Ready... Set... Go!

9th November 2012
7.30AM
Last night, I couldn't sleep. I checked and double-checked everything that I'd put into my backpack - in case of any emergencies on the road, you know. I woke up this morning and put my reindeer onesie (£12, Primark) on, complete with little red Rudolph nose. The garbage men collecting trash from the bin shed saw me walk out in my reindeer onesie this morning and started laughing. Bet they thought Christmas came early. Well, at least my goal was achieved - definitely an attention-grabbing costume!

8.30AM
Only half an hour more to go until kick-off. This is crazy - we've got our whiteboards, markers, costumes, and food. We're armed and ready to go! There's a team dressed as a wolf and a fox, and another team dressed as two grannies. One of the grannies is two metres tall and the other granny has a beard. They've both got bags full of sweets, bless them.

10AM
No luck with trying to get trains down to London, I'm afraid. We tried ScotRail, but they don't do trains to London - and East Coast won't let us on although we had the official letter that said it's a charity hitchhike. Bummer. Jasmine won't stop asking if the reason why we can't get on the trains is because she isn't cute enough. I'm not sure if her being cuter or dressing in Hello Kitty ears would make it any more likely that we'd be able to hitch on the trains, though. We're gonna try the buses at St James'.



11.45AM
No luck with the buses either, so we've been walking down London Road trying to thumb it. We haven't got any luck with getting a hitch just yet, but we did meet a guy who did the hitch 16 years ago (isn't it crazy?!) I hope this means good luck's on its way! We also meet a nice guy who gave us a couple of coins when we told him that we were doing this crazy hitch for charity. Seriously though, we've been trying to get out of Edinburgh for three hours already - if we aren't out of this city by 6PM, I'm going home.

12.10PM
AAAAAAAND WE'RE OFF! We finally managed to get ourselves a ride southward - a nice woman who happened to be in Edinburgh for work and was going home to Dunbar. After three hours, I'm just so glad to be finally on the move and headed somewhere, anywhere further south.



2.15PM
We got dropped off at Dunbar and amazingly enough, not three minutes later we got another hitch!!! Fair fortune is shining upon us. Karan insists that his bright green dinosaur costume is what did it, but I wouldn't set too much store by his words, just because it's Karan. We're on our way to Newcastle now, which is so exciting. The girl who's driving us just did a hitch to Paris, herself, so we've already met two ex-hitchers today! We're trying to get tips on how to get hitches and how to make it across the channel.

We also passed two teams along the side of the road while driving.

The views as we're driving along are gorgeous - I can't say I'm complaining at all.



Calvin Harris's Sweet Nothing came on BBC1 radio, and Karan pointed out that when Florence Welch sings the chorus it sounds like 'sexy elephant'. Now all I can hear whenever that song comes on is 'You're giving me sexy elephant.'

I wouldn't really mind being given a sexy elephant as long as we're moving towards Dover.

Morag, who gave us a lift from Dunbar to Newcastle!

We're going to take a short lunch break before heading on.

4.25PM
Not the best of luck so far... We've been trying to hitch our way south of the A1, but no vehicles are stopping. Karan reckons it's because we're at a roundabout, so traffic is moving fast and it's dangerous to stop. Lots of cars are honking at us and drivers are giving us thumbs up, though, so I suppose that's good? We're standing by the side of the autoway - I forced Karan and Jasmine to stand at a lay-by instead of right on the road shoulder, at least. I don't want us being run over by cars. The sun's beginning to set, it's chilly and I don't like it one bit.

5PM
We walked about two kilometres on the side of a road shoulder trying to find the next lay-by, hoping that might be a better stop for trying to get a hitch. My backpack's been weighing on my shoulders for what seems like all day, too, and it hurts. I could really do with a massage, but I'm not getting one standing by the side of the A1. I've got a sleeping bag, though - I'm seriously considering spending the night sleeping by the side of the lay-by... Good god, it's freezing.

It's Jasmine's determined "I AM GETTING A HITCH" face.

Karan Jasmine and I have worked out a sort of strategy for trying to get the attention of drivers - we'll stagger ourselves so that drivers have more chances of seeing us and more time to stop. I hope this works. I just want to be out of here. What happened to people being nice and helping three poor stranded hitchhikers?!

5.45PM
A nice old gentleman picked us up!!! I'm so glad to be in a car again. He used to hitchhike around, too, so he knows what it's like to be stuck going nowhere, I guess. But that was 30 years ago, he said. It's a really nice ride, too - one of those fancy Mercedes-Benz cars, but if you want to know exactly what model you're gonna have to ask Karan the car geek. The gentleman is going to drop us off at a service station where there's light and safety. He's going a bit out of the way for us, too, which is amazingly nice of him. My faith in humankind has been restored!

6.30PM
WE FOUND ANOTHER HITCH TEAM!!!!!! I don't even know who they are but we were just so glad to see someone else that we started hugging each other. (I later found out that their names are Danica and Susan.) It just hit me that we've been at this for more than 9 hours now, and we're still stuck in Newcastle. Fine, we're in a BP service station in Washington which is a little bit south of Newcastle, but it's still Newcastle really. We finally bought a road map of Britain.

Danica and Susan are shuttling in between asking the truck drivers, asking the people at the Burger King nearby, and asking the people filling up their tanks. Karan and Jasmine are just waving the whiteboard near the BP exit and hoping that someone notices them and stops. Lots of trucks are coming through but I think it's going to be hard for them to do three passengers, which really sucks.

That hey-hey song which Karan's been singing all day while trying to thumb it is seriously getting on my nerves. I kind of want to shove him every time he does that stupid song and dance. I think I'm just tired and irritable right now.

8PM
We're off again! I feel bad for leaving Danica and Susan behind, but I'm sure they'll get a ride out of Washington soon enough. The people giving us a lift are headed towards Lincoln, which is pretty darn far south, so I'm really, really happy. Also, I'm getting so tired that it's hard to function.

Beth and Rob, who gave us a lift to Blyth.

I've realised that the majority of our car conversations go something like this:

"So where are you guys headed?"
"We're headed to Amsterdam."
"Amsterdam! Sure it's not for the weed?"
"Ha ha, it's actually a charity hitchhike."
"Oh that's nice, so what charities are you supporting?"
"The Cheetah Conservation Fund and Breakthrough Breast Cancer."
"That's pretty cool. And is this for school?"
"Yeah, we're from the University of Edinburgh. Well, we're from Singapore, but we're here for a year on exchange."
"What are you studying?"
"I'm studying philosophy, she's doing economics and he's doing mechanical engineering."

I can't even remember the number of times I've repeated those lines already.

10PM
We're at a service station in Blyth now - apparently the grannies were just here a while ago, and we reckon they're one of the teams further ahead so we can't be far behind now! It's so hard to get a hitch out of here though. It's freezing cold, I'm wearing a ridiculous reindeer costume, and to top it all off it's just started drizzling. Really. What on earth am I doing with my life? None of the cars are stopping, either. I want to curse in a lot of profanities.

11.15PM
Oh. There's a restaurant behind this petrol station. How is it we did not know this? We're going to go there now and see if we've got any more luck that way. This is a #slitwrist situation.