Hitch Hiking

rebelccfc · 01-09-2010 3:43pm #1

Would/Have you ever hitch hiked somewhere?

Ever come across any freaks if you have hitch hiked?

RedXIV · 01-09-2010 3:44pm

Once hitchhiked from Carlow to Dubin in the early hours of the morning and got picked up by a Tesco truck driver. one of the nicest guys I've ever met. Was expecting a fourth kid when I was walking to him.

No idea who you are mr. truck driver but hope all is well!

thebigbiffo · 01-09-2010 3:53pm

i hitchhiked all around the locality when i was a kid and graduated up to it being my prefered mode of transport in my late teens and early twenties. i once held a sign up for dublin outside limerick - the side of the road going into limerick. i wondered for 20mins what everyone was laughing at before i copped it - was some party the night before though

i swore some days in the pisses of rain and freezing cold i'd never pass a hitchhiker when i got my own car - although i pick up the odd one, it's still just the people i like the look of...

r3nu4l · 01-09-2010 3:55pm

Why I don't pick up hitch-hikers

galah · 01-09-2010 4:01pm

hitchhiked around Ireland three summers in a row, back in the 90ies. Great craic. The 'weirdest' people:

a guy with a huge axe in the boot (who turned out to be a forrester, but man we were scared first),

a crazy truck driver with the thickest accent, who wanted to marry one of us (either one, he wasnt fussy apparently) - we couldnt understand him though, only realised later that that's what he was on about;

one really nice older gent who took a huge detour from his route to show us some castles around Mayo (I think),

one guy who got really upset cause we couldn't pronounce 'Youghal' correctly (Yoch-awl - apparently, not 'You-gall'),

two lads from the North who brought uss from Cork all the way to Portadown to show us their 'swimming pool' (a tupperware box out the back, good fun nonetheless),

a really nice poet from near Drogheda with whom we stayed for a couple of days in his cottage in the woods,

some guy from near Aughrim who wanted us to stay with him and his mom...

the list is endless. Those were the days (and I am actually amazed that nothing nasty ever happened...)

JONJO THE MISER · 01-09-2010 4:06pm

Often hitch hiked when i was younger, haven't done it in years.

PeterIanStaker · 01-09-2010 4:07pm

Nope, never hitch hiked, I like my skin where it is, on my body, and not on a lampshade.

koppy · 01-09-2010 4:10pm

hitched 20 mile to college every day in late 90's..dont see too many doing it now..

CreepingDeath · 01-09-2010 4:23pm

On a weekend away in my college days, 5 of us split up and hitchhiked from Galway to Cleggan. Took about 3 or 4 hours if I recall.

BrokenArrows · 01-09-2010 4:32pm

nah i have never done it. mainly because i have a car. but if i was stuck i would give it a go.

Cumann de Barra · 01-09-2010 4:36pm

Ya couldn't pay me enough money to pick up a hitchhiker. Always smelly looking people.

admiralofthefleet · 01-09-2010 4:38pm

i bring a bag of lime with me just in case

chakotha · 01-09-2010 4:48pm

I used to hitch when I was in secondary school and college circa 1990. A fun way to travel and usually faster than the bus.

I was out of the country until 1998 and when I returned nobody seemed to be doing it anymore. I spent 2 hours waiting in vain for a 5 mile spin. Times had changed so much plus I (in my mid-late 20's) was no longer in the demographic. Lesson learned!

It's shame that the 20 year olds can't easily hitch around nowadays.

Celtic tiger materialism has something to answer for. And there seems to be more general fear than before.

fakearms123 · 01-09-2010 4:52pm

Hitchhiking is for murderers and hippies, everyone knows that

Kimono-Girl · 01-09-2010 4:57pm

one of my friends hitch hiked his way to Kerry, it was too late for the bus and a cab would cot a fortune, and he didn't want to bother us to drive him...luckily he made it down there with a really nice family...

i would never pick one up though :eek:

Rowley Birkin QC · 01-09-2010 4:58pm

chakotha wrote: »

I used to hitch when I was in secondary school and college circa 1990. A fun way to travel and usually faster than the bus.

