Hitching across Britain.

[randomness]

From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-hitcher-simon-usborne-takes-to-the-road-847716.html:

"My mission, one I'm beginning to regret accepting, is this: in today's Britain, in an age when a coach ticket can cost less than a piece of cardboard and a marker pen – and when the fear of violent stranger crime is high – is it still possible to traverse the length of the country with only a backpack, a sign and an extended thumb?"

All I can say is that it got much more difficult to do this in the States long, long ago. At least for me. Hitchhikers in America were an endangered species decades back.

Comments

[totient]

hitching across Canada, though, is still totally easy.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Or New Zealand! I was driving south to Christchurch and there were a couple of women who were making better time than me. (I was making occasional stops.)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I gave up in college when people stopped picking me up. I once counted a thousand cars go by me one afternoon near my parents' place.

But like I said, "At least for me."

[cerridwynn.livejournal.com]

Well, i grew up being taught that hitchhiking is dangerous and picking up hitchhikers is dangerous -- and falls somewhere just shy of taking candy from strangers on the list of "things-you-shouldn't-do".

Now i recognize that this is probably a sad thing and a perpetuation of a culture of fear. But those early childhood lessions are hard to shake -- I don't think i'd pick up a hitchhiker now, even someone who looked perfectly nice.

[cerridwynn.livejournal.com]

oh, and in case it wasn't clear, this makes me sad. but it's deeply ingrained.