Go Away! Hit the Road

It's a very enriching, useful, cheap, interesting way to get around and meet people from social, professional, and cultural backgrounds you might never meet in your daily life. And many people have told me that they profited from picking someone up as well. Some made friends, found the band they were looking for, or just had a less boring trip. So says Kati, from Germany, about her extensive hitch-hiking experience. Hitching isn't all that popular in the UK - make reference to it, and most people will probably look at you in horror, especially if you're female. They tend to expect you'll either be stranded by the side of the road forever, or abducted by a psycho and never heard from again. But you needn't rule out adventure if you're able to take a few safety precautions and carry out a risk assessment.

Kati reckons she's hitched the 10km to school about 250 times, as well as long-distance jaunts to various German cities, Switzerland, Austria, and around Scotland and Ireland. And she's done most of this by herself. "I only hitch-hike alone when I roughly know the route, so I wouldn't be lost if I suddenly felt like getting out," she explains. "I kindly reject people that I have a bad feeling about. I always ask where exactly people are going before I get in. Sometimes I had one of those pepper sprays." (Note: these are illegal in the UK. If, however, you happened to be carrying something like hairspray, and used it in self-defence, you'd be within your rights.) Nosh, of Glasgow, who hitches in pairs or trios, says, "I always carry a mobile on which I appear to be texting. Sometimes I say that I'm in touch with my mates throughout the journey for safety reasons."

Other than turning down one dodgy-looking bloke, Kati hasn't had to make any tough calls on the road: "Some people were boring, annoying or not very likable, but nothing really scary. My first time hitch-hiking, an elderly Jehovah's witness picked me up, on a mission to save me. I'm glad it was only 10km." But she's had many positive experiences: "Maybe the most interesting and likable person was a youngish Portuguese woman who was a dancer. We spent about two hours talking on the highway somewhere in the middle of Germany. And there was the guy who picked me up from Skye and took me all the way to Glasgow. He spoke Gaelic and was the head of the visitors' centre in Portree, so he knew practically everything I wanted to know."

My Skinny colleague Rupert has had a combination of positive and influential experiences. "When I got a lift off the government adviser on speed-cameras up North on the A9, it was pretty ironic that he used his knowledge to speed and slow down like the rest of us." But more unusually, he tells me: "I went to Mongolia because a guy who gave me a lift told me I should. His son had been on an expedition, and had been horse-riding in the mountains. I liked the sound of it so much I did the same thing six months later." Another classic was being picked up - after waiting ages in the rain, and covered in mud from a hike - by a Glaswegian businessman in a cigar-smoke filled Mercedes. We stank, and dripped all over his leather seats, but he was fine with it." Rupert's only bad experiences, he tells me, have only come from long waits - never the lifts themselves.

"I've only had the one dodgy experience," says Nosh. "This older dude picked up me and a female friend straight away, outside Glasgow, and said he would drive us to Birmingham. I was trying to pass as male and had grown my beard and was binding. I fell asleep after a while and when I started to come round he was having a dodgy conversation with my friend about prostitutes and asking personal questions about where she lived. When we stopped for a break he followed me to the toilets. I quibbled over male/female and eventually went into the female toilets, why the hell I did I dunno... maybe it was the thought of him watching me and possibly trying it on. I got stuck in a queue and by the time I got out he was back in the car and looked like he was going to drive off without me. My mate jumped out and waited for me with the door open. We stupidly decided that we would just stick with the same ride as we didn't have far to go - it would have been almost impossible to get a lift on the roads he took. He got pissed off and then dropped us at a shitty service station in the middle of nowhere."

Again, though, she's had enough positive experiences to not be put off. One of the nicest people who picked her up was a Liverpudlian trucker in his late twenties: "He was incredibly chilled, had good music and the craic was good too. He took all of us round to his sister's by the train station for some food and then to the station saying to call him any time we needed a lift." Another nice driver was an older man from Glasgow driving a meat truck – "as vegans we quibbled over this" - who "just seemed really lonely and genuinely interested in our safety. He gave us about £40 too."

"People always say something about how dangerous it would be to hitch-hike nowadays," says Kati, "and that, normally, they wouldn't pick up anyone - in a defensive, apologetic tone that suggests they want to convince me they're normal, decent people. And then I usually tell them that I doubt that it is any less dangerous than in the seventies when loads of people were hitch-hiking and car-sharing wasn't around yet, that it is just the media that make huge stories out of isolated events."

For my part, I've been picked up by people ranging from a priest to an ex-con (he'd done time for growing cannabis; it still hadn't put him off). I made it from Edinburgh to London in two lifts, first with a former hitch-hiker and then with a trade-plater – as people who deliver vehicles from A to B for a living, these folks are no strangers to hitching themselves. Although I've had a bit of luck with freewheelers.co.uk as well, the liftshare phenomenon hasn't caught on here the way it has in countries like Germany, so I've found I can't always count on such websites to help me out. But if I've got the time, and a back-up plan in case I can't reach my destination by nightfall, I enjoy just sticking out my thumb and seeing what happens. Above all, I trust my instinct and don't compromise it.