Sir, – Martin Fitzpatrick (“I wished I was off that N17: Former hitchhikers share odes to the road,” Letters, August 14th) suggests that hitchhiking a lift from Marseilles to Paris might be a record. While not seeking to claim a record myself, I can assure readers it is most definitely not. I once hitched a lift from Lisbon, Portugal, to Karlsruhe in Germany – which took more than a day, with barely a stop on the way.
The downside was being awoken from the VW camper van in which I was travelling to be dropped illegally in the middle of an autobahn in the middle of the night to fend for myself. The rescue came from the driver of a massive HGV, which took probably half a kilometre to stop, with me running to catch up and climb on. Once inside I listened live to Richard Nixon’s presidential resignation speech on the radio.
I was 20 and it was one of many extraordinary experiences I enjoyed and sometimes suffered when I escaped jobs I hated to travel around the countries of continental Europe that I loved. – Yours, etc,
PAUL GOSLING,
RM Block
Derry.
Sir, – As a woman driver of sensible age, remembering my car-less youth, I cannot drive past a hitchhiker. On a recent trip out from Galway I picked a man up, a genial member of the Travelling community, and from the second he hit the passenger seat until he got out 20 minutes later, I got a robust lecture (for my own good) on the reasons a woman like me should never pick up men along the side of the road. – Yours, etc,
ANNE MARIE KENNEDY,
Craughwell,
Co Galway.
