It is said one’s adventures make a life. If true, then I’ve led a good one. With drive and curiosity, events came my way. I’ve travelled the world, met an assortment of people, been offered exciting jobs. I could tell rousing tales about my exploits and experiences in these times, but I won’t. This story is about an adventure, had when I was young. It was conceived with a friend over end of term drinks. As the night wore on, devised when drunk, were the details of the trip. For money we’d waitress or serve behind a bar. From siblings we’d purloin: rucksacks, sleeping bags and other spare kit. For a tent we’d phone around. To seal the deal, on hollow glass we clinked, then screamed aloud,
'We’re hitching to London.'
Throughout the summer months my friend and I played and worked hard, but remembered to keep a little money for the trip. With the last days of August fading fast, our departure day arrived. That morning we scurried around checking kit as we chewed on cold toast. At the bus stop across the road, we peered through thick Haar for the bus to take us past Musselburgh to the A1 and the start of our trip. To our surprise, we stood at the side of the busy motorway for a short time. A truck stopped, inside a middle-aged man, with dark curly hair speckled with grey, shouted down to us, 'Where are you off to girls?'
He took us as far as Newcastle and warned about the risks of hitching on a busy road. Danger, absent from our lexicon, we thought only of the adventure and what it would bring. At Newcastle we were picked up by a young driver who was interested in who we were and what we did. He dropped us off at Dunstable. Stood in the middle of the pretty Oxfordshire town we watched as the London commuters streamed out of the station, disappearing to their homes. With no idea where we’d spend the night, for the first time, trepidation took over me. In the police station on the high street, we enquired about local campsites. The middle-aged sergeant, concerned how young we were, instructed us to wait on a wooden seat, till the constable came in. When he arrived, he was ordered to take us to a safe spot next to the river Thames. Sat in the back of the panda car, we were driven to safety and shown how best to pitch our tent. Grateful for his kindness, we bade the constable farewell, then quickly hunkered down for the night.
In the morning, we awoke inside an orange haze. I opened the flap of the tent and, with speed, closed it again. We were prisoners of a gaggle of geese. What were we to do? With no option, we waited till the leader got bored and we won our freedom back.
After two days in Dunstable, we hitched a ride that approached London from the West. In the distance my friend spotted the cream cylindrical chimneys of Battersea Power station. Fans of Pink Floyd, we let out a gasp; the image was real. At Clapham Junction we took the train to Victoria then the tube to Knightsbridge. Stood in front of the imposing façade of Harrod’s department store, we waited for my sister who was residing in London at the time and had promised to put us up. On her arrival she announces, 'Shall we go in there for lunch?'
Unwashed for three days, hair stuck to our heads and dirt ingrained in our clothes, my friend and I looked at each other as we followed my smartly dressed sister through the departments, the air thick with perfume none of us could afford. We climbed the escalator to the restaurant on the fourth floor. Sat amongst London’s hoi polloi, my sister informs us she can’t put us up, but knew of a campsite in Crystal Palace, that would do the job.
At the campsite with the tent pitched, we headed to the showers. Who’d have thought soap and water could feel so good. After our ablutions, we scoured the shop for a bite to eat. Sat in the warm air as the sun set, we joined our fellow campers, as we tucked into our evening meal and planned a mini adventure; visiting the sights of London.
For two days we hopped on and off buses, trains and tubes, visiting Madame Tussaud’s where we observed waxwork figures we recognised and others we had to guess. At the National History Museum, we marvelled at the dinosaur that was 50ft high and took up the whole room. On a red route master out of South Kensington we passed by smart hotels on Pall Mall, then up to Marble Arch, where the bus passed by familiar property from the Monopoly board; Selfridges, Oxford Street, Regents Street where we got off, to have a look inside Hamleys toy shop with its five floors of an imaginary world. On the bus again we went the short distance to Charing Cross to visit the National Portrait Gallery and the wonderful works of art entered for the BP award. On our second day we travelled to Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and London Bridge. To us, London was as unlike Edinburgh as the Earth was to the Moon. The streets may not have been paved with gold but its vastness and imposing buildings steeped in centuries of history were what dreams were made of.
On our last night, sat outside the tent, we ate fish and chips bought from the campsite restaurant. With a bottle of cider in hand, drunk with happiness, we relived our travels and travails. That was when we first saw them – the French boys. But that’s another adventure, woven into the rich tapestry of my life.