Two Days from London... Edinburgh

I started Tuesday from a petrol stop about 10 minutes north of Darlington. I grabbed a quick bite from the café across the street and then strolled over to the roundabout to thumb my way north. I was hoping to make it up to Newcastle early enough to catch a ride to Edinburgh by noon. Boy was I a bit optimistic… It only took me about 10 minutes to catch a ride with the morning traffic from a businessman called Ben. He reminded me a bit of Ian, but not nearly as easy to talk with. The ride was only 45 minutes or so into the city and we talked mostly about the economy and politics of the US and England. We arrived to Newcastle around 10am and I was stoked at how good I was doing on time.  I will tell you, walking through Newcastle from the south to the north is an absolute pain in the ass! I spent nearly all day trying to get to the A1 north out of the city. It actually turned out to be a bit of a treat since I was able to walk through the city and see the landscape. There is a breaking point where you just want to stop walking and get to your damn hitching post though. Mine came around 2pm after I had been walking for 4 hours…

River Tynes

At 4:30pm, I arrived at the rotary for the A1 north out of the city. Finally! Maybe, just maybe there was someone who would be traveling back to Edinburgh after spending the day in the city. Well, I wouldn’t get that lucky, but I did get picked up by Chris. He wasn’t going very far, but he was kind enough to drop me off at a parking area on the A1 about 5 miles north. This allowed me to avoid people that were using the rotary to go south or west, instead of north. This proved to be very helpful because I only ended up waiting about 15 minutes for Peter to offer me a ride. He is an absolute blessing of a man. Apparently, he had been traveling south to drop off someone and saw me trying to hitch a ride. On his way back north, I was still standing on the side of the road, so he stopped. He is such a wonderful and generous man that really went out of his way to get me as far as he could. Ultimately, he drove 45 minutes past his turn off to drop me off in Berwick-upon-Tweed (2 hours east of Edinburgh). All along the way, he pointed out castles and landscapes and provided lots of useful knowledge. Easily the kindest driver that has picked me up so far in my hitching experiences.

My final ride of the day came from a trucker called Michael. It was totally my first time in a trucker’s cab. Those things are roomy! Michael turned out to be a wealth of knowledge on Scotland. The ride was very easy because he provided most of the talking and I pretty much just listened and relaxed. It was great because even though I wasn’t waiting long, I was extremely exhausted and did not have the energy to engage someone for two hours. He took me all the way to Edinburgh and dropped me off near the airport. I didn’t know it at the time, but this turned out to be the PERFECT point.

It was a big part of our conversation: whether I should hitch into the city while he continued on the bypass or to go to the south of the city with him and try to figure it out from there.  Opting for the later, I ended up catching a bus towards the city centre and asked the driver if he could let me know when we got to a transfer I needed. When he called back, I was in the middle of nowhere and had no map or idea of where to go. There were a few people standing around waiting for their buses at the stop, so I asked a man that seemed to be a local. He looked up and said, “I can’t tell you where this street is at lad, but (He pointed) that is called the Calders.” Could this get any better?! I walked across the street and boom… Calder View. What’s not to love about Positive Mental Awareness (PMA)?

Edinburgh Castle

It took me two days and 8 lifts to cover about 400 miles hitching from London to Edinburgh… Mission Accomplished!