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.