I was desperate for a wee. I stood hopping by the side of the road torn between running to the public toilet and trying one more car. There was barely any traffic and every car counted. Despite my desperation, something compelled me to try one more. It was a small white Hitachi van that seemed barely wide enough for two but as soon as it saw me it pulled straight over. Momentarily forgetting my aching bladder, I whipped back the back door. There was a smart pair of black shoes and a radio which I quickly moved as I chucked my bag in. We left Blackmoor Gate and drove onto Exmoor - I bit my lip and crossed my legs.
The engine whined as we whizzed up the hills. Mark had spent the day mooching about the coast looking at surfboards to accompany the shoes and radio in the back. He’d not been able to find one but was soaking up the last days of freedom before he began a new job drugs testing new employees at Hinkley Point. He wasn’t overly enthusiastic about it but understood the necessities of family life. Nevertheless, the free spirit in him was obviously feeling despondent.
With a few hours to spare before picking his boy up from school, he kindly agreed to take me along the coast to Minehead. As it turned out, Mark was a fantastic tour guide and knew the landscape intimately. With the little van revving under our weight, we pootled along the beautiful coastline.
Mark had a keen interest in local geography and filled the hills, heather and high-up cliff tops with life. The sheep, deer and birds were all named, the rocks explained and the valleys and villages populated with all manner of characters. Below the red-brown cliffs the sea looked immaculate and when spun with tales of smugglers and fishermen, sparkled even more brightly.
He offered to take a detour from the main road into Lynton which he felt I couldn’t miss so we pulled off the moorland road and wove into thick green forest, descending steeply into the valley. Lynton was a beautiful town and seemed to cling precariously to the hillside. He took me through it, down yet further, until the suburban bungalows dissolved into a stunning view of the Valley of the Rocks. It was a dramatic stretch of coast that looked more like New Zealand than Devon. He pointed out the resident formations, the Devil’s Cheesering and Jagged Jack and his personal favourite, the White Witch.
As we turned around I could hold in my bladder no more and jumped out to relieve myself in the heather, hoping none of the other tourists would get a view they hadn’t expected.
We doubled back on ourselves and dropped below Lynton into Lynmouth which was another beautiful town, this time cowering at the bottom of the cliffs. The rocks crowded overhead impossibly. This was Mark’s favourite in Devon not just for its beauty but also for its history. He recounted how in 1952 it had been destroyed by a dreadful flood. The East Lyn river burst its banks and swept away ten bridges, a hundred houses and thirty-four lives. The wreckage was supreme and there were over 100,000 tonnes of rubble, most of which was thrown into the sea to be digested by the tides. The town took six years to rebuild. Mark waved to a couple of mates drinking a beer outside the pub as we passed.
As we drove back up onto the cliffs he casually dropped that he was into pool. “Yeah I play a few competitions around the country,” he shrugged modestly. I sensed he was being discreet and pressed him further, soon discovering he was in fact a superb player. Though not quite a professional, he rubbed shoulders with the best, shooting games against some of the world’s top players. His proudest victory yet was against the world number 13 but his lack of consistency prevented him from fully entering their ranks.
As we came into another village he quickly paused his account of a recent game to excitedly point out the sites. We were now in Somerset passing through the huddled cottages of Bossington and Allerton. Ancient chimney stacks creaked over the thatched rooves. “Now this bridge here,” he explained attentively, “is thought to be the oldest packhorse bridge in the country…”
I realised what a difference having an impassioned tour guide makes to a place. The enthusiasm needed is born out of love and Mark certainly loved that stretch of the coast, indeed by the end I did too. Before dropping me he took me right through Minehead, a leafy green town, showing me the quay and the beach and the start of the South West Coast path which stretches unbroken from that point for 630 miles. Behind, the pointed red and white turrets of Butlins peered over the town conspicuously. I thought of George Harrison’s description of the Welsh Butlins from their hitchhiking trip. “It was like a German prisoner-of-war camp - Stalag 17 or something. They had barbed-wire fences to keep the holiday-makers in, and us out. So we had to break in…” Mark and I didn’t break in though, instead, he dropped me on the edge of town and we said a warm goodbye. I was glad I’d held in that wee.
A couple picked me up in a battered red 4x4. The passenger was a younger girl and the driver had a thick white beard and wild hair. He had a crazed look about his eyes. As I got in he looked back and held me with a piercing gaze saying in a slow, thilling manner, “How exciting it is being so close to death!”
His eyes seemed to look right into my soul and the moment is etched indelibly into my memory. Nothing about it was unkind, sinister or dangerous, it was just one of sheer exhilaration.
I agreed it was indeed exciting.
The woman in the passenger seat was much younger and seemingly saner and was his daughter. They’d been farmers in South Africa but had lived in Somerset for a long while. Their accents were still discernable though. Her name was Gigi, his was Ro.
