Adventures of a Hitchhiker - An Introduction

I first got into hitchhiking in 1991. I was 19 years old and was living away from home for the first time.

I'd managed to get myself a job as a waiter on a holiday camp in a tiny little surfing village called Croyde Bay in Devon, a lovely county tucked away in the South West of England. Croyde Bay wasn't like Wigan, the town I grew up in. Wigan is a tough, industrial town in Northern England. It's not the sort of place where you would find a holiday camp that's for sure.

I spent 4 summer seasons working and living in Devon back in the 90's. The seasons ran from March to October and each year I would return to Wigan to spend the winters working in an Italian restaurant that had employed me since I was 15 years old.

Keeping the guests happy and well fed

I first travelled down to Devon on the train. I'd never been to Southern England before and I'd never been on a train journey like this. It was all a step into the unknown, I had no idea what to expect.

The train took 11 hours to finally reach the town of Barnstaple which was at the end of the line. The deputy manager of the holiday camp had arranged for me to be picked up at the train station and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Tony was there waiting for me as I exited the station. I didn't have to look for him. He was parked across from the station entrance in a minibus with the holiday camp logo emblazoned down the side.

Tony was lovely. He spoke with an accent that was totally new to me and at first I struggled to understand him but by the time we turned a corner and looked down over Croyde Bay some 30 or 40 minutes later, I was getting to grips with it.

Over the coming days, months and years I would meet people from across the world. Others like me who were looking for a change of scenery and a slice of adventure. I would meet people who had been to all sorts of exotic locations most of which I'd never even heard of.

First time surfing...with a longboard

These people may not have known it at the time but they were planting seeds within me. Seeds that would eventually bear fruit and see me getting up to all sorts of shenanigans in all sorts of places. My life was changing; and so was I.

I wanted to learn so much from these bold adventurous people who didn't seem to have a care in the world. I too wanted to see the sights and tell tales of adventure to admiring onlookers. I would sit for hours listening to my new friends talk about their stories of Moroccan adventure, stories of surfing in Costa Rica, in Mexico, in Australia...you name it. And of course there were plenty of stories about hitchhiking.

My introduction to hitchhiking was simple. I happened to mention to one of the locals at work that I would be going to town (Barnstaple) on the bus after the shift. He looked at me as if I was mad. 'Why would you pay to go on the bus when you can just hitch?' he asked. At first I wasn't sure if he was being serious. There were still plenty of cultural differences in the way at that stage. As far as I knew, hitchhiking was something that only people on TV did. The domain of serial killers and and their victims. And probably only in America. 'Hitch?' I asked. 'Yeah just stick your thumb out across the road. Someone will pick you up.'

An hour later I found myself standing across the road from the holiday camp with my thumb in the air. 'If only my friends in Wigan could see me now' I thought, as the first few cars drove by. I felt free, I felt radical...and I liked it.

Toga toga

A few minutes later a Volkswagen Beetle pulled up in front of me. Two lads a little older than me occupied the front seats. They looked local to me. They wore ethnic clothing and had dreadlocks. They looked like no one I had ever seen in Wigan. 'Where you off to?' the passenger asked as he leaned out of the window. 'Into town' I replied. I felt happy with myself that I had remembered to use the local lingo to describe my destination. It seemed to do the trick. 'Nice one....jump in' he said.

Over the course of the short trip into town I found out they were from Tiverton. Of course I'd never heard of Tiverton. I learned that Tiverton was 'half an hour up the link road.' It appeared that there was some more local lingo that I needed to learn, so I enquired as to the location of this 'link road' of which they spoke.

It turned out that the link road is the equivalent of the motorway in Devon. The UK motorway network didn't stretch into this part of the country so the main A361 road that ran across the county was known as the 'link road'. It was a road that I would become familiar with over the coming years.

The two lads had driven down to Croyde to surf and were on their way home. The majority of the conversation during the short trip revolved around me saying things while they laughed hard at my accent. I loved it. When I told them about the phrase 'dirty, circle, purple curtains,' I thought the driver was going to crash the car. They were both in hysterics. If you're not familiar with the Northern English accent, I can assure you it is nothing like the Received Pronunciation English that you hear on the BBC. To someone from outside the UK you could be forgiven for thinking that it wasn't English at all. And of all the Northern accents in England, the Wigan accent is probably as stereotypically Northern as you can get.

I was amazed to find that they had never met a 'Northerner' before. To them I must have come across like a cartoon character or someone from Coronation Street. 'Northerner' was a phrase that I would hear a lot over the next few years. It would usually be used by the locals in a strange yet humorous kind of sarcastic manner whenever something of sophistication was being discussed for example. They would say things like 'Don't worry, he's a Northerner...he wouldn't understand,' and so on. You get the gist.

There's this thing in England between the North and the South. They are like two different countries occupied by two different peoples. The South was a place where Northerners would sometimes go on their holidays and the North was a place that Southerners never went unless absolutely necessary.

One of the main differences I found was in the style of humour. Northern humour is largely self deprecating, whilst my friends in Devon found it funnier to take the mickey out of others rather than themselves. This was hard for me to deal with at first. People would say things to me in jest that would have gotten them a good kicking in the North and the way I took the mickey out of myself was endearing to my new friends.

Having managed to drive the car into Barnstaple without crashing, I was dropped off at a bus stop and we said our goodbyes. I watched them drive away and wondered why they had no surfboards with them. I figured they must have some stashed in Croyde somewhere.

I learned a few things on that short trip into town. I learned that hitchhiking is not only free but it's fun. I'd learned a few things from the lads and they'd had a right old laugh for half an hour. It seemed that there was value not only in hitching but in picking up hitchers.

Indeed over the next few years I would use my thumb to get me back and forth between Croyde and Wigan a number of times and it is from these trips that I will draw my stories for this series. I met a host of extraordinary characters and had some unforgettable experiences on those trips and although it was the same road travelled, it was a different journey every time.

Thanks for reading,

STEEMONKEY🐒