Any ex-hitchhikers here?

[Dave 123]

Of the strange religious man?

No, I jumped out at some traffic lights near Chester and got the bus home.
He would liked to have dropped me at his back door though!

 

[gbb]

I hitch hiked prolifically in the 70s for a couple years between Notts and Peterborough.
Sadly I did get picked up and propositioned once or twice by weirdos but on the whole it was reps or lorry drivers who were glad of someone to talk to probably.
Ironically I remember if it started raining, your chances were less of getting picked up after a short while, I guess folk didn't want their seats getting wet.
Never really struggled to get a lift.

Picked up hitchhikers well into the 80s and 90s but found I got a few weirdos in succession so it put me off.
One guy got in the car, started mumbling and rocking ....oh....i just got him to where he needed to be and let him out. Probably couldn't help it.
Two guys (separate occasions) had no real idea where they were going. Oh....
I dropped one off at the first exit for Birmingham....i still didn't know (neither did he of course) where he was headed.

 

[PeteXXX]

When I was driving in the Southwest of Eire when you could fill a car with petrol for a fiver, I was flagged down several times by people waiting for the daily bus. I drove them to the next village, or wherever, I was just bimbling around the countryside, and invariably they'd ask what time I'd be picking them up for their return journey
Busses were few and far between back then!

 

[robjh]

In West Germany in the early 80s there were numerous, ahem, unverified, reports of an elderly man hitching on the autobahns, who once in the car and on the road would claim to be the Archangel Gabriel and promptly disappear. I did, twice, see an older guy hitching on crutches around the Würzburg area and I did wonder to myself if it might be him...

Edit : thought I'd google this story and found this. It seems the vanishing hitchhiker is a common yarn, and not at all restricted to Germany in 1982!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Hitched a lot as a kid, mainly to London or Oxford and back, back was trickier from London.

Best was a lift from Jonathan Pryce and worst was a lorry driver who was a nutter.

 

[slowmotion]

Ostend to the Albanian border in 1973, via Saltzburg, Rijeka and Split. Then the lifts dried up so I hopped on a train to Istanbul and beyond. Some of the people who picked me up had intentions that turned out not to be entirely honourable.

 

[classic33]

Two guys (separate occasions) had no real idea where they were going. Oh....
I dropped one off at the first exit for Birmingham....i still didn't know (neither did he of course) where he was headed.

The second one!

 

[gbb]

The second one!

Can't remember...i think he was headed well north, can't even remember where I dropped him off, it was probably 40 years ago.

 

[growingvegetables]

Hitched a fair bit, until I went off to Egypt, then Yemen, in 1978. Came back "permanently" in 1986 ... and hitching had pretty well disappeared? Or maybe I didn't notice (want to notice?) it.

There was a fair bit of hitching in my time in Yemen. Usually involved guys waving AK47s in a "friendly" fashion. Yup, I stopped and gave them a lift; no way could a series 3 Landrover outrun an AK47!. However, we did lose one vehicle - the hitchers put my colleagues out at gun-point, and drove off.

The other group of hitchers - deserters from the Iran-Iraq War. That was horrible - remember what you've read about "shell-shock" in WW1 trenches? Except this wasn't some school lesson on Siegfried Sassoon - this was 3 or 4 guys sitting next to me and telling their stories. Horrible.

 

[HLaB]

Ive seen a few hitchhikers lately on the A1 I'd be surprised if anyone stopped

 

[PeteXXX]

Sad but true! There's to much dodgyness around now to risk it! Transport companies don't allow passengers for insurance reasons, but even so, I wouldn't chance it

 

[swee'pea99]

Hitching was my basic way of getting around city > city when I was at university and for some time afterwards. Had some great lifts, and no really bad ones. Hitched right round both islands of New Zealand, and from Sydney north as far as the Gold Coast. Worst ride there was with a loathsome father and son, who told racist jokes and laughed raucously. I would have asked to be let out, but I was just relieved to have found a lift taking me right through the then-notorious 'murder mile' - several hitchhikers having disappeared over recent years.

 

[slowmotion]

Sad but true! There's to much dodgyness around now to risk it! Transport companies don't allow passengers for insurance reasons, but even so, I wouldn't chance it

I can't agree. I don't think the risk to drivers or hitchers is any greater than it was forty years ago. All that's changed is lurid reporting of the nastiness of modern life by the Press, and our willingness to be gulled by it.

I'm a bit miffed that I can't repay some of the generosity of strangers that I enjoyed when I was younger. Hitchers have disappeared.

 

[Drago]

Hitching? Safe has houses.

 

[robjh]

Ostend to the Albanian border in 1973, via Saltzburg, Rijeka and Split. Then the lifts dried up so I hopped on a train to Istanbul and beyond. Some of the people who picked me up had intentions that turned out not to be entirely honourable.

.....
I'm a bit miffed that I can't repay some of the generosity of strangers that I enjoyed when I was younger. Hitchers have disappeared.

Maybe don't try to replicate all the types of generosity you were on the receiving end of in your younger hitching years?