Rediscovering yourself by hitchhiking to nowhere

Standing outside a service station just outside the town of Boulogne on the motorway in France, we held our makeshift signs above our head and sang together. The words emanating from our cold but enduring mouths screamed twentieth century American culture at the freezing hearts of French drivers and our overjoyed faces shivered with delight as we danced our way towards the fallen defences of the warmed heart – the melting Bastille – the first point on our hitch.

Jailbreak was a fantastic experience. It brought my two teammates and me closer together to the point where we appreciated and understood each other’s maniacal ravings on the floor of Charles de Gaulle airport at five am on our return home. It gave us an opportunity to realise how we could recover from arguments, disputes, and general aggression resulting from travelling without any money for thirty-six hours and seeing each other’s worst sides from a very direct perspective. It forced us to act as a team and acknowledge each member’s point of view to the point where the only real opposition to group movement came in the stubborn and immature form of standing still with one’s arms crossed; and this only lasted for a very brief period of time.

I wish I could say that the team I was in managed to make it to somewhere exciting and distant. But to be honest, making it to Paris was good enough for us. Having spent a good fourteen hours in Dover, braving the pouring rain, the thrashing thunder, and lamenting the tormenting lightening, not to mention the unforgiving lorry drivers, we managed to get onto a ferry crossing the Channel. Admittedly, at this point we were considering giving up, and in a way cheated our way onto the Continent, paying a slightly reduced price to board the P&O considering their indisputable lack of tolerance to charity activism, but we did continue our efforts when we reached the other side.

Moving quickly from the ferry-port in Calais, a desolate industrial coastal nightmare verging on foreign absorption given the excessive number of British named pubs and cafés, we skipped our way to the train station where we, illegally, hopped on a train heading down to Boulogne-sur-Mer. On the train while chatting to a student in my limited GCSE level French, the guard appeared in the aisle asking for tickets. After he made several attempts to blackmail us and insulted my French, we convinced him to let us stay on the train until Boulogne. Not wanting to risk getting caught again and next time being fined something amounting to one-hundred and forty euros a piece, we asked at the ticket booth in the station if there was any chance we could get a free ride down to Paris only to be answered with a firm and resilient, ‘non.’

Realising the pointless nature of our request we were determined to get a hitch, so, throwing our rucksacks on our backs and bolstering our makeshift ‘Paris, s’ il vous plait’ signs, we threw ourselves into action and trekked a good four miles to the outskirts of the city and onto the motorway. Making our way down to the service station, where this article begins, we got lucky, having satisfied a prolonged hunger in the local ‘Mac D’s’, and were given a lift by a friendly doctor who spoke not even a single word of English. I decided to attempt a conversation with the man about the French countryside, comparing and contrasting it with that of England claiming France to be majestic and incandescent in its unparalleled beauty and romantic but rustic ambience, or at least, that’s what I think I said. This was followed by me frantically pointing things out as we passed them which has led me to the belief that Kerouac’s greatest fear in ‘On The Road’ of lacking the ability to talk is one of the most difficult points of hitchhiking. Other memorable moments included being dragged out of a hotel room screaming; going completely insane after having not slept a wink in the airport; and circling and crossing out celebrities faces in a Heat magazine in accordance with who I liked and did not.

All in all it was a fantastic trip and has spurred on my desire to do more hitchhiking in the future, such as the Morocco Hitch during Easter – and even possibly more over the summer in an attempt to travel for free to and around Africa. While many people will drive past you leaving you standing in the pouring rain, a lonesome few good natured drivers will most certainly give you a lift if you wait for long enough. Patience is the key to most things in life, and is one of the most important attributes necessary for enjoying hitching. Without it, you will hate the experience, and with it you learn to cherish and in many ways hunger for it like I now do.