Principles Of Hitching

Once in a while I’m asked how to hitchhike.
Everyone has their own methods and principles for travelling in this way, ranging from the scientific to the superstitious. All methods have to do the same thing, which is to be, or seem, effective enough to survive repeated road-testing.
Here I'll describe elements of my approach and the thinking behind it. This isn't a how-to-guide, it's just a description of my practice and reflections to myself about it.

Why hitch?
How a person hitches only makes sense in the context of why. There are as many reasons to hitch as there are to travel in any other manner.

I hitch as a means of travelling slowly, with a view to observing nature and crowds, and connecting with individuals and small groups of people. I do this whenever I have a sufficiently large margin of spare time that I can choose to forget about counting minutes, hours and, occasionally, days.
One fundamental reason for this is my belief that the slow speed of hitching affords space for stimulating or novel experiences of time, as well as a quality in human interactions that I seldom encounter within the confines of my normal working schedule.

Hitching in the way I do often allows me to escape time as a routine and instead see it as duration, expressed in weather, light and other natural phenomena. I like to think it teaches my eyes something. It also gives me plenty of time to think.
With regards to human interaction, there's a kind of rarefied human intimacy that runs throughout hitching. To me it seems more prevalent in lifts given by people who have had some time to deliberate before deciding to host you in their personal space. For this reason, my approach is to wait for people to choose to pick me up, and to not directly ask for lifts.


How I hitch: My hitchhiking style is thus about being extremely visible, extremely patient and waiting in places that afford a driver the maximum amount of time to consider the prospect of inviting me to travel with them.


Who I'm waiting for: My ideal lift is from someone who’s fit to drive and isn’t inclined, intentionally or otherwise, to harm me, themselves or anybody else for the duration of our journey together. What they do before and after our meeting rarely concerns me if these requirements are met.

The following considerations and roughly hewn maxims emerge from the above why and how of my hitching style.


Hitchhiking Maxims

1) Wear a fluorescent vest.
Night or day, this helps with visibility and giving a sense of legitimacy.

2) Use serif lettering.
Perhaps magical thinking, but I think again it makes you look more legitimate and less crazy. Seems to help.

3) Be genuinely patient enough to look patient. It can’t be faked.
If you don't enjoy waiting, hitching might not be for you.

4) Roll up your sleeves.
Advice given on hitchwiki once with the reasoning that you look less threatening. I swear by it.

5) Shave.
Doesn't cost anything and seems to help.

6) Let people see your character.
In order to get a lift I feel there is an act of empathetic reflection that takes place. Myriad people have to be able to see themselves in you if they want to let you in their car. Seems to work better if you're relaxed and physiologically honest.

7) Dress neutrally.
Same reasons as above. You want to be seen as human/traveller first, not as a member of a subculture.

8) When meeting potential drivers, be extremely judgmental where it counts and non-judgmental where it doesn’t.
The reverse of 6 and 7. You need to make an informed guess about whether this person is someone safe to travel with, which means not getting distracted by non-essentials such as clothing and taste. You're looking at physiology and body language first, who they voted for and what bands they like you can discuss in the car.

9) Stay humble and patient, and learn to listen.
If you're easily frustrated by personalities that are different to your own, hitching might not be for you. Being offended is not the same as being in danger, and you must remember which one of you chose to hitchhike.

10) One good evangelist deserves another.
You might be tempted to change minds once in a while. Try, by all means, but remember how fun that usually is the other way round.

11) Give.
If you have something that your driver will appreciate, however small, you should offer it to them. You will feel better. Remember that they have to be willing to accept it or it's just losing something, and not giving it.

12) Receive.
Equally you will be offered things. I tend to decline most unnecessary things but there are certain moments in which accepting something will feel like the only right course of action.


13) Don’t take negativity too personally.
You have decided to become an ephemeral public spectacle. Reactions will be mixed and some will be strongly negative. You're dealing with countless pockets of unexpressed stress and anger (noise in the social circuit), conceptions of hitchhikers as parasitic beggars and the fact that you are anonymous and temporary, so an easy target. It doesn't affect me personally unless I feel I'm really seen and criticized as a person.

14) Any encouragement can completely refresh you.
Someone coming to talk to you and wish you luck will make you feel like the last three hours waiting didn't happen. It does something odd to time, worth experiencing.

15) The best experiences are often not lifts.
Surreal happenings proliferate in the petroleum archipelago. You're never far away from a problem, conversation, solution, punchline or striking visual composition. Just enjoy it when it comes.

16) Retain your ability to marvel.
Related to the above. You're going to be alone for many, many hours/eternities with your thoughts, so it helps to be entertained by small things. If you're not fascinated by the fact that you are an unusually sociable talking mammal sharing metal boxes powered by the sludge of fossilised creatures, then hitching might not be for you.

17) Remember in hope.
When you pass the point of being able to entertain yourself you have to go into the directory of hope-giving experiences. My usual call is thinking of my longest or worst waits and the countless time I have been picked up just as I was giving up.

18) You will always (and thus never) be surprised by who is on the road, regardless of day or time.
Links to the above. This is one of the great truths of reality and great side-effects of industrial culture. In any petrol station you can potentially find (and will occasionally find) someone driving to your exact destination, at any time of day or night. Similarly, in any city there will be someone living three doors down from you whose personality and way of being would blow your mind if you ever discovered them.

19) Stay on the road and you will move forward.
Simple and statistically true...or true enough.

20) You can never prove that the world is entirely safe. You can only prove that you are lucky, and it is wise not to invite complacency.
Exactly how much danger I put myself in by hitching is difficult to discern, but the final maxim is based upon a quote by Gregory Bateson that I found helpful in choosing how and where one lets sustained experience calcify into identity:

"The principle of pride-in-risk is ultimately almost suicidal.
It is all very well to test once whether the universe is on your side,
but to do so again and again, with increasing stringency of proof,
is to set out on a project which can only prove that the universe hates you."- Gregory Bateson (Steps to an ecology of mind.)

This is the point here. What you are doing is trying to make informed guesses about trust whilst travelling by car. Don’t identify yourself with your ‘success’, and don’t mistake your luck for skill.

The Tunnel

It is very difficult to choose which of the stories should be told first so here’s one I’m choosing because it came straight from a film.
I was stuck in a petrol station in Kortrijk, Belgium, in early August.
Kortrijk is a playground for me by this point, there are some messages I scrawled on lampposts and crash barriers and it has a mixed history of good lifts and long waits. I was brought there by a young French couple.
Think I waited there about 4 or 5 hours. The only memorable event was a man returning to his Porsche with a look of pleasant surprise. He was turning his head this way and that, if you’ve ever seen Goya’s depiction of Hannibal seeing the alps for the first time it was a similar level of pantomime disbelief. I sat there chuckling, imagining what he wanted to be heard saying to himself: “Wait, this can’t be my car? No, it can’t be!...but it’s a Porsche! Think about how expensive those are! Oh! The key works! It is my car!”
At some point a web designer lifted me up the road to what he thought was a better spot.
Well now. Better in what way? I will let you decide, but I believe that every last liquid ounce of time that I have spent in a petrol station I would spend again for what happened in this place.

Just another petrol station. Probably about 7.30pm. Big crowd of football fans standing around smoking and getting tanked up. Few giggles and exchanges of looks as I stood there. After some time I walked into the shop. The station attendant was a man in his 30s with very short hair, square framed glasses and a bright and quizzical expression.
“Good evening, sir.”
He was very polite and helpful. Exceedingly so, pointing out where I could get free water, and that if I wanted to use the facilities I should do that before buying anything and use the ticket to get a discount. After this exchange he asked: “Is that an Australian accent I detect, sir?”
I explained where I was from. He looked a little bit disappointed in himself and I assured him that a lot of people do think I’m Australian, even in Bristol.
I went back out to wait. Few more coachloads of wobbly fans went past. Advice, shrugs, smiles and belches came my way.
I waited. It grew dark. Some people told me I was on the wrong side of the road. A few more people told me I was in the right place. I looked over the road to the petrol station opposite and noticed there was no bridge. I shrugged and sat back down to ruminate. I think it must have been close to 11 when I went back into the shop to get some coffee.
As I was paying I conceded to the attendant that perhaps I was in the wrong spot.
“To be honest sir, I would agree. But that’s ok. I’m finishing in a moment and I can take you there.”
“Where?”
“To the other station, sir. Pick up your phone from where it’s charging and meet me outside. I shall open the tunnel.”


I use to say that being surprised or fazed was the import tax placed on your imagination by not having a conceptual model to meet an experience. I don’t know if I still say this. A lot of things get worn away when you travel by waiting. Time and the sun burnish your attention span and your skin, and eventually your capacity to be surprised is worn away. As I went to unplug my phone I remember having a bicameral response of ‘What the fuck is the tunnel/of course this man is about to open a subterranean escape route for my benefit.’
Amazingly the capacity for gratitude only seems to get stronger after years of reality showing its tendency to segue into a novel at odd hours of the night and day.

He came outside in a black jacket, rolling a cigarette. He placed it behind his ear and unlocked his bike. We walked together to a sort of non-descript grey booth that looked like a vent. They’re all over the place and you never notice them.

