So Phil and I decided we were going to do the Cambridge University hitch-hike to Paris to raise some cash for the student-run charity RAG, along with 3
00 or so other delusional individuals.
Three hundred would-be hitchers
We were leaving Cambridge on Friday morning and we were supposed to arrive in Paris by Saturday afternoon. Carefully considering the distances involved, we ruled out attempting Linford Christie speed jogging. We realised that we were going to need some pr
etty exceptional hitch-hiking equipment. But we settled for a big sign instead.
Practical Hitching Stances
As you can see, we wrote the sign in both English and French. This idea, stylish as it was, would prove completely and utterly useless.
In the pictures you can see us practising the two contrasting styles of optimistic hitching and disillusioned hitching.
So on Friday morning we all set out from Cambridge Market Square, and yippee! it looked like our luck was in, as we got our first lift. Admittedly it was only as far as the M11 motorway junction - about 3 miles - but we'd figured we were going to h
ave to walk there anyway. So we set ourselves up at the junction and waited....
....
and then we waited some more ....
....
Perhaps this hitching lark was harder than we'd bargained for ...
....
After an hour we were getting pretty sick of waiting, before a helpful lorry driver gave us a lift most of the way to the M25. On the way he regaled us with amusing stories of how fast his lorry could go, and indoctrinated us with his particular view of t
he universe, which we accepted with a smile as he was giving us a lift, after all.
On the M25, no-one can hear you scream
It soon became clear that car drivers did one of these things:
Completely ignored us (most common)
Read the banner, and drove on looking puzzled
Beeped their horns, in support, I presume (which didn't help at all because we wanted a lift, not empathy!)
Slowed down sufficiently to make hilarious obscene gestures. Ha ha ha.
Actually gave us a lift (least common)
Only 20 miles to go to Dover...
At six o'clock that evening we arrived in Dover at the P&O Ferry Office, where we set about obtaining our ferry crossing across the Channel to Calais. This wasn't difficult, though, as P&O was giving us all free travel.
Fifty or so of the hitchers were there in the P&O office with us. Some of them were obviously taking it very seriously indeed.
Phil contemplates the presence of Alice and a threatening White Rabbit
The major problem with being on the same ferry as 50 other hitch-hikers is that everyone is trying to find a family or a bus or a lorry going to Paris. Pretty rapidly it becomes like the search for the Holy Grail. And of course, for all the innocen
ts caught in a plague of students looking for a lift, it must have been just a tad annoying for everyone to keep asking you where you were going. All in all, trying to find a lift on the ferry was a serious non-event.
But it was about to get much worse. When we got to the ferry port in Calais, we met groups who'd come across on ferries hours before and were still stuck there. Horror stories of hundreds of students standing on a roundabout drifted among us. Nobody was g
oing anywhere, it seemed.
So then everybody decided that if they weren't going anywhere, they'd go to a bar instead.
In a bar in the small hours of the morning
It was now something like two o'clock in the morning, and we were all sitting in a random bar in Calais. We were a long way from home and a long way from Paris - things were looking grim. And I was looking even grimmer.
Me looking very grim indeed
Fortunately, some of the hitchers had located some rooms at a very reasonably priced hotel, and they offered to let us sleep on their floor rather than get any more rooms. We considered this for an instant and accepted.
Separately, thirty of us decided that we'd get the first train out of this Calais hell-hole at 5.30am.
5.30am: We're hitching on a train instead.
So we finally arrive in Paris on Saturday morning.
The first Parisian thing we could find
All the other people on the train set off into Paris, but Phil and I have a plan, an ace up our collective sleeve if you will. It will transpire that almost all of the people who got to
Paris ended up in the same nightclub on Saturday night and stayed the
re until six o'clock on Sunday morning. However, Phil and I instead make our way into the western suburbs of Paris, as we are going to stay with some friends of mine who live there. Thei
r three year old daughter instantly took a liking to Phil and proceed
ed to jump all over him.
Phil having his head kicked in by a three year old
Hitching back from Paris would have been arduous in the extreme, but we didn't have to. Coaches had been arranged to take everyone back from Paris to Cambridge. All we had to do was meet underneath the Eiffel Tower on Sunday at 3pm.
We got there early so we could go up the tower, but we found that the queues for the lifts were enormous. But that's OK, we thought, we'll use the stairs - we're tough enough. Hubris.
Altitude sickness
The bus ride home looked like it was going to be uneventful, save for us being made to watch Tom Cruise films on the video system. Half way along the autoroute from Paris to Calais the bus suddenly blew a tire, leaving us trapped in the only rest stop in
the country to feature the typically French squatting toilet.
