Hitch hiking and various other pastimes #3

Tuesday 20th March 2012 (start of spring)

After a chaotic nights sleep, perhaps having got 3 hours of shuteye I arose at 5 am to try catch the first truckers leaving. No such luck however, and by half past 7 I was back at the main building, where I met Steve the Tramp again and his mysterious blue eyed dog. He told me his story, how he'd had his home and possessions taken from him and had hitched to Wales and was now heading back to Essex. He enquired as to how long I'd been on the road and my paltry one day seemed particularly meagre compared to his month long stint. I gave him the £2 change I had, he would need it more than me, I guessed.

It got to roundabout 10am and Steve seemed to have left, whereas the Hong-Kong/Warwick charity hitch-hikers were still at that cursed place. I began to lose my patience at this point. I knew that hitch-hiking is a game of chance but to be stuck in a grey industrial looking, bleak, bland service station isn't quite what I had in mind when I set off. Although, saying that, the majority of my time has been spent in such services.

I took a walk towards the enormous motorway roundabout looking for a town or something but it was dual carriageways and motorways all around. To add to my despair, I waited for a bus to take me to some obscure little train station but even that didn't show up.

The comedy hitching factor was also attempted; using a large wooden square I wrote 'Dover M20, Anywhere but here', whilst stood on a stretch of busy industrial road. A fair few people acknowledged me and bode their apologies which almost came as a relief amongst the ignorant scowls of so many a British person.

I then went to try acquire some hot water for tea and if that failed I would have been at the end of my tether...However, things didn't work out too bad in the end. I didn't go for my free hot water, instead I had a surge of optimism, which I had predicted could be the case due to letting some angst out in these pages. So I went to sit directly outside the entrance to the main building with my M20/M25 Dover signs, feeling a tad sorry for myself, and within a few minutes a friendly guy said he could take me a bit further down the M25.