Hitch 2012 - Day One, To Portsmouth

sleepy monkey

The beginning started with a champaign breakfast at uni at around 8am. I got there slightly later after not getting much sleep and waking up at 7.30. After a few photos and a lot of standing around we eventually hit the road at about 9.45. It took us a while to get picked up, but by 10 we had our first lift. Julie took us all the way to a service station near Cardiff, and it was quite surprising how nice her car was and how easy it had seemed to get picked up. So we'd been standing there holding a sign for around five minutes before I noticed some green shirts wandering up the road towards us. It turned out to be Chris and Natalie who'd been dropped off just down on the

motorway. After a while they decided to start somewhere else, but then as they were walking away these guys from the petrol station started shouting at them. They'd walked over and managed to get both us and themselves lifts to Newport. Newport was awful. Aiden and I ended up waiting an hour because we were on the wrong road and there were even little messages from other hitchers saying that Newport was hell. We ended up being picked up by some religious people interested in our charity sign. They took us to Bristol where we got picked up by a crazy Russian guy who tried to take us back to Wales! We managed to get out reasonable quickly on the edge of a junction to the motorway. I thought it would take ages but within a few minutes this guy pulled over with a polystyrene plane in the back which was remote controlled. It had a camera on the front and you could wear these glasses so it was like you were in the plane. He had crazy hair, and you could tell he'd done hitch-hiking as a kid too.

Aiden's Banana
(he carried it all day!)

He dropped us at Newbury service station where we bumped into Chris and Natalie again! We got some food then got picked up by a guy from Somerset playing first Fallout type 50's muic then some quite excellent dubstep. He was heading to Winchester to pick up a chair, so he dropped us at a roundabout where we eventually got picked up by a guy in a pretty fancy car who took us to Southampton. From there we got a quick lift in a 'bus' with a woman and her kid and then while we were standing by the roundabout, only 15 minutes from Portsmouth a car with a young couple pulled up As soon as the door opened you could smell a huge amount of weed had been smoked in that car. Turns out that they had stopped because they liked Aidens monkey suit and despite living near where they picked us up, they drove us the whole way to the ferry port. We were the second group from Swansea to arrive, as an engaged couple Ben and Katie were already waiting with a couple of hikers from Exeter uni.

We bought our ferry tickets for about £30 and proceeded to wait for five hours (we arrived a five and the ferry didn't start boarding until 10.45) with a quick walk to McDonalds and a group photo to pass the time. Within this time many more groups had turned up, mostly from Exeter and Leeds. I called my mum for a bit to let her know how i was doing, but the battery died and she got worried and called Aiden to check that i was okay. We boarded the ferry with a load of French school children and Aiden and I stood on the deck and watched ourselves leave England. A French boy came over and we sat with him for a while. He was fourteen and with the school trip. Aiden went to bed after a while, and I sat with the boy who wanted to buy me a drink. I saw a bunch of Hitch people who were wandering around the shop and made a quick exit, which the boy was not happy about. Everyone went to bed after a while, but i wasn't really tired so I stayed up talking to Joe for an hour or two in the bar. At about 2.30  I decided I should probably try to get some sleep, but accidentally stood on a girl on the way to my seat so couldn't make it to my sleeping bag. It was pretty cold, and I ended up getting less than two hours sleep.

Hitch 2012 - Booking Plane Tickets

Me and Aiden met up today because we decided it was finally time to work out when we were going to leave and come home ect so we could book plane tickets while they were still reasonably cheap(ish). i was thinking we'd only be away for about 10 days, but then Aiden pointed out that i was assuming that we'd manage to make it to Morocco within 5 days, which apparently is quite unrealistic.
To be honest, i think Aiden could quite happily have decided to just stay there forever, but i'd quite like to pass my exams this year, so we decided on the 26th/27th. i was going to leave earlier, but then i imagined the amazing tan i wouldn't get the chance to achieve here in *sunny* England, so now i'm thinking the longer we're there the better.. i just hope i can afford to stay there for 27 days!
It took me a while to work out how to book my flight so that it didn't land me in London at 9pm with a 4 hour train journey to get me home in the middle of the night, and i managed to find one that would mean getting up kind of early (9am check in) but meant i would get home at a reasonable time, and only cost 1709 dirham.. and it's not on RyanAir! :)