Jailbreak - an island is my home

After breakfast, we were faced with the prospect of getting home. We figured it would be best to get to a petrol station on the edge of town, like we did in Aachen. So we wandered down the street and were faced with this:

We were well and truly in the centre of a huge city, with not a chance of hitching out. We went to the metro station with the thought that if we went further out, we'd have a better chance of hitching. However, cautious of ending up somewhere completely random we headed for the only landmark we knew - the airport. Unfortunatley, most people at the airport were arriving for a nice city break in Brussels, but eventually we found someone who agreed to drop us at a motorway service station. Everyone we approached at the first service station seemed to be heading for either Paris or Brussels. After an hour or so, we sat on some grass behind the station and ate our lunch - a sad picture that was to represent our difficult journey home. I have no more photos taken after this, as we just didn't want memories of what came next!


The last smile...

We decided to crawl down the motorway, hopping from one service station to the next, hoping that there'd soon be a turn off to Lille (on the way to Calais). However, we decided to cheekily look at a road map in the service station and found out an ugly truth. One motorway out of Brussels to the west, goes to Lille. The other (that we were on) only went between Brussels and Paris. BOTH in the wrong direction. Eventually another 'Mal' was done on us and we were left at an abandoned-looking petrol station on a slip road. In desperation we placed ourselves on the road, until a battered-looking car pulled up. The driver, Clement was going to Lille! Although initially cautious of his dirty car, we relaxed when we found out he too was a student, going to hand in his dissertation. He did go via his mum's house and invited us in, but thinking that was probably on the top 10 lists of things never to do (especially whilst hitchhiking) we declined. Unfortunately, Clement thought there was a service station nearer to Lille than there was, and anxious to get his work in (having already gone WAY out of his way for us) we let him drop us at a retail park. BIG mistake. We ended up having to get a lift back into Lille, gave in and got a train to Calais. Through all of this all that kept going round in my head was the chorus of Frank Turner's Rivers - an island is my home - I've never felt more love for England!

We arrived in Calais only 20 minutes or so before the last ferry, so we got a taxi straight to the port. We aimed straight for the lorry entrance, but got nothing but sympathetic looks from lorry drivers who didn't think they were able to pick us up. The police moved us on from our hitching spots twice and told us the only place we could hitch from was the entrance for overnight cars, which no one went in! We tried to blag foot passenger tickets but were told to ask the supervisor in the morning. There were some other hitchers at the ticket desk who advised us to ask people buying tickets if they had spare space. However, they had been trying all day so we didn't hold out much hope. Eventually the traffic died down and we resigned ourselves to spending the night there. We had befriended one nomad, Tom, who spent his life travelling between festivals and who looked out for us. However, there was another nomad guy who was drunk and waiting for his drunk wife. I'm sure he was harmless but we didn't want to let our guard down by sleeping. A kind security guard noticed this and took a bench to the other side of the building for us, so that we could sleep infront of the 24 hour security desk. Grateful as we were it was so cold and unfomfortable that I kept waking up and having to buy coffees to get warm enough to fall asleep again. It was disheartening that a journey from Brussles to Calais, which takes about 2 hours in the car, had taken us an entire day. We thought we'd be home that night, not sleeping in a ferryport.

The next day we decided to just pay for the ferry. Being so tired, we fell asleep on the crossing and were woken up by a man called Russell as everyone disembarked. Having hitch-hiked himself, Russell agreed to drive us to a service station on the northern side of London. Our next lift was headed to Milton Keynes but did a Mal on us and left us somewhere near Luton. We eventually hitched back to the service station we'd come from. Being a Sunday, there was far less traffic and almost no lorries around. Eventually we met a girl and boy who were off to film a TV show in Wigan. Elated at the thought of getting up North we accepted their lift. Having been advised by friends at uni that a train ticket from Bolton to Durham cost around £20, we went all the way with them, rather than leaving them at Birmingham. We arrived in Wigan and went straight to the train station. On the day, without a railcard, a ticket to Durham costs £60!!! We cried. A lot. We were tired and hungry and desperate to get home that night but we knew we wouldn't make it if we hitched. We managed to blag a tran to Manchester, but once there, the thought of parting with £60 was just about more bearable than the thought of not making it home. We had to go a really roundabout route to get to Durham and arrived about 9pm, exhausted and emotional. We'd done it! We were home!

