Anna & Beth’s hitchhike to Amsterdam
To start with I’d like to thank everybody who donated to Cancer Research UK in support of our journey, and to everybody who helped us along the way, you made the whole trip worth it! Now to tell you how we did it…
Following a mental birthday night out as pictured above, me and Beth headed straight to Boston Tea Party, who kindly sponsored us, without having hit our beds at all (good start i know). We had a nice relaxed breakfast before setting off on our journey. Our first lift was from my friend Seb, (thank you!) who took us to the Exeter service station which was a better springboard for hitting the motorway. There we danced around like lunatics asking absolutely everyone and anyone if they were headed to Bristol, which surprisingly many people were not! Eventually we managed to get a lift with a lovely couple who had just got married and had been honeymooning in Devon, and now were travelling home to Birmingham, they kindly dropped us off at the Bristol services where we stopped to top on some red bull to keep us awake, (sleep was already taking Beth).
After refuelling we started asking people if they were headed to London, for some reason unbeknown to us everybody was headed to Wales and refused to take us to London on a detour, and we therefore found ourselves stuck in Bristol services feeling rather chilly for an hour and a half. However after a lot of badgering we managed to get a rock band called The Blend to give us a lift to London in their tour van, regardless of having only one seat left. So all cuddled up in the back together, we set off for London! As they were shameless promoters hoping to spread their band name about we will link you to their Facebook page in this post you can have a listen to their music, and watch a video of them hanging Simon Cowell…
We were kindly dropped in Camden by our new friends, who also bought us a tube ticket so we could navigate London without spending any money. After a lot of confusion as to how to use the tube system and going the wrong way several times we managed to navigate our way to Shepard’s Bush where we stopped to refuel with my family who kindly made us a lovely pizza each, which was really needed as we hadn’t brought any food with us due to us both being utterly disorganised. After a lot of planning we decided that the only way to get to the Eurotunnel before the last train at midnight, was to get a train down to Gatwick, where we could be picked up by Beth’s dad who lived near there, who could then take us down to Folkestone.
We arrived in Folkestone thanks to Beth’s dad and with a whole bag of food provided by Beth’s mum, and tried to get onto the Eurotunnel. However due to it being rather late at night, traffic going through was limited and there didn’t seem to be any chance of us getting the train that night. However we bumped into another group of girls also doing the hitchhike who had found a lift down to dover to try the ferry, and managed to get a lift with them. Once we got down to the dover we stood at the entrance to the port and tried our luck at hitchhiking on to the ferry. We eventually managed to get into a Romanian man’s lorry who would then take us across, however unbeknown to us, if you were a lorry and you had extra passengers you had to pay £38 pounds to take them across. Our Romanian friend in his limited english therefore decided that he would not take us and told security we were hitchhikers, leading to us being escorted off the premises. With our spirits slightly dampened we decided to try one more time anyway because we were so determined to make it across the channel. After a lot longer waiting for a lift, we managed to get in the car with a friendly Bulgarian man who was headed home. All seemed to be going well before this man somehow managed to crash his car into a wall, puncturing his tire. This meant he had to go to the office to get it sorted, where we were swiftly recognised by security and once again escorted out by the same security man who told us we were no longer welcome on P&O ferries for life. Brilliant.
With our spirits down in the dumps, and Beth’s anger leading her to outbursts such as “I hate hitchhiking” and “I’m never doing anything for charity ever again!”, we decided to sneak into the hotel room of the girls we had bumped into earlier, who had had their hotel room payed for by the lovely man who dropped us in Dover. We got up bright and early at 6 am and hitchhiked our way back to Folkestone, seeing as P&O ferries was no longer a viable option. Here our luck changed. The first people we asked agreed to give us a lift to Calais. It was a lovely couple who were on their way to visit the man’s brother in Calais. We were kindly dropped off at a service station in Calais where we managed to get a lift with a lovely young French lady who took us all the way to Lille, however Beth and I had both been asleep whilst she was driving (sorry hitchhike HQ we just couldn’t help it) , and therefore missed the part where we could ask her to stop at a service station, and ended up in the middle of the city at the train station. This is not an easy spot to get picked up from as it’s mostly pedestrianised, and therefore we decided to fund money to get the train to Bruges. We managed to get the money together, and hopped on the train to Bruges, however half way through this train journey we realised that the train actually went all the way to Antwerp, which would be a much easier destination, and therefore we decided to play the age old trick of pretending to be asleep whilst on the train so that we could make it there. However as we pulled into Antwerp station the ticket lady appeared out of nowhere and told us we had missed our stop by 40 minutes and that we were to stay on the train so it would take us back to Bruges, (we had played stupid tourists who thought we were on our way to Bruges still), we agreed to stay on the train, but as the train pulled into the station we legged it out of the door, outrunning security out into the streets of Antwerp. However unbeknown to us we had got out in a very dodgy area of Antwerp, where there was no chance of getting a lift and the whole community consisted largely of Hasidic Jews, who are known for keeping mostly to themselves. At this point we started to wonder what on earth we were going to do. So decided that the only option was to phone up my aunty and uncle in Eindhoven to give us a lift to Rotterdam, where my cousin lives. Once we arrived in Rotterdam, we took a much needed shower and started to get ready for the night ahead, deciding it would be easier to do this in Maartje’s house than in the hotel, we also refuelled on some lovely pancakes and then set off on the train, funded by my aunty, to Amsterdam. We finally arrived in Amsterdam at the hotel at 10:00 pm on the Saturday night, making our total journey time 38 hours. Meaning we came last. whoops. Oh well we made it and had the best night out ever, before having a really cute day out being tourists in Amsterdam! 100% worth it! Me and Beth are still collecting money for Cancer Research UK and Balloons charity until February, so please please keep donating, and make our 38 hours of crazy hitchhiking worth it, to help out people who really need it! Thank you!
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