Tarred by Exhaust

London to Bristol

The Elizabeth Line skimmed quietly west. The newest of London’s tubes, it’s the capital’s latest—reasonably successful—attempt to show that it can operate in the 21st century. There’s something of a Tesla about it, before Musk trashed the image. Clean, sleek, quiet. Perfected aesthetically. Apple-ified.

I was heading to Bristol for a festival. For once I’d decided to hitchhike purely on financial grounds. The train, only a few hours, was expensive and I reasoned I could reallocate my savings to a few rounds at the bar.

My fellow Elizabeth Liners were a motley crew. Most sat with arms over huge suitcases, families burrowed among them. Heading for Heathrow and the rest of the world. Anywhere in the world. Everywhere. It’s funny to think this grim, grey concrete suburb is such a portal. You’d never guess if you got off the train at West Drayton, as I did that day, that within a few hours you could be among the Pyramids of Egypt, the forests of Brazil or the towers of Tokyo.

I walked for half an hour through murky terraces. Pebbledash walls, tiled roofs, bay windows. The more architecturally adventurous had mock Tudorbethan beams. Tracksuited youths sloughed about on bikes. The noisy tug of the airport was impossible to ignore, a kind of gravity.

I’d found a roundabout with a decent looking slip road right onto the M4 to Bristol. It was the road coming out of Heathrow so I thought there’d be a decent chance of a lift.

To get there I had to pass through the grounds of the Holiday Inn, a vast, fearsome-looking place, somewhere between a sixties tower block and a mental asylum. Such a building fits right in here. There are many asylums out in these edgelands.

Buses were unloading tourists as I passed. People filed into the hotel lobby. Others clung to the outside smoking. There was an acute sense that this was the underbelly of travel and tourism, the inside of the machine. It was a glimpse of the workings of the vast, unruly industry, a glimpse of what most people see, though they probably choose not to see it. They no doubt save their photos for the real sites. Leicester Square, red-coat Guardsmen. Anything but this.

I jumped over the fence to the roadside. A resilient lime tree, bent over. Its once green leaves were tarred with exhaust. It left a grey streak on my trousers as I brushed by.

Now for the cars. Countless, rushing, slowing, listing sensibly to the left, revving aggressively, indicating, checking mirrors. After a few minutes, a man pulled into my makeshift layby, really just a gap of unused tarmac in the armpit of the left turn. He was wearing a bucket hat and had a smear of stubble across his chin. “You going to Bristol?” He said. I was, I replied, was he? “Errrrr, nah. Stevenage.”

It was the opposite direction. I wondered why he stopped but thanked him all the same. In a place like this, any human interaction is something. A small reminder that we subjugated this unfortunate patch of the earth to benefit ourselves.

I thought of J.G. Ballard. He lived not far away and based his bizarre book Crash! in this neck of the woods: the motorway slip roads and flyovers that wire Heathrow into the rest of London. Ballard loved this kind of place, places of concrete. Places where even the most scraggy shrub feels like an impostor. The book is about someone who is sexually obsessed with car crashes. Read it if you haven’t, it’s pretty strange.

Nearly half an hour passed. I was beginning to think this was a bad place to stand. Not least because I could feel the exhaust forming a film on the back of my throat, clogging my nostrils. I don’t remember ever standing in such a filthy place.

Then I got lucky. An Audi swung in. Its driver was a youngish man called Mohamed. We shouted a quick exchange over the noise. He wasn’t going far, only two junctions, but I reckoned I’d be better off anywhere but here.

It was a relief climbing in. The air was cool and clear. It tasted of nothing, instantly noticeable after the pollution. There were two kids on the back seat, both wearing the white gowns of some kind of martial art. Karate I quickly learnt.

Mohamed would take his kids to practice on Saturdays. They were making good progress, purple belts already. They took after their dad. “What belt are you?” I asked. “Black,” he replied coolly. He said he’d been to the world championships. Rotterdam, 2006, representing Afghanistan.

He asked about hitchhiking and said he’d done it a fair bit in the Middle East, once in Saudi Arabia on Hajj. Mohamed thought it was much safer there. People were more open and there were no rapists or murderers.

He told me he’d studied civil engineering at City University. He’d done it for several years but lost his job when COVID hit. He changed careers and set up a car dealership with his dad and brothers. It had grown quickly. He said last year they turned over 700. I wasn’t sure if that meant cars or large ones.

It hadn’t all been plain sailing. For a time he was working 14 hour days, seven days a week. But now it was off the ground, things were settling down. When it was quiet in summer he’d only work two or three days a week. September was busiest he said, people moving for university, moving house. The country on the move. Things got pretty hectic round then, he said, raising his eyebrows.

It was barely ten minutes to the Windsor junction. This was a much better spot. Far less stressful somehow too. Over the tops of the hedge I could see the bulbous towers of the castle. I made a note to head straight here when hitching west next time.

A low plane came howling overhead. Its metallic underbelly clearly visible from the roadside. I thought of the countless souls flying in and out of Heathrow, conveyed into London, conveyed out of London. Millions and millions. Work, business. On holiday.

I realised you always get a good sense of a city from its ugliest parts. Even if you don’t fancy hanging around in them.