It has been many years, since before I had kids, that I have travelled on holiday on my own. I've been away on work but this is different. The morning of departure on my apparently well organised holiday I joked to Mr Doris I felt like a teen again with a rucksack on my back but with the benefit of a credit card in my pocket and the security of a husband at home. He quipped he bet I was the only back-packer carrying a Prada handbag! Anyway....
Hitchhiking was not part of the travel itinerary but that is exactly what happened. My first train broke down before it started and the replacement train was too late to make the next train connection and would miss the flight. I didn't want to drag Mr Doris on a car journey all the way down the country to Stansted and decided to hitch a lift instead. On the mobile Mr Doris was initially shocked but then saw my sense!!!
Me being me and my independent spirit busting forth, I refused any further help from him such as a lift to the nearest motorway. After all, if I was going to hitch I wasn't going to do this by halves. I bought a marker pen and penned out the motorway name on the back of my travel itinerary and set off walking in that direction. It wasn't a trucking area and I ended up walking much further than I expected with my face becoming as red as the tight red pedal pusher trousers I was wearing. My first lift took me about 10 miles to the motorway where I waited barely 8 minutes and caught my first truck on the slip-road to the motorway.
The last time I hitched lifts was when I was 17 and travelled up to Scotland. I had bought a great paperback which extolled the virtues of hitchhiking and how best to do it. Truck drivers during daylight hours have to get from A to B and sometimes don't mind having a passenger for company. It is important to recognise the main travel routes and to break your journey up into chunks as it is unlikely to get a truck going the entire same route. Back in those days, I recklessly enjoyed the sights of Edinburgh that I stayed an extra night and then had to get back to London with only 78p in my pocket and had to do it that day as I was back to work the next. I did it with pennies to spare. I had not hitchhiked since.
Anyway, this time round, I am clambering up into the truck cabins and had forgotten what the climb was like and I'm trying to gracefully do it with Prada handbag and rucksack in tow! The sun was shining and I was excited to be so daring. The other thing that occurred to me was how ecological it was. After all, I wasn't using additional fuel and was joining in on journeys that were already happening. It was great to be seated up so high with a good view of the roads and sky but I had forgotten that trucks can only do 55 mph on the motorway and so I settled back and accepted that I'd get to the airport when I did. It was better than waiting at the station for a train that I knew was definitely going to be late. This way I had a chance.
It seems that truck drivers and I share something in common. We look younger than our ages! Strange that. I would like to say so much about each of the drivers and the wide ranges of our conversations from the metaphysical to the current political situation or the education of our children but it would be as long as a novel.
Truck drivers are fab in that they are prepared to suggest slight detours to drop me off at good truck stops to pick up my next lift in the correct direction, or take a road that goes by the airport rather than the one they were originally going to take. There is a camaraderie on the road and that great trucking song "Convoy" comes to mind.
My time for checking in at the airport was ticking away but the final nail was when the last truck broke down on the M25 motorway. I have never seen a truck break down on the middle lane of the motorway but here we were. His brakes under the cabin suddenly seized up, we had been in a slight traffic jam but now the traffic was moving again, except we weren't. A motorway is not the place to suddenly decide to get out and find an alternative lift. And definitely not the middle lane when you are in a Dutch truck and getting out means the fast lane. The driver finally got out his side (thankfully the slower lane) and stood tweaking under the cabin. I sat chuckling. There was nothing I could do so no point me getting upset.
After a while he got the truck working and off we went. He dropped me off at the service station near the airport and I skedaddled up to the car park where I knew there was a shuttle bus service into the terminal. No tickets are needed as it is assumed that everyone has paid the high fees for the parking and it is in the middle of nowhere and unlikely to have passing pedestrians!
I was only about an hour late for my flight but obviously it had flown. They were able to book me into the next flight that evening for only a modest sum extra. At that point I cried with relief. I was there and was going to be travelling that day after all. But my adventures were not over and that's another story!
Of the few adults I have told this story to I have asked them not to tell my children or their children about my hitchhiking. I am not sure I could cope with them ever doing it and would worry they would not be as "safe" as I am about it. On the one hand I do not want to encourage it as there are so many dangerous people around. On the other hand I think these are far outweighed by the thousands and thousands of trucks driving our roads and it would be more efficient, and interesting, for them to have a passenger. It makes me think of the sometimes double standards of being a parent ..... do as I say not as I do.
I probably wouldn't go hitchhiking again but there is a sense of achievement in knowing that I could if I needed, and that it is possible to get around the country for next to nothing.
Original Comments:
Glad you are back you little dare devil.
Take care xx
I'd have been having a minor nervous breakdown.
What's your secret hon ? ;-)
You know, people give me crap about being into astrology sometimes. But while you were on vacation, Mercury (planet of travel and communications) was going... retrograde. (backwards, for all intents and purposes.) So thanks, but sorry you were, for being a great example of what can happen! ;-)
It's ok, it's gone direct again now. You're safe.. Glad to have you back blogging again. You're inspiring.
And thanks for keeping me on the blog roll..
It makes me laugh, though, you telling people not to tell kids about the hitchhiking. When I was a student I hitchhiked all the time, but I was always careful not to let my parents know!