He unlocked the door on the front of it and looked at me quietly for a moment.
“Remember sir, to close the door when you reach the other side. You won’t be able to come back.” He mounted his bike and lit his cigarette.
I thanked him profusely, somewhat stunned by the combination of luck and decorum.
As he turned to leave I asked him his name. He looked at me over his shoulder, exhaling a plume of silver-blue smoke.
“My name is Frido, sir. Good luck, and remember to close the door.”
He rode off into the night and I walked down the steps into the tunnel, remembering to close the door.
I emerged in a petrol station, the mirror image of the first. I half expected to meet Frido’s twin but thankfully that didn’t happen. The other attendant was a short, blonde haired lady in her 40s, busy in the corner with some boxes at that moment. I was relieved. It was hard enough having all of the now-steaming football fans stopping off there for more beers on their way back from the game. Fuck, we were all spooked that night. I was still reeling from my initiation into the arcane brotherhood of petroleum corridors and they couldn’t work out how I was there when they left and there when they came back. I should have said I’m like the absinthe fairy except just what you see when you buy shit beer. Instead one of them came over to ask if I was a member of Antifa and sensing his anger I feigned ignorance. I slept in that station and got out the next morning with an ice cream man and his two year-old daughter. He confided in me that Belgians are not a trusting people and he dropped me off at Kortrijk.
This time I waited about 4 hours before instantly falling in love with another hitchhiker I met. Her and her cousin got me a lift out of there in the one spare seat of the car of a Dutchman who was driving his young son around the national parks of France to look for insects because ‘why not’.



Since that episode I’ve taken to calling a petrol station with its twin on the other side of the motorway a Frido.

Account of a car accident (not hitching)


I went to visit my mother this summer. It was the first time I’d seen her properly in a year and a half. I arrived on the 30th of July and she picked me up from Pescara bus station.
I got off the bus and found her after a couple of minutes. She seems to skip town during Time’s census, looking younger and younger as the years go on. She’d probably attribute it to a diet of low-income, constant views of eagles and eating her neighbour’s tomatoes. She swears by astral planing with cats at shoulder and dogs at foot. I digress.
I got in the car with her, the little Fiat of whatever description. The one she’d been excited about since April when she placed her slowly-accumulated funds on it.
Some bastard car from about 20 years ago, apparently done up to speed but you’ll see.
Anyway, we drove home. I met her dogs for the first time. Comments were exchanged about life, the garden, the size of the cats.
The next day we drove three hours across hill, dale and motorway to visit her friend Antonio. Have to sidestep for a minute and just say this man’s grace simply beggars belief. The man is burdened with grace. He is a slender, red-bearded, bespectacled lamb with a pack mule’s load of knowledge about renaissance art and architecture at the humble age of 26.
He showed us around his town for a few hours. We parted. He gave us a watermelon. We drove the two and a half hours back to her house, stopping on the plateau so that I could take some long exposure photos of the night sky. They weren’t the best but I enjoyed stepping out into a cold wind and the sound of sheep-bells in the distance. That was a placid 6 minutes or so. I got back in the car, we drove through the rest of the plateau without incident and soon we were descending along the bended roads towards her house. About 20 minutes from home a thought came to me.
“Mum…”
“Yeah?” Still driving.
“You must be spending a lot of your time driving around mountain bends in quite a small and old car. What’s the contingency in case you fly off a road one day? Do you have an Italian will written out?”
“Err no, but I have an English one.”
“But is that good enough?”
Conversation continues as we make the distance closer to home.
We were about five minutes from her house when we came down a steep road and the brakes cut.
“Shit. We’ve lost the brakes Mike.”
“Fuck.”
“Oh wait, no we have them.”
Brief relief. Some seconds later:
“Oh no, they’ve gone again.”
We begin accelerating down the hill.
“Does this mean we’re going to die?” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Well….”
At this point everything that happened was pretty sudden but my father’s old model of ‘consciousness concertinas when you’re about to die’ seemed to hold true. This he learnt during his own close call, whilst nearly drowning on a beach. The seconds seemed to stretch as we sped downhill and shot straight off a curve.
The instant at which we left the road the realisation hit that this was actually happening and odd inconvenience turned into a coin-flip of whether we’d leave that car alive. As the trees came up to meet us I tried to remember the surrounding terrain- in my head it was all steep drops and cliff edges so I was expecting us to flip. Instead we bounced down a wooded slope and came to a stop.
I asked Maria if she was ok. She said yes. I was definitely ok. I told her I was going to open the door very slowly to make sure we weren’t on a precipice, and it was then we realised the headlights were gone. We were on fairly solid ground so I got out, went round to her door and opened it. Thinking of it now I must have gone around the front of the car, which had been stopped by a tree, but I didn’t notice it in the darkness.
All I could focus on it that moment was getting her away from the car and back onto the road, so I just remember the feeling of grabbing trees for support and brambles cutting my shins. At one point we were treading on what felt to me like household junk. I expected we were walking through a local fly-tipping spot but it turned out to be parts of the car.

We got back to the road and began to walk down.
Maria: “An angel must have stopped the car.”
Me: “Which angel cut the fucking brake cables?...Sorry, it’s too soon for me.”
We were lucky to have had that accident on a moonlit night, because neither of us had torches or working phones on us. We padded down the road, stunned. I remember how glad I was to be walking on solid ground. On top of this there was a weird feeling that ‘being alive’ was seeping back into the picture. In that moment I felt something like a cat who, having been violently chased out with a broom, was now returning to cautiously lap at the milk of the senses. Colours, sounds and smells seemed more vivid.
It was around this point that my mother spoke again.
“Mike, are you sure that you’re alright?”
I shake my limbs and rub my back. “Yeah…I mean we’ll see by morning really, but so far so good. You?”
“Yes, I’m completely fine. But isn’t that strange?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well do you reckon we’re really alive or just dead in the car?”
I laughed and patted my mum on the shoulder, and we continued to pad down the road, entertaining that night’s ghosthood.


In my memory the rest of the event felt much shorter than the crash. We arrived home and called the police, who told us to go to bed and that they’d be over in the morning. They never came. We then called Maria’s friends Goldie and Richard, who came over to help us retrieve our things from the car. Going back to the site an hour later was surreal. There were more brambles than I remember. Richard and I walked through them and down the slope to the car. When we got there, he surveyed the car in silence with his torch, turned to me and said: “I’m surprised that you and your mum survived this.”
We took out the bags and the car keys, and climbed back up through the brambles and splintered saplings. Goldie and Richard dropped us at home and we sat up on the porch with the dogs, drinking brandy. I couldn’t sleep properly for two days.

I’d say that since that crash I feel less like a broomed cat and more like a tree that has had all of its leaves shaken off temporarily. As though you can’t pass through that tiny window of being alive and unharmed without dropping what was in your hands somehow. Some days it feels like being alive and being dead must be pretty similar, given how easy the switch can be flicked. It feeds back into my hitch-hiking too. I used to occasionally feel guilty on the behalf of my family for putting myself in cars with strangers all the time, but after almost dying in such a domestic setting I feel a lot less bad about it.

On Dangerous Situations

"The principle of pride-in-risk is ultimately almost suicidal.
It is all very well to test once whether the universe is on your side,
but to do so again and again, with increasing stringency of proof,
is to set out on a project which can only prove that the universe hates you."- Gregory Bateson (Steps to an ecology of mind.)




The question comes up in almost every conversation I have with people about hitch-hiking. “Have you ever been in a dangerous situation while hitching?”
Ignoring studies in the perception of danger versus actual accidents, I’ll take this to mean “Have you ever felt that you were in a dangerous situation while hitching?”.
The answer is a few times with varying results. I don’t have my journals to hand so these are from memory.

“I was bladdered at breakfast.”

A petrol station in Nottingham, August 2012. I got there with a lift from an American man living in Bristol. He knew a lot about cold winters in Massachussetts, hunting muskrats, the fur industry and skiing. He worked in a managerial role for a lingerie company somewhere in the UK and went as far as Nottingham that morning. I’d had a bit of an odd summer. A family member had died and I had broken up with my girlfriend. Another family member was in the middle of a mental health episode. Things all felt pretty ethereal and my head was in the clouds most of the time. One weekend I decided to hitch up from Bristol to Bradford to see my brother Pat at university.
Standing in the petrol station with my sign, a middle-aged woman walked past gesturing indirectly at me. I didn’t register what it meant but then she turned back, beckoned me over and said she’d take me close to Bradford. I followed her, got in the car and thanked her whilst putting on my seatbelt.
The instant she turned the keys in the ignition ear-splittingly loud pop music blasted out of the speakers, and we began to reverse out of the carpark. The noise was horrific, and just before we hit the road she paused the music. In the then-deafening hush with my ears ringing, she leaned over clumsily and said to me: “By the way, I was bladdered at breakfast.”
She presses play, the music returns, we join the road and begin one of the most nerve-racking journeys of my life.
A few themes throughout the journey:
-Every CD she had was from a reality TV music competition.
-She forgot how to use the volume dial. It was either play or pause so an immense contrast every time she wanted to say something.
- Her speed remained close to 95mph for the whole journey.
- My level of conviction that this woman was steaming drunk remained at about 95% for the whole journey.

I remember a basic feeling of being pinned to my chair by the speed of the car, coupled with the shock realisation that she was a wild one, followed by self-enforced calm and ruminations about what things I could and couldn’t control.
I think my initial internal monologue was “Uh oh. This is shit. Well, you can’t do much until you take in more information so relax into it. There’s no way you’re climbing out of this car on the motorway….and after all, everyone dies when they die and at least it’s a beautiful day.”
As we sped through the morning light on the mercifully empty motorway I crept out of my philosophical gazing and back into my body. I eyed my driver suspiciously as she demonstrated an audacious capacity to multitask. Between her left index finger and thumb a lit cigarette, between her right index finger and thumb the small birchwood paddle of a large dripping ice lolly. With the six remaining fingers she maintained control of the wheel. I calmly (threw up inside) took this in and thought some more. That particular CD’s roaring wall-of-shite production drew to a close, only to be followed by what appeared to be the same track. She hit pause suddenly. Ears ringing, I leaned in for her next revelation.
“That’s the problem with these artists, they all sound the same.”
I didn’t point out that the track was on repeat. I merely gasped in horror as she frowned like a scolded toddler and six-finger steering wheel contact turned to three-finger steering wheel contact. Her now off-duty right hand lurched forward to take the offending CD out of the player and I realised this was a moment when I could turn from death-wish passenger to survival-oriented crew. I snatched the stack of CDs from the dashboard and told her “It’s ok, I’ll deal with the CDs, you can just focus on driving.”
We continued at close to 100mph down the motorway. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown, noticing the hedges blur past whilst flinging shitty pop singles into the CD player with all the aspiration and effort of an Olympic discus-thrower. I just hoped each one would wipe my memory of the last. Well I also hoped I would survive but I was distracted.
She on the other hand was on the verge of a spiritual breakthrough as she carefully mediated the sacred dialogue between cigarette and ice-lolly. Her tongue must have felt like a child in the midst of a divorce. Occasionally she’d side-track to tilt us out of the path of sudden and bloody obliteration, with all the focus of someone remembering to stir a soup.
People usually ask why I didn’t just get out of the car. I still ask myself that sometimes. What I remember is the feeling that the only way to get out of that one would have been gradual inception. Slowing that car down with conversation was like trying to melt ice with nothing but your hand. I was getting results towards the end by engaging her in conversation about her son, but by the time I noticed a slight improvement she came to a full stop in Leeds city centre and said : “Here you are, close as I can get you, it’s a five minute train ride.”
I thanked her and left, swiftly.





