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A long time ago, a friend and I had a chance of a free place to stay in Edinburgh during the festival. Free accomodation was good because we were young and had little money, but Edinburgh was a very long way away. So we decided to hitch hike.
The people who were willing to pick up two young blokes from the side of the road were "interesting". One was a farmer in a tiny van with a huge sheep in the back. The sheep stank. Another had an ambulance converted into a camper van, and on the front the word ambulance had been replaced with "Amble Van". A third had a defrosting turkey on a tray in the passenger seat, and I had to put it on my lap. He was taking it home for his family dinner. As it defrosted, the tray filled with... liquids. On the corners, I had to tilt the tray so that I didn't get turkey juice on my trousers.
We spent a lot of time standing on road sides with our thumbs out with no one stopping. Some drivers made gestures that we didn't understand, but which seemed to be reasons not to pick us up. So we wondered if we could extend our gestures from the simple thumb "please give us a lift". We tried "Help, I'm falling into the road" (stand on one leg and flail your arms) and "We want a lift, but not from you" (thumbs down). By the time it got dark we were in Yorkshire, so still a bloody long way from Edinburgh. The sheep man dropped us at a tiny turning on the A1. No cars came out of the turning. The traffic on the A1 was far too fast to stop for us. So we walked along the roadside towards Wetherby, which took us over an hour. Things weren't looking good.
We had some food and drink in a hotel bar. I said I knew someone we could stay the night with if we could get to Durham, but that was still a long way away. We went out into the evening back to the A1. This time we were at a roundabout where the traffic had to slow down, and we got a lift almost straight away.
"Where are you going?"
"Durham"
"Get in the back."
It was a van full of workmen, and we got in with them. There were no seats. There was some food in the middle that they'd been eating, and some of them were drunk, though happily not the driver. A skinny dog put it's nose in the bag of sliced bread, and one of the drunks yelled at it and showered it in blows. The dog escaped into the front. Receiving more blows, it hid itself by the driver's feet. The drunk in the passenger seat tried hitting the dog some more to get it out, which made it wedge itself under the pedals. The van was doing about 70mph and the driver couldn't use the brake pedal. By taking his foot off the accelerator, the driver gradually slowed the van to a stop. He took the dog gently out and passed it into the back, and we continued our journey.
They were going further on, but they were happy to take us into Durham town centre.
"Where in the town do you want dropping?"
"Anywhere near the viaduct is good, thanks."
Durham has a handsome stone railway viaduct, and the place we were hoping to stay wasn't far from there. They dropped us off and wished us luck. It was getting on for midnight. My friend hadn't been to Durham before. He looked around.
"Where's this viaduct?"
"Up there."
They'd dropped us directly underneath it, and it was about 70 feet above our heads.
The next day we considered how far we still had to go, and took a coach.
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