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Published: April 5th 2009
This idea of freedom is an interesting one, isn't it? I mean, who is free and who isn't? Everyone depends on other people, on other things, everyone is dependent on something.
Jen and I thought we had achieved ultimate freedom. We were walking away from our comfortable life in a nice society, walking into some kind of bohemian dream of life on the open road filled with long days of silence and thought; the kind of thing great poems are written about.
Turns out northern France isn't quite so romantic.
Our break in Canterbury was slightly surreal. We'd been on the road for maybe 10 days at this point, so not a huge amount of time, but it was enough to start noticing a change in ourselves. Compared to a quiet life on the trail, the "hustle and bustle" of Canterbury was quite alarming. People seemed to be swarming everywhere with somewhere to go and something to do and never enough time to do any of it in. I was quite overwhelmed.
In the evening of our second day in town, we went to a student bar for an open mic night. A pretty normal
Leaving Dover
I think they're overstating their ferry servicesthing to do if you're young, free and sociable. But, somehow, I felt quite out of place. Its just such a massive shift to go from spending your evenings sitting round the fire, cooking, eating and then sleeping to sitting round a table filled with drinks listening to loud music until late in the night.
Modern life is great, but, at the moment, I know which one I prefer.
Anyway, in no time at all, we'd said our goodbyes and left Canterbury. A day and a half later, we were walking down a hill into Dover; salt in the air, gulls in our ears and the sight of the sea filling our horizons. It was quite exciting. Before long we'd found the port, and then found our way onto a ferry. In the space of what felt like 20 minutes we'd gone from walking down country lanes to staring at the receding coastline, with the sea air whipping at our faces.
Now, I never knew this before, but from the ferry in the middle of the Channel, you can see England and France at the same time. The Channel's actually really small, just a tiny strip of
Hitching to Berlin
You have to make the drivers smile you see... water separating us from mainland Europe, yet in my mind it was like this huge barrier. A barrier that in the past had separated me from the rest of the world. A barrier that now separated me from home. Its only 20 miles of sea, but, to me, it feels like some kind of abyss. An abyss that I can only now cross again when the time is right and I feel ready to return home.
Two days out from Calais Jen's feet and hip were giving her grief, but we were pushing on steadily towards...Belgium. That night we camped early to give us a bit of time to relax. I seem to remember saying something like, "You know Jen, just because we've planned to walk all this way doesn't necessarily mean that we have to. We could hitch a bit, or just bum around somewhere for a while. We're supposed to be free aren't we? We can do anything...".
We had a bit of a chat and actually realised that free was something we were not. We had, together, dreamt up this fantastic plan, but the problem with great plans is that they carry great responsibilities. Responsibilities to see them through to the end, to make sure that they live up to yours and everyone else's expectations. To be honest, plans are shit.
To hell with plans, we thought, from now on we will just have ideas. Sometimes our ideas will be good. Sometimes they will be so good that we'll act on them. But our ideas will never turn into plans. That way our lives will be truly spontaneous, totally free from one moment to the next, entirely radical and dynamic at every turn.
We got quite ahead of ourselves whilst cooking cous cous and sardines and, upon eating our frugal meal, took a few minutes to reflect.
It was true that we had 'planned' ourselves into a bit of a corner and that we were now, in some ways, slaves to our own dreams. We needed to start thinking a little bit more out of the box and so, with Jen's feet giving her a bit of grief and the road to Belgium seeming increasingly less like an adventure and more like watching a tea bag brew, we decided to hitch to Berlin.
Now, we were faced with some small logistical problems at this juncture. For starters, we were about 25 miles outside Calais and had no idea where we were in relation to roads. Another fairly major problem was the fact that we had run out of Snickers bars. In order so solve the most pressing of our issues, the next morning we walked to a supermarket and had some reduced pain au chocolat for breakfast. Next, we set about finding our way onto a major road.
Stealing a few cardboard boxes from the shop and turning them into signs, we soon found a lift over to a junction for the A26 - in our minds the highway to Germany, next stop Berlin. Unfortunately, however, it transpired that the junction we had been dropped at was even less popular than Southend on Sea and hitching became quite tiresome.