“Come with me all the way and you’ll only have to take a two hour train!”

Dear me, this one’s closer in the memory banks but seems farther because it happened in the middle of so many lifts. I was just saying goodbye to Kevin and family. Their camper van was pulling away as Kevin cried “You’re a creative genius!”, I laughed and shook my head and before I had time to ascertain where I was, a car stopped and a rather twitchy man in his 40s jumped out and ushered me in.
Confused? So was I. Where was I? Somewhere in Norway. It had been a long day, I think I’d done about 250km in fits and starts on a night of very little sleep in a cold ditch.
Anyway I jumped in the car with this guy and off we went. He was Romanian, living away from his wife and children and working somewhere in the southwest of Norway. He was talking very excitedly and kept turning his head to meet my gaze and see my reactions to what he was saying. I felt uneasy pretty quickly. I was on my way to see a friend in Oslo. I got my map out to look at where we were going and work out how long I’d be in this car with him. We were headed down the same road for something under 100km. I pointed out a likely point to part ways and he looked very anxious. He tried to persuade me to go the same way as him but I politely insisted I needed to go to Oslo. “But?! Don’t you see? Come with me all the way and you’ll only have to take a two-hour train!” Inside my tired brain a tired young man slaps his hand to his forehead.
“Err, let’s see how long it takes us to get there. ”
You’ve been here before. No sudden movements, just be patient and find the opportunity to escape the situation, but actually do it this time. A couple of minutes of him talking more about missing his wife and children whilst my mind wandered over different escape plans. I was thinking of asking to stop at the next petrol station to use the toilet, then bailing, but it was easier than that in the end. He suddenly said to me “I need to stop here to buy a phone.” The car stopped and I’ll just sum up the situation before I relate what I did.
I regret forgetting this man’s name and not having my notebooks to hand. To this day, I don’t think there was any ill intent. He was lonely. Loneliness manifests in people in completely different ways and I guess I view it with the same mind-set as I view a mental illness with the sense of chaotic potential. Something to the effect of ‘empathise heavily but carry a big stick’…haha no, more like ‘enter with empathy but keep in mind what is and what isn’t your problem’.
I grabbed my bag, got out of the car and said to him “Right, I don’t want to offend you but I’m travelling on my own and I have to act on my instinct. Your energy level is making me uncomfortable so I’m leaving now.”
His response: “Ok, have a nice trip.”





“We’re going to have dinner in Bordeaux if you feel like it.”

I’m writing this at home in a sparsely furnished front room awaiting fumigation. I read some of the first story to my friend/flatmate and he reminded me that I had a recent lift I had to terminate early. This is a good one so I’ll put it in while it’s fresh.
Somewhere near Hendaye about two months ago. Slow day, one prior lift from a kind young woman named Araotz. A veterinary student who walked past me three times and decided to eventually free me from the petrol station I’d been in from the night before until the mid-afternoon that day. She was flying to London that weekend and it was going to be her first ever flight. If I was born in that part of the world I doubt I’d have travelled anywhere near as much. It’s so culturally, environmentally and gastronomically rich it makes my toes hug the ground.
She dropped me in Hendaye where I walked into a petrol station with sign for Baiona/Bayonne in hand. Of course, I don’t expect much but a van driver beeps at me and beckons me over, puffing furiously on a cigarette. Young, Spanish-looking man with mad hair. Throws open the door and says “I hope you like dogs” before a massive American pitbull looms into view and barks in my face. He tells me she’s really very relaxed and that he needs to go and buy tobacco. Her name is Frida.
Yet again. “Here we are, stay calm, obtain information.” I think to myself with Frida on my lap, who may as well have been made of marble for how disturbingly heavy and powerful she felt. I stroked her box-shaped head and slowly shook my own in disbelief. Anyone scared of dogs can sort of relax, Frida was not the ultimate reason for ending this lift prematurely. Our driver returned surprisingly quickly, and dealt with the queue of beeping motorists behind us by speeding up onto the road and cutting in front of not a few grateful drivers. He then introduced himself as Guillermo. He was from Segovia and had been working a few years doing seasonal agricultural work around Europe. That day he was on his way to Switzerland. He explained to me that he should have a licence for Frida but doesn’t, and also that before joining the motorway he’d like to stop at Toys R Us and get a toy.
“Stay calm, obtain information about this man’s toy.” I think to myself, with Frida on my lap, praying to the God of Dogs to keep me safe outside Toys R Us in the idling van. I definitely remember trying to think if I knew how to begin killing a dog like that if it came to it. Hope the Dog God didn’t hear that one, but I suppose not since I still have both of my testicles.
Guillermo returned surprisingly quickly, with a toy wrapped in his jumper. We sped off and he threw the package to me. A sort of marble-run obstacle course built into an orb. He told me he was obsessed with them. Somewhere near the motorway entrance we have a conversation to the effect that Guillermo didn’t want to pay the French motorway toll and if I didn’t mind he would drive through the barriers. He explained that the barriers automatically spring forward under enough pressure and that it wouldn’t damage the car, but if I was willing to help him by running ahead of the van and pushing the barrier it might be useful. I responded that I didn’t mind how he drove but that I wouldn’t get out of a vehicle on a motorway.
I fell asleep soon after this conversation and awoke to a loud snapping sound followed by shrill beeps. “Ah yes, the motorway.” I thought to myself blearily as Guillermo floored it. Somewhere in the first 40km or so of those roads there is a September audience of very tall elephant grass. We were driving so fast I wondered if the police were coming for us, and I remember passing through the middle of this verge-side valley of feathered grass in the sunset, calmly pondering whether we might die there. I fell asleep again and awoke to the same snapping sound followed by the beeps.
“How many more of these are there?” I asked Guillermo.
“That was the last.” What followed felt like driving along southern France’s clandestine Nazca lines for 45 minutes and suddenly we were back on the national roads.
Guillermo gets a call from his friends in Bordeaux and rattles off in Spanish for a while. I listened to the conversation. Talk of dinner, some beers, a lot of weed and if there was any speed or MDMA, Guillermo would keep driving for the rest of the night. What Guillermo relayed to me was “I just spoke to my friends and we’re going to have dinner in Bordeaux if you feel like it.”
I looked up at the foot of the barn owl, swinging from the rear-view mirror. I thanked him but politely declined, explaining that what I needed was sleep and I wouldn’t get it as the passenger of someone under such a cocktail of drugs, regardless of their actual ability to drive.
He understood. I gave him a chorizo from my backpack to share with his friends and I hopped out into the woods.

The Sufi


This Friday just gone I was waiting in a petrol station in the Basque country trying to get a lift south. The petrol station was a bit too close to the city and situated right where the roads forked, so it was hard to know where the majority of the traffic was going. Most people seemed very well-dressed and looked like they were on their way to weekend plans. After about an hour and a half of standing there the daylight was fading and I was getting ready to find a place to sleep.
At that moment a man came past, looked at my sign, said he wasn't going that way and wished me the best of luck. He struck me as being someone worth talking to for a couple of reasons. One was his appearance. He was quite short, dressed in black working clothes that looked well-used. He had a bandana tied over his long brown-grey ponytail, wore round glasses and had a big bushy moustache. He looked a little bit like Robert De Niro and a bit like Elmo from Sesame street. I'd had a few shrugs and smiles that evening but there was something that suggested he was open to talking, so I asked him if he knew where I could camp around there. His smile straightened out and he looked at me carefully for a few seconds before saying: "You look like a good person. If you like you can stay at my place. I live in a converted bus in the woods."
I thought about this and said yes. He asked if I'd eaten and we drove to the supermarket to buy some salad. Whilst finding onions we bump into a friend of his. They speak in rapid Basque before the friend introduces himself to me in Spanish then laughs and says in English 'This man is a cowboy.' I wasn't quite sure how to take that one but we said our goodbyes and went to the till. I offered to pay for the salad and the cowboy refused.

During the drive to his it became apparent that he had been living alone for a long time, and it showed. There's a certain level of madcap thinking that comes from being alone which I tend to think is permissible but I wasn't sure on what side of the crazy line he fell. Later we drove past a pub and he said he doesn't go out much to bars as he's liable to get wild in them. At that remark I began to have some doubts and for the sake of posterity I decided to send a location-drop to a cool-headed friend who I knew would relay it to my family if I didn't re-appear in a few days. By that point we were actually in an area without reception and I had to abandon the idea. I sat there as we drove deeper and deeper down a thickly wooded mountain road, replaying our meeting in my head and reminding myself that it had been me who approached him initially.