It's fustrating to think that we could have been home much earlier if we'd have set out to pay the amount that we did to make it back. We could have had an easier time, and our memories of Jailbreak were jaded by the struggle of getting home. But it was an experience I'm proud of and we raised a lot of money for Cancer Research UK. I couldn't have wished for a better partner than Amina, who is the only person who will truly understand the experience we shared.

Jailbreak - time's up!

The map of all teams' destinations - we didn't do too badly!

Looking lost in this layby and desperate to reach an actual town before our 36 hours was up, we pounced on the first car that came our way. Luckily, young Ariel and his dad offered to take us to the next town, Aachen. Like many of our drivers, Ariel asked if we were scared getting into cars with randomers, but to tell the truth the danger works both ways. We had no idea who we were getting into a car with and they had no idea who they were picking up, but at least we had the safety net of the texts to our university - the drivers had no support system.
We reached Aachen just in time to text in our final location. We were supposed to send a postcard from our destination but at 8pm there was little life in the town. We also had to take a photo of us next to a landmark. As Aachen is not firmly established on the tourist map, we had no idea what to look for, which lead to a series of photos by various statues of people we didn't know:

finally a real landmark!

We eventually gathered, from sneakily borrowing a hotel's computer, that Aachen's pride and joy was its cathedral, so we started huning for that. Not knowing the word for 'cathedral' in German was, however, a bit of a setback. Why did I learn 'my hamster is dead' in German class, but not 'where is the cathedral'?! Eventually we found it and had a little photo shoot.

As Aachen was a fairly small-looking town and we were keen to ensure we got home the next day, we decided to start hitching back that evening. A man in a hotel told us we could walk to a petrol station near the edge of town and to to hitch from there. It took a while but eventually a couple took us to an out of town service station. As we were getting out of the one car, a man in a white van asked us straight away where we were headed for, and as we said 'Brussels' he was keen to give us a lift. Although we were taken aback by his eagerness to get us in his ominous van at 10 in the evening, we had little chance to confer and were getting desperate, so hopped right in. Our driver had to stop by the cargo area of Brussels airport, which added to our suspicions and worry, but despite this he actually turned out to be one of our loveliest drivers, who shared a sad personal story with us. He'd been so keen to give us a lift as he thought Amina was Indian (as he was) and thus clearly felt an affinity with her. It turns out he was just keen for some company and to look after us as he was divorced, his children didn't talk to him and his last girlfriend had ran off with his money. He drove us right into the centre of brussels, and did offer to take us to McDonalds, but the combination of us thinking this was a bit strange and being keen to find somewhere to sleep made us decline.

A breakfast dream!

Brussels was buzzing and looked like a great place to be, but we decided that we were just keen for a bed. We saw a massive concrete high-rise hotel and thought it would be a good place to find a cheap bed. The entrance hall however, was very marbled and guilded and two dirty backpackers looked very out of place (and couldn't afford a room) so we moved on. The next hotel we found was smaller and they offered us a room for 60 euros or so. It wasn't the cheap hostel we were expecting but when he told us breakfast was included we were sold. In the end it was exactly what we needed - a shower seemed like the biggest luxury in the world, and nothing can describe the comfort of a bed after sleeping in a service station! That breakfast was quite possibly the highlight of my trip. There were breads and cheeses (we made ourselves a luch too to slip into our bags!), eggs and bacon and a range of THE most delicious pastries I've ever tried (I'm not sure how much the breakfast was enhanced by our desperate state but it was still pretty darn good!). Little did I know how much that breakfast would mean to me and help me through the trauma of making our way back...

Jailbreak - reaching the continent!

Friday morning we were up not-so-bright but early to jump on the unsuspecting truckers. Eventually Mladen stopped to give us a lift (despite huge language barriers... he was Bosnian!) and we were off to Dover! Mladen didn't realise we expected him to take us on the ferry, and he didn't understand any of the languages available to us so it was pretty hard to explain. He reluctantly let us stay with him, worried he would get stopped at the passport checks, but we sailed through them and on to the ferry!!! We were fairly glad when he said he'd stay in his lorry for the journey as he spent most of the time on the road looking at us and saying "schon" and "sexy ladies"...