After 4 hours at the loneliest junction in northern France, we thought we'd try hitching back to Calais (where we hoped it would be more lively) and then back out towards the East. We finally got a lift back to the coast at about 6.30pm and set up camp on a slip road with signs for Lille at about 7ish. The last of the light finally waned and still no lift had taken us away from Calais, so we started thinking about finding somewhere to spend the night.
By this point our spirits were quite low. All of the bohemian sunshine that had been fuelling us in the morning had drained out and we were left feeling a bit like a day that had been forecast for sunshine, but that just ended up being a wash out. We were pretty low.
Just on the roundabout there was a bridge with a nice little flat, dry space near the top which looked like a good place to camp, as far as good places go on motorway junctions. We climbed up into this little space and sat for a while in silence. Too tired to cook, we just sat. In the end, one of us started conversation with, "How do you feel?". The other replied with what we both felt, what we both didn't want to hear, what we both didn't want to feel: "Lost".
It seemed ironic that 24 hours after freeing ourselves of our restraining plans and opening our minds to all possibilities, we were back here in Calais where we had been only days before, brimming with happiness about the beginning of our adventure. We sat for a while more in silence, mulling over our own dissatisfaction and unhappiness. It seemed that we were both considering the same thing: what if hitching to Germany didn't work the next day? What if we were making a big mistake deviating from our well planned and devised adventure? What if we ended up just going home? Neither of us could face that I think, not just for seeing the looks on other peoples faces but for feeling the shadow it would leave in our hearts. We wanted to be away, we wanted to escape into this dream world of freedom, we wanted this to work. But so far, it hadn't.
After some time, we began to think that our spot under the bridge wasn't particularly safe after all. It seems that after sundown, groves of migrants rise out of the woodwork of Calais and begin patrolling its streets and, in our minds, begin seeking for Brits to rob of their passports. Fearing this, we wondered back into the centre of Calais, closer still to the dread of returning home, and found the cheapest hotel that our broken French could discern.
Dumping our bags on the floor of our room, I broke the silence, "Maybe we should go and find something to eat...".
"Let's just think for a bit", Jen replied. So, we laid down on the bed and I stared up at the ceiling trying to make sense of the day. I was trying to decide what I really wanted, and it was a tough one. Mixed up with all of these higher thoughts about truth and understanding was a little boy who was missing home. I was missing the life I'd left in Reading, all of the people and all of the friendships, all of the good times and the comfort that they bring. I was missing the conventional life that I was walking away from, I missing this idea of a perfect life in a nice house with a nice job and a nice wife and a nice car; I was missing everything that this trip was about not having. Maybe not for any particular reason, but just because the day had defeated us and there was nothing we could do about it. But through all of this, I couldn't face going back. I couldn't face ignoring this incredible opportunity that I had, this amazing experience that I was on the verge of. We had to carry on.
I turned to Jen, "So this is what we'll do: We'll get up tomorrow, go back to the Road and hitch to Lille. And then we'll hitch to Berlin and we'll forget that this was ever hard work. We can't turn back now".
"No we can't", she agreed, and with that we went out for omelette and chips.
The rest, so they say, is now history. We got up the next morning, headed back to the roundabout that nearly became our home the night before and got a lift to the German border with a nice lorry driver. From there we continued to make our way north and east and ended up camping by the side of a service station that night. The following morning, we completed our journey and arrived in Berlin central at about 3 in the afternoon. 1000kms in a day and a half, and it didn't cost us a penny. I've said it before and i'll say it again, but hitching rules!
And so now here we are! We're staying with Jen's sister and will probably hang around for a week or 2, and then after that: who knows? I wont be writing up any more plans or telling you about things that we're going to do. I'll tell you about things that we've done. I might tell you about ideas that we have, but never a plan.
You see that's the trouble with plans, they make you realise that Freedom is a bit like soap. If you don't look after it just right, if you plan too much and try to hold on to the soap too firmly , it just slips right out of your hands and runs away with itself down the bath tub.
And then you're fucked. No freedom, and no soap.
Not us, no sir.
We're free.
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Martyn
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Soap?!
You dirty dirty man, no soap! lol glad to hear its going ok with you guys, have a good time in berlin