Twenty minutes later I am sitting on a folding chair, watching big grey slugs sliding around the wooden surface of the improvised cable-reel table by candlelight. The man stands in the near distance washing the salad in a little basin screwed into a clump of hazel. He's shown me his horse, his numerous cats and kittens and the large french bus which he calls home. The interior is wooden-paneled and it must have taken a long time. There is a bathtub, a fold-down bed, a wood-burning stove and a large empty space at the back waiting for his time, money and thought.

He comes over with the food and suggests we eat in the bus. By this point I've reached peace with my initial feeling about his character and if there are further doubts I'll insist on sleeping up the hill in my bivi-bag.

In the bus we sit down to a small table laid with two plates of salad and some bread. The man goes outside and brings back a bottle of cider, explaining that his friend grows the apples and he helps press them in exchange for a couple of crates. I said I wouldn't drink a lot but would have some.

Well, we ate, drank and talked for about an hour. We talked about trees, woodland, family, expression of character, consumerism, time, money, perception of both and what things are necessary for living. He kept saying he had 'sufi'. This is a contraction of Spanish 'suficiente' and seemed appropriate to his mode of being. At this point he doesn't have much work, but he is a self-trained mechanic.

After dinner he explained that if I wanted a shower I was welcome to one and he'd leave the bus for as long as I took. I declined and he shrugged and laid out a thick folded blanket on the floor as a mattress for me. I fell asleep listening to the river and had the best night's rest I'd had in ten days.

In the morning I woke up and went outside. He was up washing his clothes and handed me a cup of coffee. It was about 9.30 and the sun was pouring into the valley. I walked around the place, inspecting the battered old minivan where he lived before the bus, the stable where his horse lived, the little garden where he was growing courgettes. After a brief conversation about gardening and a demonstration of scything he drove me back to the garage.

Kevin- 07/14


On a grey and drizzly day somewhere in central Norway I got stuck on a roadside bend in the hills. I waited patiently in the face of the wheeled milieu till my brain leaked out through my ears and decided to join the rabble of pines lining the road. We waited in a different mode, peering over the crash barrier-cordon to silently cheer on the trickle of cars. It must have been a race since none were stopping. After about forty minutes of spectatorship a camper van pulled over suddenly and I was a person again, surprised it was a camper van because I’d long since given up on even trying with them. Most of them had Dutch or Belgian plates and a retired couple glaring at me with suspicion behind map and steering wheel.
In this case I didn’t see the driver. As I walked up hefting pack over shoulder the side door popped open and a smiling blonde haired man stuck his head out. Slightly round face, short hair, crow’s eyes framing blue's eyes.

“Hey there, we’re heading south for about an hour if that’s any good?”
“Thanks a lot, that would be a massive help.”
“Oh are you English? Maybe you can help my son Kevin practise his English.”
I follow him into the van and a boy looks up from his place at the table.
I greet him and shake his hand. He is a very relaxed-looking ten-year-old, and minus some puppy fat he is his father’s double. I can see this because the man is standing beside Kevin with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, beaming with pride.

“You see I named him Kevin because he looks so much like Kevin in home alone.”
I briefly wonder how much a newborn can look like Macaulay Culkin in his prime, but I take the veracity of such origin stories pretty lightly given how many conflicting ones I’ve heard about 'Michaelangelo'.

I hear a toilet flush. The bathroom door opens and a startled woman emerges. She looks like she could be Thai and it later turns out that she is.

“Oh…hi?”
The father explains he’s picked up a hitcher to teach Kevin.

“Ahh, ok! Welcome to our van!” She beams at me.
Husband and wife climb back into the front seats and off we go.
Kevin and I are left in the back of the van as we wend through the alpine drizzle.
He speaks to me in perfect English, with an accent somewhere between Norwegian and American.

“This is weird. You’re the first hitch-hiker I’ve ever met. I’ve only seen them in video games.”
I laugh and assure him that we are out there in the world, whilst taking out my paper and pen to doodle. Kevin’s relaxed air is interesting. To me it seemed borne of a sort of worldly confidence that I roughly associate with eldest siblings and only-children, rather than the relaxed air of someone whose head is in the clouds (speaking for myself here).
He’s relaxed in the way that someone like Alexander Von Humboldt might be relaxed; prepared to be surprised by newcomers but not expecting to be fazed. In fact, writing this now I bet Kevin had met a thousand hitchhikers and was just trying to make a rudderless traveller feel noteworthy for a moment. Courteous devil.

“So Kevin, tell me what you like doing?” I am slowly drawing a sort of amorphous monster, the kind of thing I usually draw to let my head wander.
“Well I like minecraft. I mean I’m always on minecraft building things, buying things, selling things. And then what I really like to do is troll people.”
I look up from my drawing, interested. Kevin continues.
“I’ll say I’m selling something and get someone to follow me to a far-out part of the map where I’ve built a trap. I kill them, film their reactions and stick them on youtube. Oh man, some of them actually cry. You wouldn’t believe it.” He is smiling just at the memory of it. My first thought is that Kevin needs very little help with his English from me, given his ability to operate in the cybersphere at a Machiavellian level, entirely in his second language.

Kevin’s stepmother walked to the back of the van and came to the table some minutes later, offering us a plate of spring rolls.
We thanked her and continued our conversation, munching away as the road straightened out and we descended slowly into flatter territory. I asked Kevin what sort of outdoor activities he enjoyed and he explained to me that he saw most of the outdoors in Norway as being either dark, wet, cold, scary or exhausting. He preferred to be inside, usually playing videogames. I asked him to explain more about his aversion to the outside world and we carried on, sharing ideas about how differing variables would affect these approaches. He pointed out I was bigger, older and perhaps more weatherproof. I added that I was probably less technologically engaged. At that point in fact I was travelling without any electric or electronic devices, with the exception of a torch. An entertaining decision during the 24-hour daylight of summer in the far north. I told Kevin that on the solstice in Lofoten I emerged from my tent after an indefinite period of bad weather. I asked a passing walker for the time and he told me 9 o’clock. A moment later I had to run after him to see whether he meant the morning or the evening.
Kevin seemed unable to waste words in acknowledging such a misguided experiment. The conversation turned to art somehow as he began to take interest in my doodling. It was just at this moment that the van slowed to a stop.
His parents told me they were about to turn off the main road and so this was me.

I thanked them for the lift, the spring rolls and the conversation, tore the drawing out of my notebook and handed it to Kevin.
I grabbed my bag, said my goodbyes and disembarked from the camper van. As I stood by the roadside putting my bag on my back I noticed Kevin was still in the doormframe, eyeing the drawing. He looked up at me, waved and shouted.

“You’re a creative genius!” I laughed and said thanks.

Hitching: A-A
So here's an excerpt of a time this year where I waited 5 hours, was offered one lift going the wrong way and decided to give up and get the bus. I'm including it on this page because the experience still put me into the frame of mind that hitching puts me in, whether or not I got any lifts. I'm not putting as much time into a write-up as normal, just copying in what I wrote on the day with a few notes.

"Metro line 1 to Pinar de Chamartín. 26/03/18 6-something AM

A long time since the last voyage in this direction. That was late August 2016 and I had the sun on my side...well for half a day, anyway.
Feels as if time already has a different edge to it. Does it come from choosing to perceive it in this way, or is a free day* the genuine requirement that allows this perception? Look forward to passing through the keyhole and getting on the highways. Every time is always the first time.





5.20pm Bus to San Sebastian/Bordeaux
Of course for 5 hours of standing there, reality did bear certain fruits. One was the sunrise.
Not spectacular by any standard, but the first I've seen in what feels like a long time.
For all of Tarkovsky's words on mise en scene in cinema betraying the raw incongruence of real scenes in life, I was presented with the arrival of a van of taoists disembarking beneath the row of blossom-laden cherry trees outside the Fountain of Mora. (Fuente De Mora, train station)
Of course the driver came over to offer me a lift, except she was heading towards the national road to Barcelona.**
So at least I've proven to myself that hitching when you have a place and time to be in is a bad idea....though of course if I'd been struck by one of those occasional but completely possible (and perhaps statistically inevitable) miracle lifts, I wouldn't be saying this.
Any damage done by the experience? I don't think so. I know travelling like this is about patience, gratitude, time and hope, and today the thought that 'hitch-hiking is about forgetting' became a sort of mantra. I may've forgotten just what I meant by that.
Now on a surprisingly cheap bus up to Bordeaux and ready to soak up overland travel on the first warm spring day, in stimulating surroundings."


*What I mentioned before was a free day in terms of work. But it was the first day of the Easter holidays and I was falling in love with someone who at that point still lived in Bordeaux.
** She came walking up to me slowly with a calm smile, car keys in hand. Khakis and taoism-t shirt. First interaction in a few hours. The warmth of her personality and the scenery and arrival of that van made the whole morning worth it.

"A slip-road is a road which cars use to drive on and off a motorway."/
"It is a great temptation to want to make the spirit explicit."*/
Talking about absolutely nothing





There are a couple of words that trigger a surge of dopamine in my head. One is 'Patrick', a hangover from my formative years as diligent accomplice and hagiographer to my closest brother in age, whose ability to roam the house each night stealing food to order was one of the several things about him that filled me with a reverence that lingers. I can remember the long minutes waiting in fevered hope for him to come back to our bedroom with the peanut butter jar and some spoons. He'd reappear, tiptoeing through the door gingerly, neck stretched and ears straining so as not to fuck up the last few steps. As soon as he closed the door the cautious look changed into his trademark beam of victory...admittedly it was the victory of the axis of liquid modernity and corn syrup over our metabolism and our parent's sanity, but that beaming smile was like the sun returning anew. He's still mythic and continues to pollute reality with sparks, much to the confusion of most friends we introduce him to.

The second word is 'slip-road'. Dear god. A slip-road is such a beautiful thing.
Accessible, usually on the edge of a town. The bandwidth of a motorway without threat of arrest, close enough to civilisation that there's always a plan B. Basically a legitimated spot in an edge environment. All roads lead to Rome, but often there are barriers, tolls, police or no place for cars to pull over. A good slip-road with space for cars to stop makes it feels like mercy is alive and well in the world, hiding in planning oversights and maintenance access.