I was out of the country until 1998 and when I returned nobody seemed to be doing it anymore. I spent 2 hours waiting in vain for a 5 mile spin. Times had changed so much plus I (in my mid-late 20's) was no longer in the demographic. Lesson learned!

It's shame that the 20 year olds can't easily hitch around nowadays.

Celtic tiger materialism has something to answer for. And there seems to be more general fear than before.

Now that's just lazy.

arybvtcw0eolkf · 01-09-2010 4:59pm

I hitch hiked around Israel, great craic and met some super people - including getting a lift from two Israeli soldiers, when we got chatting they were able to give me the map reference's of the various UN positions where I was based in Lebanon.. They were tanker's and stationed in a compound above Haddatha village and were routinely firing on us - I stayed with the lads in their appartment for a weekend in Akko.

Met a girl from Uraguay in Eilat, and hitch hiked to some Kibbutz in northern Israel.. This was before the internet, facebook or mobile phones so when we went our way, that was it - she was bloody beautiful!.

pickarooney · 01-09-2010 5:02pm

Hitchhiked from the south of Holland to the south of France and from the south of Holland to Brittany and then one time I was in the south of Holland and I went to get some beer and ended up hitchhiking to the north of Germany. Met mostly sound people and a couple of half-cracked Kazakh truck-drivers.

I really didn't like the south of Holland much.

My brother hitchhiked from Oregon to Alaska once.

ldxo15wus6fpgm · 01-09-2010 5:39pm

pickarooney wrote: »

I really didn't like the south of Holland much.

Why did you keep going back then?

Japandamo · 07-01-2013 4:03pm

Hitched from Kefalonia, in Greece, to Kerry last summer. Took eleven days and eighty-two lifts. Amazingly not one bad experience, although I think by the law of averages I should have met at least one weirdo.

Here, I found that it was surprisingly easy to get lifts once I managed to get out of Dublin. Interestingly several of the people that picked me up were 40+ and said that they'd stopped for me because they used to hitch around a lot back in the day.

Managed to do it without hacking up any drivers, too.

brandon_flowers · 07-01-2013 4:50pm

I was thumbing home one day from Abbeyfeale to Listowel after getting a lift as far as Abbeyfeale from Cork. I went to the bus stop and would have to wait for 2 hours for the next bus. I waited for a few minutes and then I decided to thumb instead.

Anyway I got picked up by three travellers in a Transit, couldn't have been nicer even though I was fired into the back with all sorts of power tools, bits of guttering, a fireplace and other random items.

Funny thing is for the 10 minutes I was at the bus stop some skank offered me a swig of her Linden Village and a sniff of some glue she had in her pocket... this was the instant I decided I was thumbing. To get away from the nutter I said "I'm getting a drive, I must go" she said " Don't take a lift from strangers"

Well I'm ****ing glad I did.

Edit: And I've often picked a few up too, usually the kind looking for a drive home rather than the touristy type.

AgileMyth · 07-01-2013 5:03pm

Japandamo wrote: »

Hitched from Kefalonia, in Greece, to Kerry last summer. Took eleven days and eighty-two lifts. Amazingly not one bad experience, although I think by the law of averages I should have met at least one weirdo.

Sorry to tell you but that means you are the weirdo.

bodhrandude · 07-01-2013 5:16pm

Got stranded in Knock with a mate on our way up to Sligo from Galway in the early 1990s, we were stuck in Knock for 4 hours. My mate took to writing on a sign Do to others as you would have them do to you. All we could see was nuns and priests in cars looking at us scruffy hippies (at the time anyway) and accelerating faster by us lol.

jaffacakesyum · 07-01-2013 5:20pm

Are any of you women or know women who have hitch hiked? I would love to do it someday....something to tick off the aul list! But as a female I would be a bit scared of doing it on my own.

Duggy747 · 07-01-2013 5:24pm

r3nu4l wrote: »

Why I don't pick up hitch-hikers

Why I don't pick up hitch-hikers! :pac:

LiamMc · 07-01-2013 5:25pm

Hitching used to part of my commute to work when I was living outside of Dublin centre and had to work on Sunday mornings with no car. Public services is still poor enough to city centre, I have sympathy for anyone having to hitch-hike as a commute and be stigmatised with a Mental Illness.