Our main aim for this trip was to get off the island... and we'd done it! the excitement of watching the white cliffs of Dover fade into the distance was all too much and I attempted a nap. We got back off the ferry with Mladen, and although he was going to Italy (which would have been an awesome achievement for us) he had to resupply and he said he wouldn't get there until 3 days later. Therefore, with some relief on our part, we parted from him at a petrol station just outside the port of Calais. Mladen stepped up his sleazyness enough to ask Amina for a kiss before we left (!), on which note we hopped out of the van and searched for a new driver.

Nihat's lorry... home for the day

This is when we met Nihat. Nihat was Turkish and although he didn't speak much English, another driver translated that he was on his way to Frankfurt and should be there in 6 hours time. PERFECT! We could get to Frankfurt with a couple of hours to spare - plenty of time to have a look around and find somewhere to sleep. Once we were on the road, Nihat looked after us, despite our initial concerns about his rough, scruffy appearance, the language barrier and chain smoking. He gave us some life-saving red bull and even got out a portable DVD player and put a film on in English for us.
With Nihat we travelled through France to Belgium and in and out of the Netherlands.

Me with Jemma

cooking up a storm!

Initially, our progress was fast, and we were feeling very positive. Then we went on a massive detour to get to an Aldi (Nihat had been pointing out Aldi stores along the way... clearly a personal favourite). We were trying to figure out if he really DID say he needed to get some fish fingers or whether that was a mis-translation, when we pulled up on the roadside near a big car dealer. It turns out Nihat WAS buying fish fingers, and we were invited to the roadside fish finger picnic with his other lorry-driving friend, who's name sounded a lot like Jemma. Nihat stored a camping stove in the pull-out cupboard at the side of his van, filled a frying pan to the top with oil and made our fishy snacks. He actually filled two frying pans and fed most of the fish fingers (dripping with oil) to Amina and myself. We made ours into sandwiches, washed down with peach juice. We were aware we were massively behind schedule (we should have been in Frankfurt at this point) but the situation was still hilarious!

Back on the road we tried to ask Nihat how long until we would reach Frankfurt. We began to understand that he had nothing to collect in his van until Monday (he'd been 'weekended' as truckers say), so he was in no rush to get there. With time running out to reach a destination, we tried to explain that we'd like to be dropped in the next town. Before we knew what was happening, we were in a lay-by with Nihat telling us to get out. It had happened again. With little more than an hour until our time was up, Nihat had done a Mal on us.

Jailbreak - the life of a trucker

Following the taxi drivers' advice we headed straight for the lorry park and before we knew it a poundland lorry stopped and let us climb on. We'd joked earlier about how fun it would be to ride in a huge lorry and now we finally had the chance! However, lorries only have one passenger seat so one of us had to sit on the driver's bed, behind the seats. For this reason, some drivers refused to take both of us. Additionally, many of them are not insured to carry any passengers, but lots of kindly drivers broke the rules for two harmless, rain-soaked girls. The lorry driver, Lee, was studying for a maths degree and he gave us lots of tips for getting lifts with lorries. He told us to approach lorries and knock on their doors, and that lorries with containers on the back were more likely to be going abroad. The early morning getting to us, we fell asleep on our way to Birmingham.

'Trucker' as a modern foreign language....

When we left Lee, we managed to get a lift almost straight away by approaching drivers. Stewart was our next driver, who took us to Corley. We soon began to learn a lot about lorry drivers. They all opened up and told us a lot about their lives because it can be a pretty lonely job. Lee (the first lorry driver) was lucky in that he got to go home to Birmingham at the end of each day. Most others, such as Stewart, would be on the road all week, sleeping in lay-bys and showering at service stations. It was especially sad for Stewart who had two young children (although considering how excited Amina and I were to be riding in lorries, I can't imagine how exciting it would be for his 3-year-old son!).  Stewart reccomended hitching with Eddie Stobart lorries and mentioning to DFDS or Norfolk Line ferries that we'd had a lift in a Norfolk Line truck. Arriving in Corely it was raining and lots of the lorries were empty. Luckily, our next lift, Tom, took pity on us and let us on board and gave us each a hot KFC wrap. If spending the whole week on the road wasn't lonely enough, Tom's wife works 3 weekends out of 4 so they only see each other once a month (although he didn't seem to mind too much)! He did ring her when we were with him but she refused to believe he had two charity hitchhiers with him! Tom was also helpful, trying to get us a lift with his mate Craig, who was going to Austria (we were to late) and taking us to Thurrock services, the big stop before going 'over the water', as truckies call it!