I was recently in Galicia on a four-day trip. I'm not going to go blow-by-blow because I think my approach to chronicling these trips is changing a bit. I don't want to write a directory of kind or helpful humans, but have another go at seeing what happens to my brain at the roadside.




On Saturday in Ferrol, Galicia, I was looking for a place to get a lift out in the direction of A Coruña to see the famous 2000 year-old lighthouse I learnt about whilst researching Roman Hispania for my history classes this year. I stood by a zebra crossing for twenty minutes or so until a local man with a great bristly walrus moustache and blues brothers shades came over and told me that despite my waiting in the right place for the motorway, nobody was in that much of a rush and I'd be better to wait on the other side of the city center where the national road headed east before going south.
"Thank you, sir."
Cue discovery of a slip-road (!) heading out to the FE-14 and my next interaction some time later, a dog-walking man with hair like white seaweed draped over a rock raising his finger to tell me how I'd be there all day. Poor guy was interrupted by a car pulling over beside us and he waved bye as I ran up to it.
Me: "Hola! Dónde vas?" (Hi, where are you going?)
Bald, round faced sea-eyed man with cold expression: "I'm going to Vladivostok."
Shit, I thought I'd found the motherlode there. Hard to turn down a lift that long. He seemed Russian, but Jesús turned out to be a retired Galician shipping captain on his way to A Coruña. A man who loved his 45 years at sea and missed it dearly in his retirement. 'I used to travel the world. Now I just travel from Ferrol to A Coruña and back.' A conversation held together by reflections on the radio station M80 and its pop songs. Jesús told me about an interest in travelling around Russia in the 80s using his four months on, two months off schedule. To do so he had joined the communist party in Galicia, got a letter of recommendation and managed to travel from Galicia to Madrid to Paris to Moscow by train, followed by 16 days on the train to Vladivostok. He spent a week there and came back. This story was interrupted by Sheryl Crow's 'All I wanna do is have some fun'. As soon as it came on he fell silent and turned the volume up as far as it would go.

The trip didn't go as (un)planned in the sense that I'd meant to be there longer but hadn't packed properly for the occasion. The heatwave fell apart and the rain returned. I'd brought a guitar for the first time, but hadn't realised how damaged my boots were. I think when I stepped on a nail two years ago the change in my gait introduced sore spots. Having walked in comfortable boots for so many years, it's hard to see the point of giving myself blisters when it's something I'm lucky enough to be able to change.

From A Coruña I had a great lift with two Dutch surfers/vagabonds in a van who came back from a roundabout to pick me up because one of them had spent time hitching in the Andes where you can wait 5 hours for a single car to reject you. And where a single lift could often last a day. That night I ended up in the campsite on the beach where they'd heard the surf was good.

I realised that night that it was probably the last trip I'd have using that tent. I wasn't prepared for how sad that made me.
I don't tend to think of myself as someone who gets that attached to objects, but that thing has kept me out of heavy rain and snow for five years. There have been so many nights where you wander around alone at stupid o'clock trying to find a place to sleep, or you get that last extra lift and suddenly you're deeper in the countryside and can pitch it where you like. You fall asleep genuinely laughing because you're so happy to be safe and dry for the night. There was a week in 2013 when I was able to share that nightly relief with a man I was travelling with on foot, but apart from that I've been alone, and I associate that sense of utter joy with the green walls of my tent.
What killed it is three cumulative months over three years of being absolutely hammered by UV, dust and storms when working at a festival in Aragón. The mosquito net is torn in places, all zips are broken and the hole in the fly is starting to spread.
I'll move on and keep on finding that sense of joy in shelter in and out of other tents, and I suppose it's really just the ratio around body temperature, dryness and lack of foreign organisms in your personal space that ticks the 'you are saved' box. The tent is the skin around that experience but you can find it in other places.


By the afternoon I was back down the mountains and onto the yellow table of Spain, where I waited here for three and a half hours. Not my own photo but it's exactly how it was:

Dead road at 3pm. I'd tried hitching further up the road where all possible routes converge but had no luck, so went to the garage to escape sunburn. I met the station attendant, Gabriel and we had a protracted conversation backed by three hours of glacial clouds and tilting shadows, and interspersed with him filling up petrol for the odd car that rolled up.
He told me about the feeling of racing his lithe leaf-green Kawasaki, and proudly talked about his four American Staffordshire terriers. They have their own swimming pool and he spends €280 a month on dog food. I wish I had a photo of his face when he spoke about them. Pure sunshine.
He kept asking if I was bored, and seemed puzzled that I wasn't disappointed when people passed on.

What I was thinking about and couldn't express to him in my bad Spanish is that one of the odder modes alive and well in my head is where one treats everything in one's current plot of physical reality as a personalised metaphor or poem. In an effort to glean value out of the terrifying raw drone of time, you basically act as if you are inside an idiosyncratic world that you've created.
As if your own thoughts had origami-ed themselves into matter.
I'm not solipsistic enough to actually believe I live in such a world, but I find that to entertain that model once in a while gives me a great sense of peace and allows time to pass. It is because it imparts any situation with a sense of curation. Anything can be looked at and examined and analysed for symbolism and comparison. Oil is a theme that often comes up, ever present in the circulatory systems of both roads and the network of Chinese manufacturing that beats its plastic blood throughout the world. The latter network is something I call Pulmonary Sinensis and I got it from standing at garages looking at cars and trash.

In reference to the second sub-title of this post, I feel I'm close to tacking directly into the wind so I'm going to stop. All I wanted to do was add a little bit more to the chronicles of how waiting at the side of the road expresses itself in my organism. I remain an addict of and prisoner of the sensation, so this is just another leaf of the jail diary.



*Ludwig Wittgenstein

Aman; A part
An episode from the recent hitch from Madrid to London. Rest soon.

At 4 in the morning it started bucketing. Nervous engines pre-stoked by a few hours of light-infused half-sleep, my body reacted suddenly and I came to consciousness stood under a tree, sleeping bag and rucksack in hand. Small joy in being surprisingly dry, soon crushed under the recognition of how little sleep I'd actually had.
Initially bedding down had been fun- a skulking tour of the waysides and a trip through a hole in a fence into the inviting black fields adjacent– until it dawned all I'd done was catalogue every of the truckers' ideal piss perches then almost throw my sleeping bag down in a manured furrow.
The pitch I'd just leapt up from was the one innocuous place I'd found climbing back through that hole. Anyway, rain avoided, I toddled off to a dry spot in the doorway of an abandoned restaurant in the service station. Threw down yesterday's signs to add a bit of padding to the roll mat and the half-hearted attempt at more sleep. It didn't work and I was soon browsing the garage for coffee and non-extortionate foodstuffs.
At that point I came across a card to give my dad for his Ph.D graduation (one of two reasons I was hitching to the UK.)


A bit of a nutty card (old photograph of a zookeeper dropping a shovel-load of birthday cake into a hippo's jaws),but you have to know my Dad. Whole thing is summed up by the expression of the zoo-keeper, lip curled in a show of considerable muscle strain and flagrant curiosity at how much confection can be dropped into the maw in one go. To me it suggested the spirit of enquiry at the moment of its absolution.
Some time spent outside of the garage with my sign, watching what I guessed were two colleagues rambling away in French together. Guys in their 50s, both with spectacles, curly grey hair, smart shoes, tight jeans and shirts tucked in. Just quietly observing them. Six cigarettes and four coffees later they got into separate cars and disappeared. I padded off to the main entrance of the service station to meet the 'dawn', or the wan grey misty barometric car wash that passes for dawn at that time in that place. Spain has ruined me- the sun lives there and merely haunts the rest of Europe.
Playing the game of numbers, waiting there gave maximum advertising to the maximum number of people. I think an hour later the rain went up a gear again.
Coming back to throw myself on the bench inside I realised I'd been in that station for 13 hours.
"Hey!"
I looked up to see a teenage boy smiling at me from the bench across the way. Sat beside two women, whom I guessed were his sister and mother from the resemblance. Mother wore a headscarf, smiling politely, leaning forward with her hands folded. The two teenagers were sat up straight, beaming, eyes engaged with my bag and sign.
Boy: "Everything's going to be fine! You just have to have that mindset."
Me: "Thanks, I'm glad to hear someone else thinks the same."
He and his sister got up and came over to talk, and we spent about half an hour on life goals, the military, becoming a millionaire by the time you're thirty, curiosity, teaching, the road from Morocco to Amsterdam and school in Holland. I showed them the card I'd chosen and the boy fell on the floor in tears of laughter...twice actually.
When I arrived at sunset the evening before I wrote in my notebook that all I could hope for at that hour was a good conversation. Took half a day but it worked. If I was scientifically persistent enough I'd consider a study on the fatigue-eliminating aspect of positive acknowledgment at the roadside. Some days before in Burgos when I was at my wit's end (sleepless start to the day, endless marching, sore feet, rain and a dead national road) a garage owner came over, looked at my route, paused and opted for buoyant prescription over leaden/realistic prognosis:"Buena suerte!"(Good luck!) and a pat on the back.
That was an intense day for a number of reasons, but any small kindness during the wait acts as a pivot and the slate is wiped. You get on with it. In Burgos this meant a vampirical springing to the feet and the next car stopping immediately and whisking me to Irún.
In the same way, the thirteen hours in that station south of Lille was immediately redeemed by the positivity and openness of those two young people. The boy was somewhere between woeful and angry that both myself and his sister couldn't give him a firm answer in terms of a life goal, but we talked that over till he was sure we had them and they were just latent. His is to finish school in a year so that he can join the army and start making some serious money.
Their father came in from napping in the car to collect them for the drive back to Holland. We said our goodbyes and here again prescription was chosen over prognosis- they thought I'd get a lift but also that I'd be in France at least another day, and they just said good luck. I wished them the same and said farewell, and as the boy trailed the rest of his family out the door he stopped suddenly, came back, shook my hand and introduced himself as Aman.