Hitched on different holidays in different parts of the World. The Developing World doesn't have the same stigma/stranger-danger immaturity that the Developed World has regarding the shared experience of travelling in the same direction.
Sharing rides, including monetary payment, is quite normal and appreciated by both parties in the Developing World.

Shared taxis redundant in Dublin
There doesn't seem to be the shared taxis leaving from Dame Street/College Green Dublin 2 that there was a few years ago.
There doesn't seem to be one reason but I have heard Gender, Privacy and Prestige as reasons given for it's demise.

dj jarvis · 07-01-2013 5:26pm

i would recommend hitch hiking to anyone

i hitched from dublin port to the polish / Belarus border in the mid 90's

i went via england , france belguim holland gemany and poland
had great craic , went to a few festivals along the way,
ended up staying with random old women at the border with Belarus , they put me up , no english spoken and some pigeon German , but by feck did we drink
and these pair of little old polish women drank me under the table , literally , becasue i woke up on the floor under the kitchen table , happy days

do it while ya can - pity , eastern europe was just openening up and the people were REAL friendly , not sure how it is now

but go , go now

phasers · 07-01-2013 5:38pm

I hitchhiked once, the guy who picked me up was really nice. After I helped him bury that rug he had in the boot of his car he brought me straight home!

seenitall · 07-01-2013 5:40pm

jaffacakesyum wrote: »

Are any of you women or know women who have hitch hiked? I would love to do it someday....something to tick off the aul list! But as a female I would be a bit scared of doing it on my own.

I'm a woman and a I hitch-hiked a fair bit in Ireland around 2000-2003, mainly the Sligo-Mayo-Galway route at that time. Had good craic with folks, the Irish are sound on that score, all ages stopped, more men then women but maybe because men drive long distance more too. Some guys will try and chat you up, but it's all in the spirit of fun, really.

In all that time, there were only a couple of iffy situations, where the conversation started to go in a weird direction, but what I did was I got busy with my phone, ringing a friend or whatever, telling them where I was and what I was doing, so that's how I would deal with it. I do remember being scared at the time though, especially with one of them. On one hand, two iffy situations out of hundreds of lifts isn't too bad, but on the other hand, it takes only one of those situations to quickly escalate for a lone woman and then you're in trouble.

So take from that what you will, jaffa.

I know that I will never ever condone my daughter hitch-hiking, I'm far too protective of her.

Ireland is, coincidentally, the best place to hitch-hike in my experience. Some of the Eastern Europe is pretty bad, some of France is good but not as good as Ireland, but the South of France, for example, is atrocious. NO ONE stopped for me at the French Riviera (I guess I should have figured it out beforehand, you don't get rich by being kind and stopping for people... time is money!

)

3qsmavrod5twfe · 07-01-2013 5:49pm

Spent a summer on the buildings in the early 00's and hitched every day. A lot of the people who pick you up are generally a bit wacky themselves. Over the course of the 10 or 12 weeks I was doing it I got lifts from the travellers, a postman (who warned me to put on the seat belt for fear I'd make a mess of his windscreen!), a guy driving a car transporter (having that pull up outside the house was some craic) and some guy in a brand new E-Class Merc who was claiming to be some sort of music promoter.

The only time I got a really weird vibe was this one guy, who, for want of a better expression, seemed a little bit touched. He picked me up, picked up another guy, drove about 10 miles out of his way to drop the other guy off, then a further 5 or 6 and the dropped me off (well away from where I actually lived I might add), all the while talking about living with mammy (he was well into his 40's). That was one of the longest 30mins I've ever spent in the front seat of a car. Maybe he was just starved for a bit of company but fcuk me it was weird!