At Thurrock we found some very familiar penguins from Durham, and later some familiar tigers and also a familiar smurf! We found out the penguins had been at the station for hours, it was getting late and most of the lory drivers there (there were A LOT of lorries!) were going to bed for the night. Amina and I panicked at seeing a 'closes at 10pm' sign in the services so tried desperately to get to another services! Although it turns out M&S shut at 10pm but the service station was actually open all night. We gave the Travelode next door a shot to see if we could get a room but we had no luck. Assuming we'd get no further that day, we tried (and failed) to make ourselves comfortable on metal service station seats to spend the night...

Jailbreak 2012 - 'doing a Mal'

Looking excited before we all set off

My university's charities committee runs an event called jailbreak, where participants raise money for their chosen charity by hitchhiking as far as they can. I always thought it sounded exciting, and this year my fellow-minded friend Amina was enthusiastic enough to encourage us both to sign up. So we donned every item of neon we owned and filled our bags with snacks, blissfully unaware of what was ahead of us. At 7am on Thursday 7th June, we gathered at Durham Courthouse with other adventurous students, and as the cathedral bells struck 8, we all ran for freedom, and for charity!

 Having previously realised our first challenge was going to be getting out of the town, we had enlisted the help of another friend, Freya, who drove us to the nearest out-of-town service station. However, not long after we arrived, many familiar-looking students in fancy dress turned up, who'd clearly had the same idea as us! After feeling disheartened about how long it was taking to get a ride, we proved that it's not what you know, it's who you know! Two other Durhamites (who were on a bassoon-collecting mission (!)), knew my partner, and so gave us a lift to a service station a little further out. Although we were dubious about the location of our new base - a petrol station on the side of an A-road - it wasn't long until we were offered another lift. Mal, a handbag salesman from Darlington, offered us a seat in his van on his way to re-stock in Leeds. His dog, Megan, seemed only mildly disgruntled that we'd taken her space and sat on our laps (very unsteadily and uncomfortably), which Amina braved despite her dislike of dogs. Mal seemed initially friendly and keen to help us. He suggested we should try Leeds-Bradford airport, so we agreed that he'd take us there. He then proceeded to drop us in a random lay-by. When we expressed our concern that the lay-by did not look like the airport we'd pictured, he just said "you didn't expect me to take you all the way did you?"... er... yes, actually we did. He told us it was only 12 minutes down the road so we reluctantly got out and started walking. As we walked further, we checked where we were going on Amina's phone. The airport was not 12 minutes away, it was a 4 hour walk away! Thus the practice of dropping us hitchhikers in a random, highly unsuitable place became known as 'doing a Mal'.

It was raining, both us and our signs were getting wet, we were desperate and we were still at the lay-by. We decided to abandon all dignity and etiquette and approach a blue van that had been parked up for a while. The occupier of the car, a wedding dress salesperson named Lisa, nervously agreed to give us a lift. She took pity on us and said she'd give us a lift to keep us safe and dry for a bit! Of all the lifts we received, Lisa was our favourite. She was really enthusiastic about what we were doing, and rang up local radio stations appealing for help. She drove us all the way to Manchester Airport, gave us a donation and her phone number to let her know we were safe and where we ended up.

Manchester Airport was a bust. No airline could let us on their plane, although annoyingly it sounded like they used to but there had been a recent change in policy. Every desk we visited also sad they'd just talked to another Jailbreak team, who we finally met at the exit! We also couldn't blag a bus or train out of the airport. A friendly policeman recommended we tried to hitch out on a roundabout at the exit, which was very tricky indeed. But luckily the kindness of strangers saved the day again, as a taxi driver took us to the next services. He was in a particularly good mood as he was just finishing up his last shift before he went on holiday. When we got to the services, he reccommended that we tried to hitch with lorries, rather than cars - a tip that made the rest of our journey a LOT easier. We were back in the game!