Well Aman, if you end up here somehow, thanks to you and your sister for that chat. Ten minutes later I got a lift all the way to Brixton.

"Love is the only thing you get more of by giving it away."- Exupery / A Midwinter Hitch

Written at time (25/12):
'Sheltering in Lisbon where all seagulls come to winter on dropped bacalao and uneaten sardines.No snow but a festive scene produced by the strivings of an erupted beanbag in a winding back alley. Polystyrene balls all over the shop.

Came through Extremadura in Luis's truck (cargo was bananas). Landscape like a bar billiards table dotted with oaks for toadstools. Stork nesting on a 20 ft novelty roadside tomato bid us safe passage out of Spain. Soon over the border we were greeted by cranes stepping through the fog on their hunt for food. Luis dropped me half an hour before sunset on a small road 70km from Lisbon. After when a stream of cars passed (many farm pickups stacked with hay, all with drivers shaking their heads doubtfully) I told myself to enjoy being surprised by who'll be on the road at this time. Sure enough André and Sandra soon stopped and whisked me to Lisbon whilst giving me a tour of their worlds in perfect English. Made it to the main train station to hear 'God only knows' playing on the radio.'


Doesn't cover the untold generosity I received at the hands of two thoughtful hitchhiking buskers (Agata and Michal) who decided to rent and open an apartment to travellers for two months. I stayed here for 5 days and learnt important lessons from my hosts and other visitors about how literally vital it is to remember how to give.

The way out there was simple enough, just a metro ride to a garage on the west side of Madrid. Within 20 seconds of waiting Javier drove me 10km down the road to the next station. As I stood waiting for the sun to come up a driver noticed me shaking my hands for warmth and gave me a pair of gloves. Soon after Javier 2 drove me 20km to a station in the countryside where the grass was frosted and waiting was just enjoying the sun and quiet, till Jaime appeared and got me about 50km further to another countryside gas station in Castilla. From here I met Luis (as mentioned above).

To be honest there's not much more I can say about Lisbon asides from its sleepiness and dreamy atmosphere (and the creativity inherent in the thought of being as far west as one can go on the 'rope, and how far eurus bears you past that). The trip has raised far more questions about Portugal than answers, but I will be back to explore and meet more people there. My stay was spent more in being perplexed at how to contribute to a situation created by people who are content with relatively little. I guess the answer as usual is to find ways to pass that on. Great conversations and walks with a Dutch busker named Daan who had just come off the camino and gotten over the theft of his backpack and belongings with resounding positivity.

Left Portugal on Monday at 6am. Found the first Hitchwiki plan backfired fast and instead of an on-ramp to the bridge out of Lisbon I ended up with plan 2- two trains and a scramble around a fence to reach a motorway service station. Starting there at 8am it was two hours till Sonia took me 20km up the road on her way to work. The next wait was 5 hours. Most of it spent at the entrance addressing the stream of cars and adjacent oak tree with a smile and a sign, and then addressing myself with the memories of luck, kindness and possibility that flicker past when you're waiting.
For some reason a moment that cracked my face in a wide grin was a man with his family looking at me as his wife drove past. He didn't frown or shake his head, but watched with an anxious smile as if waiting for the finale of my roadside show, whilst practically squeezing the air with his hands for reassurance. I can't put it into words really, it just felt like he'd decided he was going to be a bystander to the whole thing and then couldn't decide if perhaps he'd made a mistake. I don't blame him but it puzzled me until just after they'd passed, when I realised I'd have to remember carefully never to make that expression to anyone asking for help. The thought filled me with laughter.

Eventually Duarte tapped me on the shoulder and got me out of there. (Lest I forget to mention it, the average English level in Portuguese is another demonstration of how effective it is to subtitle rather than dub English films and TV.) He told me about life in Luanda (Angola) and the difficulty of watching your children grow up over skype, and shared thoughts about moving to London and the reassuring sense of privacy he'd feel there in comparison to his hometown of 60,000 people. I also learnt a lot about the cork industry and the diversity of cultures and landscapes in Portugal.

Reckoning I'd do better on the national road to Spain he dropped me in the rain at the junction where this was possible. I was about ready to call it a day then but said to myself 'Ten more cars.' There were so many it was easy to slip to "Ok, after 50 cars...".
Soon taken a few more km up the road by Claudio. As soon as I got in the car the conversation turned into one about English, and then his teenage son's proficiency in it. Within minutes I was speaking to his son on speaker phone about hitching, living in Madrid, what it's like to be in a band and 'Did my dad tell you he plays sax? Not yet? Ask him!'.
The rest of this drive was spent listening to his son's rock band, interspersed with Claudio stopping the car to point out biological curiosities of the region.
As soon as he stopped I realised it was time to call it a day. Past daylight, empty garage, rain coming in, temperature drop and lettering-akimbo roadside hotel a field's hop away.
I don't know if waiting at the roadside all day and then spending a little money for a lot of comfort counts as living 'the middle way', but not wanting to repeat my usual hitching pattern of 'hitch until you can't stand and then get ill not sleeping enough in the cold' I decided to take the risk that it's not.

This morning at 6am I practically skipped down the drive to the same empty garage and stood there smiling at cars and dancing for warmth for about 5 hours again. Can't put my finger on the thought pattern, there is a happiness that returns every time I remember I put myself into this situation and a bored stupour that comes on once in a while. I wouldn't change any of it. Spent a long time thinking about Van Gogh, it was basically his scene. Big field with a row of bare elm trees in the mid distance, and on the opposite side tilled earth and tidy olive trees watched over carefully by a flock of brown sheep, each slowly jingling the bell it wore.

Well 5 hours of Van Gogh and roadside dementia can do a lot for a person's morale. I packed in my sign (España) at 11 and was making plans to hitch to the nearest train station when a pickup stopped and Luis the foreman offered me a 30km ride down the national road.

Any lift after a wait like that just wipes the slate and you're ready for the next one. Brief chat about politeness in Portugal and Spain and a bunch of location tips for my return in the spring (well that has a lot of plans to fight with but all the best to it), and a brief look at the incredible aqueduct looming out of the fog in Elvas. Throwing caution to the winds I thumbed again and instantly met Antonio who told me he would be passing through Madrid. After a brain tumour and surgical complications ushered him into early retirement he's been living up in Andorra and was returning there.
Exaltation pervades all hitch-hiking. It probably pervades most human situations but for me this is the place where you have the time and social estrangement to really take it on board. And I suppose as with everything else it depends on exposure to chaos and how good one's narrative engine is at sewing the whole story up neatly in hindsight, but jesus christ. The whole thing flips around and what was to be a slightly downbeat bus-ride to Madrid becomes a shoehorning back into the context of yet another person you wished you'd known sooner, and elation at gradually making the distance home to sleep.

10km from Madrid (as Antonio took the road off to Zaragoza) I got my final lift from a young Spanish couple about to drop off their rental car and fly home to Majorca. They dropped me in Goya and I metro-ed home on a cloud of 'did that really happen?' whenever I thought about the morning in Evora. Whole trip's still sinking in but just glad to have recharged my faith in standing at the roadside and to have re-exercised my patience.

Basel-Peckham (1000ish km)


I'm dedicating this post to Ule whom I met when I left Basel. The friendly skating guitarist hitcher who tried to get us both a lift to Berlin before I told him to abandon me and take the seat that was offered him. He emailed to say he made it to Norway with the help of a sushi delivery van so all's well ends well.
EDIT: Also I realise my first driver didn't make the cut. Milaim, I hope your sister lends you that audi again. Sun sun sun on the autobahn, the music of Kosovo and the blur of cars. I think perhaps you had to drive that fast in order for us to break the membrane of regular reality and re-enter the luck rhizome. It definitely worked and I am forever grateful.

