Hitchhiking – after a 40 year pause!

Putting my thumb out again.

On the road again

In 2022 I hitchhiked again, after not having done so for years. It seems strange to have lived so long that some things I did as a young adult could be 40 years ago!

In my teens and early 20s, I hitchhiked lots, mostly alone.

In recent years, I had wondered how it might be these days. I don’t see people hitching. I guessed it may be quite different. I am also different.

The last few years, I have had a car or van or enough funds to get the train. So there was no reason to put myself through the inconvenience, discomfort and unpredictability of hitching. In the old days, those aspects were the price we paid for getting somewhere we may not have had the funds to buy a ticket for.

So this happened in summer 2022.

I had planned to go to the Campfire Convention gathering, which was going to be held on a farm in Somerset. I live in Sheffield. It was 4 and a half hours away, so a fair distance.

The day before I was due to travel, the water pump failed on my car and it could not be fixed for a week. So I assumed that I wouldn’t be able to get there at all. I had planned to sleep in my car, so I had neither transport nor accommodation. But over the following 24 hours, I started a kind of slow forming ‘what if’ plan to try hitching and I also started packing while still not having decided to go. My body isn’t as strong and resilient as it was when I was younger, so I would have to travel as lightly as possible to not injure myself carrying bedding etc. I would have to take a tent. I packed a good 2.5 kilo 2 person tent and just enough clothes and bedding to be warm and yet cool if needed. I ended up with a 35 litre rucksack, a small tent in another bag in my hand and a large umbrella which was my shelter from rain or excessive sun and a walking/leaning stick if needed.

I got up the next day and took the bus to the roundabout where the road south crosses the ring road and stuck out my thumb…. feeling slightly self-conscious.

In my mind, I had prepared for the unknown. I knew that anything could happen… or nothing. It was absolutely possible that I would stand there for many hours then just have to take the bus home again!

Hitchhiking is an unknown adventure, and as such the unpredictable quality of the experience does have a certain mysterious allure!

Over human history, unknown adventures have been part of many great stories haven’t they? They both challenge us and bring unexpected gifts.

I started to remember some of the long waits in my old hitchhiking days for instance, waiting six or seven hours. When I was 19 and travelling with two friends from Italy to London from a quiet roadside in Switzerland, it was tough. Being a threesome made it more difficult too.

We were halfway through our three day journey and we had already run out of food. It wasn’t possible to buy food at the service stations because it was too expensive. On a long wait like that – in other words, for hours - one can get despondent because it feels like forever, especially if you’re hungry, tired or cold. I recall on that journey that somehow at different times at least one of us seemed to be able to remain buoyant when the others were down. We kept each other going. I sang Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz. Then just as it started to get dark and we were wondering if we would be stuck on the roadside all night, a big truck stopped for us. Wow! Suddenly everything changed! His spacious sleeper cab was lined with sheepskins. Luxury!

So two of us sat on the bed and one in the passenger seat. I still remember that feeling of happiness in the dark night of the lights and roads whizzing past, music blaring from the truck driver’s 8 track stereo. Then, he gave us chocolate and that just did it. Pure joy! We were in heaven and he took us all the way to Belgium - through the night - a significant chunk of the distance we had to go to catch the ferry for home.

I remember reflecting later that if we had been able to take the long train ride from Italy to London, we might have felt a bit bored. But because of the hardship and discomforts, the low moments and uncertainties of the hitching experience, a moment like this brought us into high levels of joy and celebration.

Over the years, in my job as a lorry driver, I often used to pick up hitch hikers. I once picked up a tall guy with a big rucksack, a Peruvian hat and a tripod up north on the A1. He was on his way back from three weeks camping alone in the highlands, where he’d been taking slow photos of the wild places. He was from Austin, Texas where he told me he managed a ‘clothes optional’ apartment block. Yep. This was the 70s. Really nice guy. I invited him to our house to use the phone and take a break but he couldn’t get hold of his friend in Derbyshire and ended up staying the weekend with us in Sheffield. He came to our band practice and took some great photos then sent me prints of after he got home. Chance meetings and encounters, you meet some lovely and interesting people.

Hitching alone in the early days as a woman tended to be faster… and of course potentially more dangerous. I often hitched alone. I did go through a range of challenging experiences with creeps and predatory men so I developed strategies for dealing with them. I could probably write a whole piece on the subject. The most important one always being… show no fear… nor even the slightest discomfort. Always act completely cool, casual, relaxed and confident, even if you are not. That makes you unpredictable.

I avoided France. I had heard that it was much harder to get a lift and that when you did, it tended to be much more dangerous. Years later I met a beautiful, petite and very fierce French woman who used to hitch everywhere alone. I asked her how she got on hitching in France. She replied - with a wicked gleam in her eye - that she always took a loaded pistol with her!

Back in those days, I also had many lifts with interesting, friendly and helpful people too. Being old now I assume that the sexual predator scenario is no longer the problem it was! I’m really quite fearless, even more than I was when young.

On my trip to Campout recently, I was attempting to hitch to Somerset from Sheffield – me, an older woman, standing by the road at the roundabout at the edge of town facing the unknow. Surprise! Within 10 minutes, a lovely woman picked me up! She was a nurse who lived locally and though she was on her way home e in Chesterfield, she very kindly decided to drive me an extra few miles to deliver me to the! Wow. An auspicious start, and we had a lovely time chatting on the way.

These encounters with people you’ve never seen before and will never see again have a certain quality to them. You create a snapshot, a moment, an exchange, a meeting of two lives. Brief, yet something is exchanged and it’s of immesurable value.

I arrived at my destination in the late afternoon having had eight lifts, four of the drivers, without being asked, had taken me out of their way to drop me somewhere good for me. Some told me they had themselves hitchhiked in the past. My last ride went about 10 miles out of his way to take me right to my destination! My longest wait was 20 minutes. Eight strangers. Eight lovely conversations. A mountain of kindness and a wonderful dollop of unknown adventure!

On my way home, the longest wait I had was at Hopwood services on the M42. I was standing for a while when two baristas suddenly appeared from behind the bushes and asked me what kind of coffee I would like! They had seen me through the shrubs from the drive through where they worked. They came back with a delicious latte for me - insisting it was free of charge. This put a smile on my face for the best part of an hour until I got my lift which was in a beautiful vintage Jaguar with a lovely older man who - as it was getting a bit late in the day - took me to Derby station where I got a short train ride home.

More kindness.

It seems that hitchhiking these days for this older woman is alive and well!