Anyway, I hitchhiked my way from London to Paris! I didn't really know what I was doing but I read some things on the internet. I took the internet's advice and positioned myself at a particular intersection on the outskirts of London with my hitchhikin' sign.
I don't have many pictures from this adventure, so I'll try to paint a word picture for y'all.
The intersection looked pretty ideal from what I heard from the internet. It was a roundabout where people had to slow down before getting onto the highway. Also the road was labelled so the people going my way definitely could not pretend that they weren't.
Now imagine. I was standing by the side of the road on a brisk English morning with my backpack and cardboard sign with "M3" written on it in very large letters. I was wearing all of my shirts. Most of the people who passed me ignored me. Some of the truck drivers acknowledged my existence in an apologetic, I'm-not-giving-you-a-ride way. This was to be expected from what I read on the internet. Apparently people in the UK aren't used to hitchhikers.
Anyway, eventually (in 20-30 minutes) a guy stops and gives me a ride to almost the M3. Apparently he used to hitchhike back in the day. Hitchhiking noob that I was, I tried staying around where he dropped me off, maybe walking a bit down stream. The assumption was that if could drop me off, others could pick me up, though upon inspection, this did start to seem unlikely.
Fortunately, some traffic police came by to talk to me. Turns out that what I was doing was really dangerous for me and the drivers because the road was really fast and also it's illegal to hitchhike on the hard-core highways which I was getting close to. They ended up giving me a lift to a nearby "slip road" as they call them, which would be safer and more legal. In retrospect, I'm pretty glad that I started my hitchhiking adventure in a place where I actually speak the native tongue.
British police guys
At this point, I altered my sign to read "Dover" and discovered that the writing implements I had were really not going to cut it for the entire trip to Paris. I had looked for Sharpies and the like in stores, but I guess that don't believe in magic markers or something in Europe. It wasn't too long before a truck stopped for me. Turns out that he sometimes picks up hitchhikers (obvs) and has kids my age and sometimes has to tow cars from accidents and sometimes those accidents are from drunk kids and results in their deaths. From what he said, it seemed like it was just part of the job and was just glad that they're not his kids. He dropped me off at a big service station where a lot of truck drivers go through (and which was recommended by the internet).
This is where I picked up a sandwich, and a set of markers (which for some reason already had round tips like some child had already abused them). I spent a long time asking truck drivers for a ride, but a lot of them either said that they they couldn't pick up hitchhikers or that they were only going to a city halfway to Dover and that I would have better luck waiting for a ride all the way to Dover. I spent some time talking to the guy working at the gas station. Turns out that he was a liberal arts major. Guess they have that problem in the UK too.
Eventually I got tired of waiting around for a better ride and I don't like harassing people asking for a ride when they are trying to do things, so I accepted a ride from a non-truck driver who was going to the half-way-to-Dover city. I think he had a store or something in Dover but wasn't going there that day. He dropped me off at a gas station and about ten minutes later, I had a ride to Dover. The people who picked me up were really cool. I think they were heading to Belgium but they could take me across the English Channel because some rule regarding day-trips and head counts. I tried to find a ride across but I didn't really know what to do and I think cars tend to buy their tickets beforehand so I couldn't harass them in line. I decided to just pay the 30 euros to take the ferry.
While I was waiting for the ferry, some crazy guy started yelling about the filthy proletariat and had to be escorted away by the police. So that was interesting.
The English Channel!
BOAT.
Calais!
Fortunately, the boat had wifi and I had a map of Calais. I don't think I took the best route out from the port anyway. I ended up walking along some highway for a while looking for a slip road. I think it was a couple kilometers before I reached one. I was also impressed with the quantity of road debris. There were a lot of gloves and things on the side of the road. I don't really know why there were so many gloves.
I didn't really know what was better to put on my sign, Paris or Lille, because apparently it's really easy to go from Lille to Paris. So I put both on my sign and periodically switched between them. I think the guy who picked me up was going to Lille but saw the Paris side. He was a really nice Belgian dude. He didn't speak any English, but that did not stop him from attempting to sing along to Rihanna's Diamonds. He kindly went out of his way to drop me off at a service station in Lille on his way to Belgium.
I was there for about five minutes until a trucker agreed to give me a ride. He also didn't speak English, so I made good use of those four years of high school French. He took me the rest of the way to Paris with a detour around Orleans so I ended up getting to Paris around 2:00 the next day. I asked him to drop me off near the metro but he did not. A nice guy at the gas station who also did not speak much English helped me out and told me how to get to the bus that would take me to the metro and gave me money to pay for it.
These are necessary for all truckers.
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