Sleeping in the trees in a black forest service station. Hearing the night people (mice? birds?) run around the bushes, waking up to a cool dappled morning and snail slime on my jumper. Packed up the sleeping bag, rollmat, tarp and my cardboard mattress made of tomorrow's signs.
Dropped off there the night before by a Czech cycling trainer on his way back from a competition, van full of bikes and good stories about divorce and medals as we wended through the evening's hills. Gave him a wooden spoon and hopped the fence for some sleep.
Despite the early vantage point it took a while to get out of the black forest but I managed it with 'smokeshow' Udo, a man whose car was ominously painted with clouds of smoke. This omen was to be safely disregarded and we had a good three hour journey together, talking about the state of cargo shipping, typewriter repair and how owning a car is like owning a barrel without a bung.
Two hours in Köln where the truckers were lunching. Eventually a lift from a Romanian driver on his way to France via Belgium. Nice lift and a good chat about language learning and how his young son refuses to leave him for even a moment when they're together. Even if he goes to the toilet for a minute the boy starts crying apparently. Frustratingly this truck didn't have a passenger seatbelt, didn't bother me at first but as we got into one of the most monitored (and also accident-ridden) stretches of the road I recalled both the price of the fine and the nagging feeling that it was an unnecessary level of risk.
Sure it's only perception-based, I was once travelling with an ex-paramedic German truck driver who doesn't wear his seatbelt because he's been to too many truck crashes where the driver was left crushed and in a state of life he personally didn't wish to survive. I'm inclined to agree with his position, but he was stopped and fined that day (by two policemen, one was checking him and the other was confiding to me about his disappointment at the state of English fish and chips). Anyway, this seatbelt thing obviously seems to be a nagging point with me still, but I went with my gut, thanked the driver and got dropped off in some tiny little toilet stop.
Not remembering where I was exactly, I wrote a mix of English and German in order to get a lift to the next petrol station. Siegbert the Austrian engineer came through for me and told me about his son's job in Warwick, working in a factory with a process to get the air bubbles out of glass.
Dropped at a big petrol station somewhere in Flanders, instantly met by a tall, thin, bristled and smiling French hitchhiker with whom I swapped few words but a lot of good will and cardboard for his next sign. I saw him again 5 minutes later waving and grinning furiously as he passed in the passenger seat of a white car rejoining the motorway. I was picked up by Jean Francis, who lived in Belgium but worked in a prison in France as a tutor for school exams. Great music and slow roads, and a hopeful conversation about growing public awareness of the correlations between literacy, dyslexia and the prison system. He intended to get me to a famous petrol station for hitchhikers called Courtrijk. I arrived there with a sense of deja vu and found my name on a lamppost. Good to put a name to the place, last year I got to Dover from the same spot in one lift.
Brief and funny interaction with an energetic and helpful man, bald, moustache, thick gold hoop earrings, purple silk shirt and gesticulating wildly with a sandwich. He tried at first to speak to me in Belgian, but then broke into English.
"Good luck, but to be honest why don't you wait closer to the entrance than the exit? Why not be rational? Haha!"
I thanked him for the suggestion and with a roll of his eyes and a broad smile he replied:"Oh that's just me, I help anyone I can!" I followed his instructions and after a 5 second introduction to a newly arrived French hitcher I was off with Kenneth the lifeguard towards Dunquerque (him and a friend had a creepy lift going through Poland, involved them jumping off the back of a tractor in the middle of the night on some country road). Dropped in a service station next to two ducks, an approaching storm and a man cleaning out a car with a UK licence plate. The ducks were waddling towards Belgium so I asked the English guy instead.
A lot of hitchers swear by approaching people and directly asking for lifts but this is something I've never done before*. I said as much to Chris and he kindly said "Well yeah, my plan is to sleep in my car tonight but if you can fit in you can have the front seats, better than being out in this storm."
He was meant to be off to the UK the following day but decided he was up for trying to get an earlier ferry so we drove off to Dunquerque, getting a bit lost on the way. It was a fortuitous meeting given we both seem to have sprawled our lives across Europe a bit. Chris had been working in Austria, was about to go back, had just bought an old French house in creaky disrepair and had to go and see some family in the UK. If over-organisation precipitates entropy (as someone said) than I hope the opposite holds true and Chris'll go on for a few hundred years as haphazard and affable as he is now. He couldn't change his ticket at the ferry port, and I couldn't get a foot passenger ticket, so we slept in the car and in the morning he insisted on driving me to the foot-passenger ferry port in Calais, a good few km away. I think the reason I'm dwelling on Chris is it just made me think of the balance met between tight schedules and random acts of kindness. No conclusions to draw as so many examples contradict each other (I remember gasping open mouthed when a speeding ford screeched to a halt, the driver barked at me to get in or he'd miss his ferry, and I was sped down the road by a friendly fisherman who'd previously made an oath never to drive past a hitchhiker) but there's some sort of fulcrum in there.
At the ferry port I gave Chris a wooden spoon and promptly bumped into and broke bread with a man hitching back to Bradford from Belarus, carrying a big brass begging bowl and a lot of weariness....gave him a wooden spoon too actually.
Ferry uneventful except for loud announcements about binge drinking from the guys running the cafe. Lift out of Dover with a GP trying to alleviate the burden of the elderly on the NHS (in his words), got me to Folkestone services where I waited 5 hours last year. 5 minutes this time and had a lift with an HGV driver with a dirty laugh and tons of good hitching and travelling stories about the UK and Mexico in the 90's. Last drop at a service station near Heathrow, where I was driven into Peckham by a young couple on their way back from the airport in a gleaming mercedes (they had it on courtesy after their car packed in the week before). Greg runs an adventure travel business and Ann is an academic working in Media and Middle Eastern studies. That lift was one of the smoothest homecomings so far, riding around in a mercedes discussing media saturation, universities as employers, the value of long distance walking, desert festivals...we got onto Marxism and then Greg reminded us what we were driving and we put our heads down in shame.
Jumped out in sunny Peckham, folded and binned my 'London' and ran off into a very dreamlike week of a much-meandering mental pollen reconnaisance.



*This is a point of ongoing debate. I think I understand the pros of asking people for lifts but for me personally I prefer to stand around looking like a patient and friendly hyperlink. Just different ways really. For me the paradox has been that if you look patient you can end up getting offered lifts much faster than if you're trying to get a lift to be on time, and I'd consider asking people something that happens more when you're short of time (although it might not be).
The other factor is that the time spent standing at the roadside waiting and smiling is some of the richest thinking time I know. Perhaps the closest socially widespread version of it is the appreciation people have of fishing as a leisure activity (regardless of the catch). It also overlays well with the idea of creative activity as a form of mental or spiritual fishing. If there's not much to see outside you try inside and vice versa, and whatever else happens you are contributing to the stockpile of accumulated time in strange places and a wordless sense of pattern about these talking mammals who fill metal boxes with anaerobic dino-slime and invite you to share their world for a couple of hours.

Footnotes to Sunlight

“Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.”- Alfred North Whitehead

I like the idea of shrinking swathes of history into a few footnotes, and I like to adjust that quote to say that natural history is a series of footnotes to sunlight. The archetypal human obsession with the sun is good fun if you’re ever at a loose end, and spending innumerable hours by the road under the midnight sun managed to pull me through this obsession and out the other side (for now).


The road has taken me back to the UK for a week to see my family and meet my new niece. It was surreal going from 4 hours sleeping in a ditch in Reading to holding a new family member in the same day, but the last 8 weeks has been a catalogue of surreal goodness. I’ve been wanting to write some sort of summary for a while, specifically since talking about it with Lars after he picked me up ill and sleep deprived between two big storms around Toten in Norway.
Thank you again for that Lars, and thank you to everyone I’ve met, been helped by or been able to help, and before I forget- one thing I’ve learnt on this trip is mobile numbers are very useful to have when you turn up in a friend’s city by accident (emailing people at 11pm is a bit subtle) here’s mine: +34 600 70 10 39 )

I came to Oslo in June to see a close friend, meet her (solid and lovely) family and get some head space, and she said that if I was in Norway with no plan I should go to Karlsoy festival near Tromso.
So the next day after using hitchwiki to get out of Oslo I got a lift from a man named Hans who took me to Trondheim and told me basically everything he knew about shipping phosphorus, sailing to Japan, breeding and racing horses, running discos and destroying cold war bunkers (he was off to catch a plane to Tromso to meet his demolition team). As soon as he dropped me I stuck my thumb out and two climbers picked me up, told me to go to a place called Paradise (in Lofoten) and then dropped me off in a town called Hell where I was stuck for a few hours. Made it to Steinkjer with a bookseller and started the next day hopping around avoiding shitting seagulls as I tried to pack the tent up. Got up to Mo I Rana the next evening and on the third day the first people to stop were a couple of Swedish climbers on their way to Lofoten, so next moment (or four hours later after crossing the snowy arctic circle listening to ‘walk the line’) I’m on a boat with them going across the sea to distant snowy peaks replete with about fifty rainbows…I began to wonder if ‘Paradise’ was some phenomenally well-funded gay club at this point but it turned out to be a climber’s paradise with great camping spots. Climbed cliffs at midnight on the solstice and then spent a very long time in my coffin-sized tent as the weather went down to 4 degrees with sleet. Came out without knowing what day or time it was (turned out it’d been two days). In fact I rarely knew what time it was for the whole trip- no watch or phone and the sun didn’t go down.

After some cold weather indecision I hitched to Tromso where a fresh bout of snow (and indecision) had fallen, so I tried to go into Finland out of curiosity. Wiggo the mechanics teacher took me to Kilpisjarvi, pointed out that I was unlikely to get a lift that day and said come to Lakselv so you can hitch to Nordkapp (northernmost point in mainland Europe, some claim). Well, nothing like a long car journey so we hopped some borders to pick up cheap Snuss (tobacco you put under your top lip) in Sweden and drove back through Finland into Norway. Next day a lovely Estonian couple took me up to Nordkapp where I saw snow, tundra, reindeer, a surprising number of houses, a big edge and then nothing but sea till Svalbard. Sent a postcard and did a U turn. After standing an hour in the snow I was picked up by the same Estonian couple on their way back down. I then took the scenic route back to Tromso and when I got stuck and bought warm clothes in Alta the temperature then shot up to 24 celsius.
Ended up on Karlsoy a week before the festival and spent the days building the main stage and the evenings walking back to my tent on the beach in complete disbelief at the beauty of the place. Words won’t do it. Also let it be said that the happiest seagulls I have ever seen are those on Karlsoy. After a brilliant festival and helping take the stage down I was given a goatskin by Svein Eigil (really felt like I was in an RPG) and hitched out for Finland curiosity part 2.
So, back in Kilpisjarvi in 30 degree heat- when you come over from Tromso the scenery changes suddenly from mountains to flatland with small birches and occasional lakes. I was standing there with my thumb out at noon, glaring sun, empty road, shimmering heatwaves, tundra getting embarrassingly dry- three reindeer trot past me calmly, turn right and walk onto the porch of the house behind, where they beat their antlers on the door and then sit down. At that moment I vowed to make ‘Acid Lapland’ a music genre. Marlena from Finnmark picked me up on her way back home for a festival (lot of Norwegians ride through these roads to avoid the slightly slower coastal route on their way back to Norway). She dropped me 50km of Muonio where I finally met the famous Finnish mosquitoes. People tell you about having to clean their windscreens several times in a journey to get the dead ones off, or tell you that they thought they saw smoke from a forest fire but it was clouds of the winged bastards. I hadn’t taken this on board so ended up waiting around having to constantly fan myself with my hitching sign because repellent (strong stuff, mind) doesn’t work. In order to think straight I dropped the sign, put up my tent (eyes practically closed to keep them out and bitten every step of the way), crawled inside and passed out from the relief.


