Hitchhiking to Morocco: Day one
Hitchhiking from London to Morocco, because why not?
Day one
Technically we began this adventure fraudulently. Central London to Mottingham on a train —that’s cheating right? Technically it’s still within London, and if we’d wanted, Tom, Sydney, Hester, Timmy and I could have walked there from our fronts doors, it just would have taken 6 hours. Slightly worse for wear from last night’s escapades (end of term celebrations), we set off at 10.30 am, and Tom and I parted ways from Sydney and Hester (who were waiting for Timmy to arrive on the next train) at Mottingham station, bidding them farewell until we would meet again in Morocco!
But then we needed the loo, so returned to the station, and then when we did actually leave them and started trying our hand at hitchhiking (for the first time!). An hour later they joined Tom and I, who were still firmly rooted at a Mottingham service station, and picked up a lift within minutes. Indignant and loudly cursing their now far away arses, we were reminded of the importance of being kind to people even when they steal your only chance of a lift, by the heavens opening up and smiting us with a late-March hail storm.
We decided to individually ambush all those unfortunates who happened to abide by road laws and stopped at the traffic lights down the road. So sign for Dover in hand, I traipsed up and down the traffic, and lo and behold a woman yelled to get in! Unfortunately to do this I had left Tom with both of our massive bags, now a considerable distance away: sprinting with a bag the size of a fat, legless St. Bernard under each arm was a sight to behold.
Anyways, as far as first lifts go, we struck lucky: a lovely Martinique couple who were keen to try out their brand new car drove us all the way to the white cliffs of Dover.
As we approached the ferry terminal, we saw hitchhiker after hitchhiker… no one seemed to have had any luck. Rumour had it that only 2 groups had managed to hitchhike across the channel that day, others had given in and paid the £30 fair after 6+ unsuccessful hours. Despite our eventual luck, I was still a little bitter and knew deep in my soul that those lucky bastards that we had started this adventure with were undoubtably one of those two groups (I was right!), so out of sheer audacious determination and naive optimism and, let’s be honest, mostly poverty, Tom and I decided to join the multitudes and give it a go anyways. Barely 20 minutes later we were picked up by a lovely man named Pungadjee — he regularly commutes all the way from Germany to the UK… lucky for us, but a killer for Monday mornings I’d think.
The ferry was fun! We explored, took selfies, chatted to staff, and were given free shots by a bored shop attendant of the most expensive alcohol I have ever seen: smoked vanilla and molasses rum, and then gold leafed cinnamon spiced vodka. Literally no one was going South once getting off the ferry, partly because 1/4 of the ship were fellow hitchhikers (mostly paid passengers who had given up — HA!), there was a coach trip going somewhere North, and then there were a ton of Ministry of Defence people, none of whom could tell us what exactly they were up to except that they had strict no-hitchhiker policies. WHATEVS. Pungadjee dropped us off in a nearby town and we walked to the service station to camp out for the night…
