Lucas Wintercrane went on a bit of a crazy mission with his friend Mike. They were aiming to make it as far as they could with no money, and only their charms and thumbs at their disposal as well as maybe a bit of juggling and busking to earn some breakfast.This was all in aid of YoungMinds. This is Lucas’ report on this mad adventure…
“We ended up in Hamburg, Germany. Which placed us in 7th place out of 62 teams, so we were very pleased with how it went. We were 2nd place if you exclude the teams that got flights. Flying is not against the rules but does not really follow the ethos of hitchhiking. However had we not been refused by all airline companies when we got to Gatwick we would have not hesitated to fly to a destination.
Our first lift was to Reading services, from there after a short wait we were picked up and taken to Gatwick. No luck there so we struggled and found a lift to Maidstone services where Costa Coffee kindly donated tea and muffins to our hungry selves, from there 2 girls took us to Ashford Intl train station from there we asked the train inspector if we could appeal to his better nature and get a free train to Dover, he succumbed to our charms in the end.
At Dover the lift we got was a bit of a fluke, I was trying to flag down a lorry, but the car in front thought I was going to run out and slammed his breaks on at which point I quickly sold him our story and he let us ride on to the ferry with him. Dean turned out to be driving all the way to Denmark, so we hitched a very long lift to Hamburg, Germany. His car heater didn’t work and on route we stopped to sleep the night in his car at a services.
On arrival to hamburg we went to the train station having got word that we’re doing well. But that another team were doing better, a team had already reached New York, we gave up winning and decided to settle for this as our destination. We tried blagging a free night in various different kind of accommodations but in the end gave in and got some cash out to pay for a night in a hostel. Next morning we were up at 7am to start our journey back. We soon learnt that Germans were not accustomed to hitchhiking and struggled to get out of Hamburg. However after 2 lifts and 5 hours waiting at the slip roads to autobahns (motor-ways) we made it to the boarder of Holland. We then tried riding the train to a larger town where we would have more luck hitching. But we got kicked off after 2 stops so bought a ticket to Zwolle for 10 euros each and got on the next train. This was allowed because it is only on the outward journey that we are not allowed to spend money on transport.
Sods law insured that on the following train to Zwolle we were not checked by an inspector. The Netherlands had good rail connections all the way down to Brussels in Belgium so we charmed 4 or 5 ticket inspectors who were very helpful and one even bought us a waffle and cup of tea each.
Once in Brussels we missed the last train connection that would have got us close to Calais. So we decided to walk around the city and sample the local nightlife. We spent most of the Monday night/Tuesday morning with an Austrian yodel group who were very amusing and great company. It also meant we saw another city for a bit longer so added to the experience. We stayed in the bar until 5am our train being at 6am this was the perfect time passer, then we caught a train to De Panne from where we hitchhiked another 50km to Calais ferry port.
At this point we spoke to a Manchurian family who let us ride in their camper on to the ferry which ensured us a free ride. They made us tea and offered us a baguette each. Once on the ferry we asked around and found a German lorry driver that was delivering to Newport. So we travelled for 7 hours or so back to Bristol with him which was a nice smooth end to trip and saved us a whole days hitching back.
Our charity page www.justgiving.com/lucas-wintercrane is still open for donations till March but the total is collected Thursday night at the after party.
We both said we gained confidence from the whole experience with lots of conversation with complete strangers and it was very testing on our morale at points, one time we were stood in Bremen for about 3.5 hours and it really didn’t look like we were going to get out of Germany. It was also a real eye opener into how much a little bit of help on one persons behalf can benefit another so we will definitely take that on into our future experiences.
Tags: hitch hiking, hitching, Lucas Wintercrane, travelling, young minds
