with glossy pages that do justice to Mrs. Smith?s art.

In the forward of the book, Mrs. Smith said that her intention was to ?remind residents and visitors of the joy to be had in discovering the architectural and other treasures around the Island?.

?The text dips into some of the history, geology, flora and fauna of these Islands and includes some of the legends and anecdotes from its past,? she wrote. ?Travelling whets the appetite and creates a thirst so I?ve included a few of Bermuda?s interesting recipes.?

Mrs. Smith also tried to include a variety of different things in the book to keep the reader entertained.

?There are some charcoal sketches and pen and ink drawings done by my husband,? she said. ?I?d hoped that the book would have a variety. There are also recipes and maps. I used my own recipes, and if I borrowed the recipe I gave credit for it.

?I had to do a lot of research for the book. Really, I had hoped to be able to do the other end of the Island. There is an awful lot that I haven?t covered yet, but I don?t think that will happen now.?

Mrs. Smith is largely self-taught when it comes to art. When she was very young and growing up in Wales, she wanted to be an artist.

?I hoped to make a career out of it, but it was not possible,? she said. ?Painting is a creative outlet that I enjoy very much. Bermuda is very, very paintable. I thought that to travel around Bermuda painting ? on the way endeavouring to learn quite a bit about the Island ? would perhaps make for an interesting book.?

?Discovering Bermuda? was launched in the Rose Gallery of Masterworks on December 8. It was followed by an exhibition of many of the original works included in the book. They were well received by the general public and many were snapped up, although a few remain. ?I understand my book is selling very well,? said Mrs. Smith. ?I think people are buying it for their grandmas.?

Mrs. Smith?s two granddaughters, Fiona and Emma Holmes, helped her with the production of the book, helping to transcribe pages and giving her early commentary on the book.