Gigi wanted to be a writer and was telling me how she found it difficult to find the time to write properly in amongst all her various other jobs. We chatted happily for a while. Ro listened intently, his gaze fixed on the road and then, suddenly and quite deliberately, he broke in and immediately we both stopped our chatter. “Determination….” he announced carefully, “in anything…is the one guarantee to success.” He spoke with great wisdom, every word was carefully formulated in the factory of his brain, “Determination. It is the key ingredient. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are…how well connected you are…determination is all that matters. You can achieve absolutely anything with it.”
Gigi and I pondered his words.
“Surely that’s not necessarily a good thing?” I questioned. He thought for a moment then agreed with me. “No, I do not believe it is. You can take the example of the crows nest of parliament at the moment. We are willing to be enslaved by those willing to enslave us.”
Such gravity his words had, they almost seemed to be physical. The ensuing silence was thick but was burst by Gigi asking lightheartedly what I was doing hitchhiking. I explained and soon we were nattering away again.
Processing every word carefully, Ro spoke again, “Wonderful,” he said, silencing us both again, “How wonderful free will is when all is going according to plan. But we forget how easily things can go pear-shaped.” He peered at me through the mirror.
By now we were nearing their turning. They drove past it offering to drop me a little further.
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” I said.
“Not at all,” said Ro, “We have both benefitted. Who has benefitted more is not important. It’s irrelevant. If both sides are happy with the bargain it is a good bargain. Win, win. You must go through life making these kind of bargains. One party will always benefit more but that’s ok. As long as you are both happy, everyone is better off.”
We came to the centre of Williton. Judging from the proximity of the leaning houses to the spinning cars, the village was much older than the A roads that crashed through it. I was rescued from the precarious situation by a man in a van. His name was Derek. I know nothing about Derek thanks to the punishing volume he had his EDM music turned to. We sat the 20-odd minutes together in a strange sort of conversation where neither of us could understand the other. I think he was on his way back from work but that’s about as much as I gleaned.
I got out with a pounding headache in Bishop’s Lydeard and eased it with a pint before realising that there was nowhere safe to get a ride to Taunton. I stood warily on a busy roundabout for about half an hour until a white van came flying round and screeched to a sudden halt. The driver flung open the door and I jumped in as the traffic piled angrily behind.
Once accelerating, I discovered that the driver was Moldovan and spoke no English. All I could gather was his name was Max. Unsurprisingly this made things challenging and it reminded me why hitchhiking in Britain is much better than doing it abroad. I once hitched in Azerbaijan and the entire experience was pretty unmemorable because I spoke no Azeri and nobody spoke any English. The bus had gone past and at 30p it was far more attractive than another long wait for some unsuccessful sign language.
The main issue in this situation was in establishing where Max was actually going. He had heard of Taunton so nodded emphatically whenever I mentioned it but as I soon discovered was actually going the other way. After several minutes of futile gesturing and growing frustration, he swung into a petrol station and got out his phone. He shouted hurriedly down it in Russian and then thrust it into my hand.
“Khhello”, said the voice calmly in a thick Russian accent. His name was Alex. “Max wants to khnow why you are doing this and why you are not go by train or bus…like normal pherson?”
I explained my motives.
“Max will take you to the station so you can get train to London…” I quickly looked at my phone and discovered that though only 2 miles away the station was better than there, “…If you phay him 20 pounds,” he added seriously.
I told him that paying £20 to go 2 miles so that I could catch a train all the way home completely defeated the point but he didn’t seem to understand and asked to be passed back to Max. At that moment Max was looking for something in the back and only his crotch was visible giving me quite a shock. When he came back down, I handed him the phone and he looked at me and rubbed his fingers. “Money!” He said, staring intently at me, then pointed to his car, “For phetrol, money!…For train station!” I apologised for the misunderstanding and jumped out calling out “spasiba” as I went.
The evening was fast approaching and I realised the only way to get to the other side of town, some 4 miles away, was to walk. I decided not to waste any time trying to hitch so heaved on my rucksack and stomped through Taunton, through its dodgy back lanes, down its graffitied alleyways, over the river Tone, past the cricket ground and along endless stretches of semi-detached houses. With a mile of busy road still to go and the looming prospect of being stranded in Taunton for the night, I began to wonder why I hadn’t just got the train like a normal person. As I became sticky and itchy with sweat, £20 even began to seem like a good deal.
Exhausted and drenched I finally reached the roaring flyover on Taunton’s eastern edge. I almost gave up there and then, and seriously considered getting an uber back to the station. I’d be home and dry in my own bed in just a few hours.
I managed to convince myself to try a couple of cars as I stood outside the grotty Toby Carvery panting, my thumb hopefully outstretched. Sure enough, a car pulled right over and all those worries and thoughts of surrender were banished by the sudden excitement of a catch and the distraction of a conversation anew. How wonderful free will is when all is going according to plan.