Amsterdam

Jesse + Martin`s Story

As I left the house on a dark Monday morning I began to question whether this hitchhike to Amsterdam was the best idea I’d ever had. My uncertainty was heavily influenced by the chicken and Donnie Darko bunny (rival hitchhikers), who accompanied my dressing gown-clad self to the starting point at Tesco.

Much to my disappointment the chicken and bunny team got picked up immediately and taken straight to Reading. Leaving me and Martin the cowboy (my hiking partner) cursing – I had a round of expensive Amsterdam beers riding on who got there first.

We managed to get our first lift at some traffic lights from a surprised looking woman called Marion on her way to work at B&Q. She had never picked up hitchhikers before, but told us we didn’t look like the types to beat or rob her, we took this as a compliment.

Stuck at B&Q on the outskirts of Cardiff we got lucky as Clive the white van man took us out of his way to Newport.

While hanging around the service station in search of the next lift I found myself three feet away from Prince William and the rest of the Sandhurst Academy. Photographic evidence was denied on account of a (possibly armed) MI6 man employed purely to protect him from idiots like charity hitchhikers!

After the excitement we quickly convinced a lorry driver to take us to Swindon, stopping only for Martin to expose himself to a coach of school girls before moving on to Reading.

From there we hoped to make it straight to Dover but the best we could do was another lorry to the M25.

Dropped just south of London by about 1pm we were making good time, but things were about to get more tricky.

A doddering old couple in a camper van offered to give us a lift but returning at the arranged time we found they had abandoned us. Old People eh? After more waiting we waved down a Hungarian lorry driver to take us to Dover and despite his lack of English and horrendous BO we were more than grateful. By this point the bunny and the chicken were already on the ferry to France.

We cracked open a beer in Dover ferry terminal with some fellow hikers, and got on the 5.30 ferry to Calais.

Trawling the ferry for lifts we met a couple of English squaddies returning to Germany who put us in the back with their kit and sped along to Brussels in just a few hours.

By this time it was late so we decided to see what Brussels had to offer, made some friends with a group of students from Luxembourg and settled down for a few beers.

Waking up with only the smallest of hangovers we walked to the edge of the city in search of the mystical Brussels ring road, along the way picking up the third member of our team, Pepper the rabbit, from a fast food outlet.

Spending hours on the side of the road being sworn at occasionally by unfriendly Belgians wore us down so we admitted defeat and headed for the train station.

Determined not to pay for any transport we played the charity card to some unimpressed train conductors who agreed to give us a bill and two weeks to pay (they are still waiting). On the Dutch side they were more than happy to take a bar of Dairy Milk as payment. We arrived in Amsterdam happy, at 6pm, 36 hours after leaving Cardiff.

Jesse Scharf