B.A._Baracus · 07-01-2013 6:01pm

I could be wrong on this but when I was growing up hitch-hiking seemed a lot more common. You'd hear people mention it more. Nowadays when its mentioned its usually followed with "the fuck i would!" :P

Personally, i'd never hitch-hike nor would I ever pick up a hitch-hiker. You just don't know these days.

mikom · 07-01-2013 6:09pm

7's the key number here.
Think about it.
7-Elevens.
7 dwarves.
7, man, that's the number.
7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch.
You know that old children's tale from the sea.
It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby.

Where To · 07-01-2013 6:23pm

I hate hitch hikers.

Stheno · 07-01-2013 6:28pm

Never done it but did give one or two lifts

Not something you see being done that much anymore

MadsL · 07-01-2013 6:29pm

rebelccfc wrote: »

Have you ever hitch hiked somewhere?

Like a boss.

London to Prague in two lifts.

1. London to Zeebrugge with a trucker on the truck only Ferry. Free food, drinks and bed to sleep in.
2. Zeebrugge to Prague with a trucker who was on his way to Istanbul.

Job done.

robman60 · 07-01-2013 6:40pm

I've hitched about three times, all within the last year. It's normally just going to friends' houses really (10 miles away), as I don't drive.

I'll definitely do the same for people in future, as I know first hand how it feels standing in the cold, depending on strangers' kindness.

ToxicPaddy · 07-01-2013 6:49pm

Haven't hitch hiked in years, used to do it to/from college before I managed to scrape enough together to buy a crap heap car.

Most were sound, met a few strange ones.

Was hitching once and this what I can only presume was a family pushed a car passed and promised me a lift if I helped them push the car to the next garage, which was about 2 miles away and mostly uphill.

Ehhh no thanks.. but it so happened, that about 5 mins later a friend of our family stopped to give me a life and I mentioned it to him. He drove up to the family, stopped the car, got out, took a rope from the boot and towed them to the garage.. decent guy too

Fighting Irish · 07-01-2013 7:03pm

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

I could be wrong on this but when I was growing up hitch-hiking seemed a lot more common. You'd hear people mention it more. Nowadays when its mentioned its usually followed with "the fuck i would!" :P

Personally, i'd never hitch-hike nor would I ever pick up a hitch-hiker. You just don't know these days.

same amount of weirdos around today as there was back in the day

NegativeCreep · 07-01-2013 7:07pm

Long time ago me and my brother Kyle here,...
we was hitchhikin' down a long and lonesome road.
All of a sudden,
there shined a shiny demon...
in the middle...
of the road.

And he said:
"Play the best song in the world,
or I'll eat your souls"

Well me and Kyle,... we looked at each other,
and we each said...
"Okay."

And we played the first thing that came to our heads,
Just so happened to be,
The Best Song in the World,
it was The Best Song in the World!

Fizzlesque · 07-01-2013 7:12pm

Myself and a friend hitchhiked in Holland, Belgium and France a number of years ago - most of our experiences were fine but one or two were unpleasant and/or scary.

The worst was on our way back to Holland from Belgium; we both sat in the back seat of the jeep-like (I say jeep-like because all I remember about the vehicle was the seats were higher up than a car's would be, but I can't remember much more about it) vehicle and we were speeding along the motorway when the driver started moving his mirror so he could see us. He was wearing a pair of shorts which he had unzipped and proceeded to masturbate, while driving :eek:.

My friend and I were unsure what to do - jump out of speeding car, ask him to stop, stare stupidly at each other? We opted for 'stare stupidly at each other' and when he was finished he wiped himself clean with a tissue, picked up a bottle of cola, drank heartily, and offered us a drink from the bottle. We declined. When we got to where he could stop and let us out, we held onto each other climbing out and when we were dragging our bags out he turned to us and smiled his one-toothed smile and said "thanksssssss girlsssssss".

Ugh, even though that was over 20 years ago, I still remember the smell of animal manure wafting in through the windows we'd opened to mask the smell inside the car, the smell of manure being sweet perfume in comparison. There were a few other bad experiences but that one was the foulest of them all.

Japandamo · 07-01-2013 7:33pm

Sorry to tell you but that means you are the weirdo.

Oh. That...does make sense. Would that explain my strange obsession with door knockers too?

