The way to England and hitching over the channell
It was early wednesday morning when I hit the road. I got a fast lift to Olsztyn, then to Ostróda. Standing at the perfect spot, watching cars passing by, next car stops. The guy was going to Poznan, excellent option as for me. He dropped me at the gas station on the highway A2, couldn’t be better spot though. After perhaps 5 minutes truck stopped. Uzbek gipsy driver was going about 100 km further, almost to the border. The driver was pretty cool, he told me all the cool stories from Uzbekistan, shared a lot. When we arrived to the parking lot there were like 200 trucks. I felt kind of like in a kingdom. The first trucker I asked for a ride agreed on taking me across the border. When I jumped in it turned out he was going to Hamburg, kinda off the road. However, we kept calling drivers on CB radio and I got the next lift. This truck driver was going to England, Coventry which was very much on the way to Mansfield, my destination, but you know, they cannot drive more than 9 hours a day. He drove me to Magdeburg where I switched cars using CB radio again. Young driver driving his mini-truck was going to Belgium, looked like an awesome ride, but.. He had to find a petrol station which was off the road, cause he was allowed to use just those by his boss. The struggle had started then. We lost about 2 hours looking for this petrol station, at the beginning it seemed cool to look for it, but after some time I was simply freaking out. The guy was falling asleep all the time, that we nearly crashed a couple of times. We finally made it. Then his CB radio and lightning bulb broke down + he entered the pin code of the card 3 times wrongly and the hard was blocked. When he fixed that and was ready to go I noticed another polish mini-truck coming up. It was another young guy going to England. After a little talk he agreed on taking me with him. We drove together from Bielefeld in Germany to London ring.
Crossing the channell
When we got to Dunkerque we were asked for ID cards and the truck was checked on the French side. Then we got to English side. We were asked for ID cards again, I was sitting on the right side, so I was passing them. Then the guy asked me ‘what’s driver’s name?’. I was like ‘uhmmmm’. I do not really know what it meant, but he was probably checking me if I was related with the driver or not, whatever. I didn’t answer the question, he stared at me for a while, gave the IDs back, let us go. As for me, it doesn’t look difficult to cross the chanell, however, it might be easier with a normal car than with a truck, but as you can see trucks work as well. We carried on and after smoking a cigarette we boarded the ferry. 2 hours on the ferry, mostly spent on sleeping and watching if Dover cliffs were visible yet.
England
When we left the ferry we kept on going. Adam drove me to London ring where I got dropped at the service station. I was suprised how frequently the cars were passing me by. Getting a lift was just a matter of time. After perhaps 20 minutes girl driving from the east of England picked me up. She was going to Oxford, so I decided that it’s gonna be easier to go through Oxford than trying to get on the other side of the ring to get on M1. That’s what I did. When we were getting closer to Oxford she offered me a place to stay over and since it was getting late and I had been for 36 hours awake I decided to accept that. When we reached Oxford I experienced great English hospitality. Rachel’s mother used to hitchhike a lot, so I eagerly listened to her stories. After a great time in Oxford I hit the road the next day.
I was at the highway’s junction quite early in the morning. An old man stopped after approximately 20 minutes, took me a little bit further, to the place where the highway was starting (M40). He dropped me, I had to walk up a little bit. While walking a man pulled over and asked if I needed a lift, I noddded. He was going to Manchaster. I decided to take the road through Stroke on Trent. When we got there, he decided to take a detour, about 50 miles to make sure I would be fine. We arrived in Mansfield around 1 pm.
Little summary
The first day lasted for me 36 hours, I got from Bartoszyce to Oxford, which was 1850 km.
The second day lasted 4 hours and I made it from Oxford to Mansfield, which was a bit over 300 km.
The whole trip lasted 40 hours. I passed 2150 km, so the average speed was over 50 km/h.
The funniest thing is that I got here at 1, started looking for a job immediately and 4 hours later I got a job already. I’m gonna be upholder, starting on monday. Things look good, gonna stay here 2 months then hitting the road again, next destination is Barcelona 