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hitchhiking!?

What is it? What's going on?

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I hitched for the first time in 2022. At the time, people I asked either said "it won't work", or "you'll get killed". I'm writing this blog post to inform everyone that I am not dead.

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Generically, hitchhiking (or in French, "le Stop") is asking strangers for lifts. Usually, by standing at the side of the road with your thumb out, sometimes with a sign expressing where you want to go (important for longer journeys).

Rather than trying to summarise my thoughts into a quotable statement, or boiled down retrospective on my hitchhiking adventures, I thought it'd be fun to let you explore them. I've made a clickable map, filled it with the journeys I've taken (only in the UK so far!), and written a bit for each stage of the journey about who picked me up. Hopefully, from clicking around, you get some ideas about hitchhiking, whether society is (still) kind, and about talking to strangers in general.

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So... here's the map! (scroll into view)

1.1 Tamworth -> Woodall Northbound

this was my first ever hitch :)

a lovely guy called Daniel picked me up, who was listening to classic FM in an old squarish-boxy car. He reminded me of my great uncle. I remember we talked a lot about the meaning of existence (a common topic), and I got to know a lot about his love of art and exhibitions (he seemed to be a person who spent a lot of time going to "artsy-fartsy" things, and probably had a house full of paintings). He dropped me off in Woodall, which my dad had said he'd spent a lot of time in in his youth hitching to Hull.

At the time, it was mid-December, and I was told jestingly by Daniel that "a person wearing that hat can't be dangerous". It was so that that hat could have become a lucky symbol of hitchhiking, but instead a few months later it was confiscated from me.

According to my notes, we also spoke about "Dante's inferno" and "local government", though by now I don't much remember those conversations.

click the other routes to see more!

Leaflet © Stadia Maps © Stamen Design © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

list of trips

1 Birmingham -> Hull
2 Birmingham -> Leeds
3 Birmingham -> Liverpool
4 Birmingham -> Glasgow
5 Hull -> London
6 London -> Hull
7 London -> Sheffield
8 London -> Sheffield
9 The Peaks (Bamford) -> Sheffield
10 Sheffield -> Hull
11 Sheffield -> Dublin -> Belfast

each of these is a separate trace on the above map. Click the "show on map" button to show the popup for each specific sub-trip.

trip label total trip distance (km)
1 1.1 Tamworth -> Woodall Northbound 180
1.2 Woodall Northbound -> Hull
2 2.1 Tamworth -> Tibshelf Northbound 150
2.2 Tibshelf Northbound -> Leeds
3 3.1 Frankley Northbound -> Hilton Northbound 125
3.2 Hilton Northbound -> Keele Northbound
3.3 Keele Northbound -> Liverpool
4 4.1 Frankley Northbound -> Charnock Richard Northbound 400
4.2 Charnock Richard Northbound -> Hamilton
5 5.1 North Ferriby -> Doncaster North 320
6 6.1 London Gateway Services -> Ferrybridge 320
6.2 Ferrybridge -> Hull
7 7.1 London Gateway Services -> Trowell Northbound 225
7.2 Trowell Northbound -> Sheffield (Meadowhell)
8 8.1 London Gateway Services -> ?? -> ?? -> Sheffield (Meadowhell) 225
9 9.1 The Peaks (Bamford) -> Sheffield 16
10 10.1 Sheffield Parkway -> Woodall Northbound 110
10.2 Woodall Northbound -> Hull
11 11.1 Manchester Road -> Cutthroat Bridge 367
11.2 Cutthroat Bridge -> Ladybower Reservoir
11.3 Ladybower Reservoir -> Denton Rock
11.4 Denton Rock -> Lymm
11.5 Denton Rock -> Northock Hall
11.6 Northock Hall -> Bangor
11.7 Bangor -> Holyhead Ferry Terminal
12 12.1 Dublin N1 -> Castlebellingham 166
12.2 Castlebellingham -> Abbey Centre

Library

Here are a few PDFs of academic research about hitchhiking. I provide it as I have read some of each, and they are quite interesting.

If you work for a publishing company or are a big fan of copyright, please click

How Hitchhikers Cope with the Pressures and Perceived Dangers of Hitchhiking by Society
A Literature Review and Qualitative Interviews
Iris Veldwijk
source
a book by mindofahitchhiker that talks about the false-or-not perception of the danger of hitching
An Informal History of Hitchhiking
JOHN T. SCHLEBECKER
source
a very old paper from 1958,
Hitchhiking
Cultural Inroads
Patrick Laviolette
source
a long monograph about hitchhiking by a particularly sarcastic-sounding and long-word-loving academic,
Hitchhiking travel in China: Gender, agency and vulnerability
Xiongbin Gao, Scott Cohen, Paul Hanna
source
an examination of hitchhiking in China,
Staring and Compliance:
A Field Experiment on Hitchhiking
MARK SNYDER, JOHN CKETHEK, AND KRISTINE KELLER
source
a short paper on the importance of eye contact while hitchhiking
THE DEATH AND LIVES OF HITCH BOT: THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A HITCHHIKING ROBOT
David Harris Smith, Frauke Zeller
source
a short paper about a little robot that could,
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