Here’s a diary excerpt:

“Finland can only get better. I’m sleep deprived, sweaty, cowering in my mosquito frame noting the ones that get through and cursing how. It’s 9pmish, sun is high. No lifts. Many men turning to stare at me through mirrored glass as they drive German automobiles past, accelerating as a gesture of ill will. Bad vibe from couple I tried to ask about camping. Doubt I’ll sleep long if at all.”

..the next morning..

“No water. No cars. Plan is to save strength then walk back, beg borrow or steal to Kilpis and back into Norway I think.

...shortly after...

"Saved by missionaries. In Kilpis now.”

Long conversation with Helsinki missionaries about working in Uganda and the meaning of life and then they dropped me in Nordkjosbotn, near Tromso.

Don’t worry, Finland round 3 is on its way when I start again. My curiosity continues to go up and lessons have been learned about mosquito repellent and listening to people’s warnings, as well as knowing about how the population of a country is dispersed (184,000 of Finland’s 5.4million people are in Lapland). Will probably start in the south next time. I still smile fondly at the thought of those cheery mosquitoes because it’s a hell of a good memory for the “I’ve waited longer in worse” mantra I occasionally play in my head whilst at the roadside. Nothing like hindsight to describe a plague of mosquitoes as a host of much-maligned and misunderstood midwives to your future patience…

So to celebrate mosquito free good weather I headed towards Helgeland on Norway’s west coast for a scenic route south, the idea being to go to Oslo a few days after. Great times on the way down, met jazz students, marksmen, zookeepers, locksmiths, accountants- all in a great mood with weekend plans- it was hotter than Palma (in Majorca), someone said.

Got stuck around Bognes but sat about beaming for 3 hours before thinking about putting a tent up. Something said ‘5 more cars then find a place to camp’. The third car stopped, green ford estate with back windows covered by towels, far back windscreen broken, car full of stuff. A young man gets out, hurries me to the boot, jams my bag in the back and says “get in, we have to get the ferry!”.
I get in to find two children sitting in the back laughing and playing with toy pirates, and after a rushed ten minutes along the coast we find the port and sit in the queue. At this point I said I was amazed he’d picked me up given the crammed car, two children to look after and a boat to catch and his answer was that he used to hitch and I’d help him stay awake. Drove 5 hours through the coast, windows open, hot air coming through, midnight sun glowing, listening to Pink Floyd. Passed the original maelstrom (it really spins!) and at one lake the odd sight of a gaggle of male bikers in a semi-circle getting undressed to take a dip in the fjord whilst their leader (?) who was already naked stood in the water, nodding in approval. Scenic is scenic.

Put my tent in Marcus’s garden and continued in the morning. Small roads and long waits but I got picked up by a fishing instructor and her daughter and taken to see a glacier before being dropped at the ferry port. I asked two women the time and got talking to five friends from the south of Norway who told me they’d come up to go to Traena festival. I’d heard of Traena from a locksmith in Tromso, and from Marcus on the way through Helgeland. In brief- it’s a festival across two islands in some of the best fishing grounds in Norway- if I really let loose about Traena here I wouldn’t stop, but basically the girls gave me a lift some of the way down and invited me to have a barbecue and a swim by the ferry port for Traena. We sat around joking about me jumping on the ferry with them, before realising that actually had to happen. Ended up as a volunteer wrapping whale meat burritos and serving drinks in exchange for a ticket, and the rest of the festival I was free to hang out with Hanne, Marianne, Lynn, Veyni and Gina. Brilliant coincidence. It is an astonishingly beautiful place, and the festival culminated with an impromptu rave by a chapel and an afterparty that was 8 people dancing to Herbie Hancock and Jerry Lee Lewis on a table on a boat in the harbour. There I met a great dancer and friendly hitcher from Germany called Florian. Leaving Traena the day after clean-up I met him again on the ferry back where he’d already organised a lift to Sweden and decided to give me all the Norwegian money he no longer needed. I was stunned by this and he pointed out that ‘it’s only money’. The day I left Traena I slept in Oppdal (664km away), helped by an ice analyst debating the pros and cons of moving to Antarctica for 13 months, a retired civil engineer who used to build tunnels through mountains (they begin digging from both sides, and he said he never slept the night before the tunnels had to meet) and a late night lift at 11pm from two German wwoofers in a big VW van on their way to their next host. I went to sleep in a field enjoying the first darkness I’d seen in weeks. Woke up just before sunrise with a cold and began a very intense day down to Oslo. First lift with another retired engineer who was on his way to meet friends for a week of walking/staying in cabins. He dropped me at a pretty difficult spot by a hairpin bend. Two hours later (after inscribing the crash barrier with some Mase lyrics) a caravan stopped and I was ushered in by a couple on holiday and invited to talk with nine year old Kevin so he could practice his English. I was going down the E6 alongside the river, rain falling, mountains behind, sat across from a boy who bore an uncanny resemblance to Macaulay Culkin (his dad pointed this out), eating spring rolls and listening to him divulge his victorious tales of trolling people on minecraft and recording their reactions before putting them on youtube. Occasionally I tried to steer the conversation into hobbies that don’t involve the internet and made the point of ripping a drawing out of my book and giving it to him. Got dropped off and picked up again in 5 seconds by a guy I felt uncomfortable about for some reason (in brief: very lonely and very hyper) , so as soon as he stopped to buy something a minute later I told him I was leaving the car and not to take it too personally. Tried to hitch for 3 hours from a gas station then turned around to find a much better spot. First lift was Magne the undertaker and by this point I was so tired and getting more ill and just fell asleep for twenty minutes, waking up as the car swerved during rain so heavy we couldn’t see a damned thing.

Magne: Ok so I can drop you at the bus stop here?
Me: We can’t see anything. I’ll get hit by a car. Is it ok if you drop me closer to where you’re going? I don’t mind going off the E6 (but I want to live!)

So that’s the point where I end up at the bus stop just when the first storm has stopped and part two is following quickly behind. Still sleep deprived, pessimistic about any lifts on this road at this time in this weather, when a car coming from the opposite direction turns around and Lars gets out and tells me he’s going to Oslo. On the way he said he’d driven past me and decided to turn around and pick me up. We talked a lot about music, psychedelics, agriculture and the unparalleled joy of family dynamics. After being taken to his sister’s flat in Oslo and wanting to stay a bit longer with them all, I gave into exhaustion and the desire to see my friend Ellen. Turned up practically cross-eyed from lack of sleep and recovered during the next few days of great company. After that I decided to go into Germany and that trip began with rescued from hitching in the middle of the Norwegian motorway, picked up by two Polish evangelists and given an English bible to read aloud to them for a few km. With more phenomenal luck I made it to Bremen from outer Oslo in two lifts, one was Zwav moving his furniture back to Poland and the next was Johannes the rowing coach on his way to southern Germany via Bremen. He said he could drop me in Cologne the next day if I wanted, so the following morning we continued our conversation/setting the world to rights with regard to travel, marriage, Norwegian employment and education. In Cologne I saw Florian again, and spent three days with him and his girlfriend Lena learning about physics, containering and saunas.
The last morning in Cologne I had an email to say my sister had given birth to a girl, and with a smile on my face I took two hours (some of it getting lost as usual) to get out of town to a good garage, and stood under the shelter watching hail bounce off the roof and thinking about children). Soon picked up by a car dealing massive techno fan on his way to train mechanics near Karlsruhe, and got lost in a sunny southern German town listening to Somewhere Over The Rainbow (ukulele version) on the radio, and then got picked up by a friend named Lea I’d made in Oslo. She took me to a friend’s party, arranged for me to go with some friends to Freiburg two days later and then drove us home in her fire engine. Spent the next day and a half swimming in the lake, eating tempeh, washing up and all too soon I was in a car on the way to Freiburg to stay at a Wagonplatz. One of the 3 wagonplatz’s in Freiburg had been evicted several times, most recently with many of the caravans being impounded. The weekend I spent there I mostly stayed around the camp helping with chores and meeting people, but the focus of the weekend were a rally and a protest in town.
After Freiburg I had a decisional change and decided to come back early to see my niece and then go to Ireland. I’m going to shorten this story a bit or I’ll never send it but essentially I hitched back to Karlsruhe and saw Lea again, as well as two friends I’d made in Freiburg who were staying with her. Spent a good evening laughing our heads off and avoiding the massive storm outside and the next day Kafi drove me to a great hitching spot outside Karlsruhe. She must be good luck because that evening I was in Rotterdam following a lift from a german delivery driver named Moritz who'd recently returned from Australia, and then two dutch laser salesmen who drove like the wind (177km/h on the autobahn in the rain, clouds flying out the back and the driver turns round and says “I feel like….HARRY POTTER!”) and took me to a coffee shop in Arnhem the minute we crossed the border into the Netherlands.
In Rotterdam I realised I was too high to hitch so I walked until I found a campsite before starting the next day at 6am. Fits and starts to Belgium but made it and got picked up by a trucker called Stefan who took me on the Eurotunnel to Dover. In England the first thing I really noticed was the unabashed relish with which people shunned hitchhiking. People making wanking gestures out the window, swearing, screaming, putting their middle fingers up. Really surprised by it, hadn’t had anything like that anywhere. Waited 5 hours in a busy garage until a Polish software engineer on his way to Newbury came by with a Jimi Hendrix blues cd (basically 12 different versions of hear my train a coming, red house and voodoo chile) and floored it to Reading. Slept in a ditch for 4 hours dreaming that I had a German sidekick named Anna who kept making brilliant jokes, then woke up and met a taxi driver heading to Bristol, and spent that afternoon changing nappies. Very weird to be back just like that, managed to surprise my brother who did the textbook eye rub of disbelief.
Heading to Ireland tomorrow and back into Germany around the middle of August- no real plans on trajectory but hope to see you all on the road. "