Are any of you women or know women who have hitch hiked? I would love to do it someday....something to tick off the aul list! But as a female I would be a bit scared of doing it on my own.

Met a few girls hitching, but most of them were going as part of a boy/girl duo, which I guess is safer. Can't say I'd feel as comfortable going it alone as a female.

There is an annual European hitchhiking gathering that seems to end without any (reported) fatalities, though. Never tried it though, but hope to maybe next year...

ZombieBride · 07-01-2013 7:42pm

I used to hitch-hike all the time as a teenager, my thumb was my best form of transport. Did get into a few dodgy situations from it, but then again if I didn't hitch-hike I would have been left atop a mountain in the middle of no where.

07-01-2013 7:43pm

I used to do it reguarly in the 80's and 90's, locally and from Dublin on a couple of occasions.

I remember getting a lift in a sports car from newlands cross and the guy was driving on the wrong side for the majority of the time, that was the quickest time ever to Tipp.

Also did it in Holland in the 90's, that was great craic, I think they were just not used to people hiking, and we would rarely be hanging around waiting.

Times have certainly changed regarding hitch-hiking.

ZombieBride · 07-01-2013 7:48pm

I think when the women started vanishing that started to put an end to my hitch-hiking.
My mother stopped picking up hitch-hikers when some guy held a knife to her throat and robbed her handbag. He ruined it for many many people as she would usually pick someone up everyday on her way home from the city and drop them to one of the many villages to our house.

Fox_In_Socks · 07-01-2013 7:56pm

I've thumbed about 4 or 5 times ever. No instances of anything weird happening.

I've picked up a lot of hitch hikers, though, so I'm hoping to pop up on this thread.

I'm the guy with the shovel and the cream cakes.

Jay D · 07-01-2013 7:59pm

Done it from Enniskillen to Dorset St, had missed our bus was delighted!

Picked up a few since, one wánkstain insisted I drive a good 50 miles on to drop him off thinking I didn't know how far it was, get the fuck out of my car you absolute cunt.

Also picked up what turned out to be a smelly ****er from Dundalk to Phibsboro.

Ah some are decent but some clearly aren't

up for anything · 07-01-2013 8:34pm

In the late 70s and up till I went to England in the mid 80s I used to hitch everywhere. There wasn't the money for buses and everyone did it. Used to hitch around Dublin city during the bus strikes in the late 70s too.

Only had one really dodgy experience and several weird/edge of dodgy ones. A friend and I hitched from Dublin to Clonmel, to collect my passport, and back to Dublin one summer's day. Arrived back in Dublin at 6pm and decided there was enough time to hitch to her home in Ballinasloe before it got dark.

We made it as far as Athlone and were very pleased to be so close when we got picked up by two guys in their very early 20s in a gold Chrysler Alpine (never forgotten the bloody car). They were heading to Galway to some dance and asked us to go along. We refused on the grounds that her parents were expecting us but that we might come along later but they got very insistent. On the outskirts of Ballinasloe she gave me a dig in the ribs, muttered that they'd turned off the main road and at the same time told them to stop messing and to leave us off there. The lad driving laughed and told us that we were going to get what we deserved. They drove us about 15 miles out of the town up byroads and down boreens and finally pulled up in the middle of absolutely nowhere and told us that we should put out or get get. they didn't use that phrase but that was the gist of it. We got out. They drove up the road and we started walking back the way we'd come. A couple of minutes later they sped (is that even a word?) back towards us. If we hadn't jumped the ditch they'd have run over us.

We were terrified. Eventually we came to a house and gathered up the courage to knock on the door. Talk about more terror. The whole family came to the door - they were Cletus and Brandine from the Simpsons, except there were at least 4 sets of grandparents and they had more kids. We felt a bit out of the frying pan into the fire. They gave us lots of funny looks and complicated instructions on the way back to Ballinasloe which was about 13 miles away. We began walking again with dusk closing in. We hadn't listened too well to the instructions because we'd been so tense and nervous. We heard an engine again and panicked that it might be the two in the Chrysler back again but it turned out to be a tractor in a farm yard. We ran towards sound and found a man of about 70 getting out of his tractor. We asked the way to Ballinasloe and he looked at us like we were mad. We explained what had happened and he insisted on driving us back to town. Such a nice man.

