Prologue

Meet me on the road today, and you’ll bear witness to a well organised traveller. I’m talking a military level of organisation. I’ll be carrying exactly what I need on the road, the right amounts of each item (plus one spare) for the length of my trip, and I’ll know the exact location of each item in my bag.

Maps will have been printed, directions from Google Maps, long swathes of text from hitchwiki.org , the lot. I’ll likely have been on an in-depth reconnaissance mission the night before, zooming into motorway slip roads, toll booths, service stations, so I’ll know where I need to be. Wherever I am, wherever I’m going to, however little money I have, I’ll be fine.

But it was not always so.

My first tentative steps as a traveller were – to put it lightly – an absolute farce.

Rewind to the middle of October 2011. I was living in a squat in Katwijk, the Netherlands. An old Dutch air force officers’ mess, our lounge/kitchen was a large hall with parquet floor and a U-shaped bar with vile dark green faux-leather trim, a bar at which I had laughed and cried, and upon which I had made love and passed out drunk so many times. The rest of the space was kitted out with assorted furniture, primarily sourced on early morning trips on rubbish collection days, an activity that in Dutch is affectionately known as ‘grofvuilen’.

Our evenings were shared by candle light, or on very special occasions using a car-battery/transformer setup to power some electric lights. A generator would be used if we were having a rave, but that’s another story. There was no running water, so we collected rain water in two 1000 litre plastic IBC containers, which served us for flushing the toilet, mopping the floors, washing the dishes, washing our clothes, and if we were feeling particularly courageous, washing ourselves.

Across the street from us the dunes began and further on, the sea. Out of our lounge window, farmland. Yet despite the idyll, I was on my arse emotionally. And I think so was my dear friend Dan, a half Galician, half American elf like being who night after night shared the sofa with me in a state of stoned oblivion.

Until, one night, Dan came up with the following bright – no, luminous – idea:

“Let’s just go. Let’s go south before winter, chase the sun, see what happens.”

And so the pact was made. The grass would not necessarily be any greener, but we sure needed a change of scenery.