Sean Hood

Okay, so here goes. I went hitchhiking on Monday partly...

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:39:00 +0100

Okay, so here goes. I went hitchhiking on Monday partly ‘cause I fancied it partly encouraged by a few words a friend said to me, “Stop saying you will and just do”. Why Berwick? I wasn’t too sure until after. It just looked a nice place when I passed on the train coming back from Glasgow last summer.

I waited two hours for my first lift (11:20am) at Washington Services from an old man called Tony, he’d just driven up from Leeds and was heading to Holy Island to meet his son. He dropped my off just before the turn off at these services pictured above.

My second lift only took 10 minutes wait from the layby beyond the turn off from a guy called Keith, he was on a work training course in Berwick itself. I got there at around 1pm.

Berwick was nice I got chips, wandered to the beach to find I was on the rocky not so nice bit and popped into a pretty cool eco friendly shop.

After a fair bit of wandering I decided to begin my way back. I walked a mile south of Berwick and went into Tesco, it was built half with wood so smelt like a tree house. I then continued on to the roundabout that connected the A698 to the A1. Not the best place to hitch from but after 5 minutes I had a lift.

Didn’t catch this guy’s name but he was a fairly outdoorsy type person. Told me lots of stories about hitchhiking from when he lived down in Cornwall. It was a short lift, just 9 miles back to Beal filling station.

A short matter of minutes passed and my 4th lift of the day pulled up. Richard, he’s a trucker from Cramlington but was just on his was back from dropping his wife off in Berwick. Spoke to him quite a bit about hitchhiking, as he’s usually picking people up with driving so often. He dropped me off at Seaton Burn Services and told me to try the layby just after the slip road on the A1. After 10 minutes of waiting with my newly fashioned “A1 SOUTH” sign as cars sped past at 70mph I gave up and walked back to the services.

Before I had even gotten there, Andy (if I recall correctly) was just pulling out of the station and waved me over. He asked me where I was going and I replied with the same question and got the reply, “Wales” In the broadest Welsh accent I’d ever heard. So that was it, he delivered cars for a living and also told me he regularly picks up hitchhikers.

These signs helped me cover ~150 miles with 5 lifts and I enjoyed every bit of it, well maybe not the initial wait but i’s all part of the fun ain’t it?

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Thu, 19 Apr 2012 02:14:19 +0100

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