Back in the safety of her house we discussed whether we should ring the guards but decided against it in case we had to give names because she'd get into trouble for hitching. She'd told her mother that we'd gotten a lift from a friend. I hope those bastards died in a single car collision before they pulled that stunt again. It didn't put me off hitching though.

Then there was the guy who picked me up on the bridge in Waterford and dropped me in Clonmel 21 minutes later and that was before the bypass. He had a low slung yellow Fiat sports car.

Another time I was hitching to Dublin from Clonmel and in Kilkenny got a lift from two guys in a van. I was a bit on edge getting in because the guy on the passenger side got out so I had to sit in between him and driver. Struggling to make conversation I looked in the back and stupidly asked them why they had the back of it carpeted - cue lots of dirty sniggers and knowing looks. The driver asked me did I like kissing men with moustaches and I turned into a simpering miss in defense claiming I didn't kiss or somesuch. I was only 17 so got away with it. They stopped in Naas for lunch and offered to buy me lunch but I spun a story about having to get to Dublin quickly. They said if I was still on the road they'd pick me up. I was never so anxious to get a lift from anyone, even an axe murderer rather than have them pick me up again.

Also hitched in Canada - a couple of times.

SHOVELLER · 07-01-2013 9:10pm

Great thread.

Used to hitch a fair amount in the early 90s all over the country. Different times indeed. Less money and less motorways meant it was quite a popular mode of transport.

A couple of us once hitched from Cherbourg to Paris. Good fun. Weeks later coming through eastern France we had got a lift from a truck driver when he pulled into a service station.

We all got out and went in. A few minutes later we arrived back outside and no truck! With all our stuff in his cab! No passport or clothes. Now that was an adventure getting home!

Just to add hitched to sligo in 2005 just for old times sake. Surprised to get there in 5 hours!

Up-n-atom! · 05-06-2013 2:52pm

Just came across this thread - I was introduced to hitch-hiking last summer in Eastern Europe, having previously thought it was "a bit weird". Met a bunch of Polish kids in a hostel in Kosovo (of all places) who were headed my way the next day and asked if I wanted to join them instead of taking the bus. They had previously picked up a German guy, so in all there were 5 of us.

The next day we split into 2 groups and started the adventure. We didn't have to wait long, and even though the lifts only brought us a few miles each time, we never had to wait long for another ride. Thanks to the linguistic skills of the guys I was hitching with (the Polish guy altered his Polish so that he could communicate with the Serbian speakers, and German is popular in the region too) we got an amazing insight into the people who lived in the area. We were picked up by a couple of ethnic Serbs, who are the minority in the region and were obviously suspicious of the Albanian majority who were trying to force them out of the area they had lived in for generations. There was an older couple who had lived in Germany for a while, and a Kosovan who now lived in Finland.

The most amazing lift was from a Kosovan who now lived in Geneva. We got a lift from him just as we crossed the border to Macedonia - I was joking with my German friend that the car he order had arrived (it was a very swanky top of the range Merc) and it stopped right in front of us...we couldn't believe it!

It was also a lot of fun because we had split into 2 groups, it was like we were racing the other group to our destination. I didn't really do a whole lot of hitch hiking after that, since I was female travelling alone and a bit apprehensive, but I did a little in Romania a few weeks later when I missed a bus and was left stranded at a salt mine. I was picked up by a lovely man who had his baby daughter in the back of the car, so I figured I was safe enough. He had assumed I was Hungarian because I was so pale, and we had a nice chat in English.

The Poles had an amazing adventure all the way around Macedonia, Albania and Serbia - they ended up camping in town squares, playgrounds, in hotel grounds, in a hill overlooking Lake Orhid in Macedonia - none of the locals seemed to give a crap.

A Romanian friend of mine (also female) recently hitch hiked to Northern Ireland for a couple of days and got a great reception from those who picked her up (they seemed nostalgic for the times when it was more common). I have yet to hitch hike here, but I really want to give it a try!

Hitch Hiking

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