If you fancy an adventure then stand at the side of the road with a rucksack with a Union Jack on it, stick your thumb out and wonder where the next lift will take you!  Oh those wonderful days of 1969 before motorways channelled us to be dropped in isolated islands of service stations.  The continent would surely hold some detours that deviated without the occasional deviants that sometimes tried to lure long haired 20 year old like me in 1969.

I was 20 I had not much money but was undeterred by the cost of travel since I had done lots of hitch hiking in England and Scotland and hoped that sign language and a Union Jack flag on my huge rucksack would slow traffic enough for me to slightly step in front and smile for a lift – see later for the lift with a Liechtenstein banker and the young lady story!  Back to the reality of preparation in 1968 and my passport has a stamp in the back giving me permission to take money out of the country!!  I only wanted to take £15 but rules is rules!  Yes, this was 1968 and yet another financial crisis and a limit to any money trying to leave the country.  I had a slightly safe bet of  accommodation and food at a student work camp in Switzerland to build paths in the mountains, but I decided to have an adventure on the way to some mountain madness. 

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Somehow being innocent looking (?) or naïve meant that other young people kept offering a floor to sleep on in Ostend and Amsterdam and my hitching was successful normally until I was stuck with a bus shelter for home one night and on a rainy night I slept under a truck, all good experience.  Eventually I arrived at Altdorf with the William Tell monument and its fantasy story but with the imposing reality of being in big mountains and steep sided valleys with ski slopes but without the snow in July.  The slopes were now uncovered with a fine shingle below the footpaths that we were to renovate.  The students were a mixed European bunch and great fun and I led them all astray by showing how to scree run and bound down the slopes with mega jumps and turns on the soft shingle.  No injuries and great bonding of Finnish, Dutch, German, French and a Brit all carefree and adventurous.  So I told my hitching adventure to get here and we all decided to set off one weekend and meet up at some place in south of France if possible and if not then see who got the furthest away and returned to the workcamp at the end of the weekend.

Sometimes a lack of language may be a good thing because I was on my own, hitching over a remote high pass, got a lift with a strange young couple who babbled, showed money, showed a gun, showed me how risky hitching could be, so I showed them the sign for thanks this is my destination, bye!  I eventually met some of the Steinbok crew as we called ourselves after the local beer, and we all ended up back at the workcamp where we were treated to a reproductive event of Alpine proportions.  The bull was in the valley, the cow (actually a poor little heifer) was high up on an alpine pasture, the road was a steep bumpy track and the bull needs its energy for, well what bulls do.  So there was a cable pulley system from a layby in the valley with a wooden pallet contraption hanging from the cable so that supplies could be put on the pallet and pulled up to the high pasture.  Oh no, we thought, you can’t be serious! But yes, the poor bull was coaxed and prodded onto this contraption but the wooden pallet was at least replaced with a canvas corset thing that the poor creature was strapped to and it was ignominiously hauled up this cable with its pride hanging limply above the rushing torrents of the alpine valley until it arrived at the high pasture and its reward of a pretty little heifer – huh if it still had a desire after that experience then there really must be something special in the alpine air!

But the fun wasn’t over yet, remember that this was 50 years ago and not all places had modern facilities, the farming hamlet on the high pasture didn’t have running water nor proper drainage so a digger was required for a trench, but the track was too steep for a JCB, think of Dash Falls or the corridor route to Scafell.  The digger only had two wheels and two bars that swivelled out to make a stable platform when it eventually got into position, but the bars swivelled together to became a tow bar that connected to the land rover with us in the back to give some weight and adhesion when the four wheel drive was slipping and sliding by the precipitous path to the high pasture.  The students in the rear of the land rover realised that we were dead weight, oops wrong description!

Eventually we arrived, the ditches were dug and we repaired the mountain tracks, that’s us below, apparently I had hair, chap in the centre with spade.  At that time I was 21 years old and a reasonable mountain person but most of the students were without the required screw loose, so I introduced them to the short way down the alpine slope at the end of the day which involved realising that the slope had been used for easy skiing but now was mostly bare of snow but with a gorgeous soft shingle.  Need I say more to those naughty people who have been scree running! Don’t try this at home, very environmentally oops, but in youth in a foreign place, extract the environ and you have mentally, fun.  How far can you run then jump and skid and slide and fall and … aren’t we invincible in our youth?

Smells trigger memories and I just smelled the wood smoke from the cow herder’s alpine hut while they turned the creamy milk into some stage of cheese, very rubbery and smoky but tasting perfect with a crust of bread while resting from our labours on an alpine slope.  Eventually after some competitive hitch hiking around Switzerland we multi cultured workcamp youths had to say farewell in Dutch, Japanese, Finnish, Svitze Deutch or whatever Greutzig was, and me in English and a few other nationalities.  But I wasn’t ready to leave the mountains for my next adventure, so I wandered to the highest most remote mountain hut with accommodation to commune with the hills and I was the only English speaker listening to the radio when …

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon.  The other mountaineers in the alpine hut knew something was going on from their local station but the feed from America defeated them, so when they realised that I was English I became obliged to translate.  Well the local language in Switzerland can vary from Italian, French and Swiss German and my schoolboy French was not really up to the task, but fortunately the various grappa spirit with eidleviess in it or some odd herb (I wonder …) anyhow, combined with the mountain air and the momentous occasion I indulged in some multi lingual hand signs and even now half a century later I remember the moment as one of the most momentous “where were you when…”

So, you travel to the moon my heroes of adventure and technology.  Down on earth I will do my own adventurous travel so I hit the road with huge rucksack with Union Jack pinned to it, thumb out and hope to hitch a lift around Europe to anywhere the lift is going.  A cold hitch hiking over an alpine pass to Italy and a warmer adventure awaits, surely.  Eventually I ended up in Florence where my meagre funds were depleting too quickly and climbing over walls to sleep in gardens was a bit risky and a diet of tomatoes and bread wasn’t very healthy so a change was needed and maybe a return to UK might be more sensible than Brindisi ferry to Greece and more tomatoes.

It wasn’t until I ran out of money and tried to sell my blood for money for food that realisation set in that I needed to aim my hitching thumb back up north.  I remember going to the market and finding an English speaker how to sell my blood for money and he took pity on my stupidity and told me to grow up and go home before I got a disease or got conned and worse.  He kindly gave me money enough to eat and the next day I got on the road with my trusty rucksack with the Union Jack facing the traffic and my thumb stuck out in hope.

Did I mention the fantasies that you have when daydreaming with a thumb stuck out in hope?  At the risk of rambling let me tell you about the Liechtenstein experience.  The young couple with possibly a stolen car and consuming naughty things while driving, eventually dumped me on the road to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, actually the only major town in this odd tax haven hiding both in and out of Switzerland, a messy arrangement for super wealthy people.  The dream happened; a huge black Mercedes limousine slowed, the driver in dark suit, white shirt and tie, eyed my rucksack and me carefully then stopped the car a few yards, metres, away, got out of the driver’s seat, checked my appearance, asked a few questions in English to check what sort of person I was.  I explained that I was hitching around Europe to get to know people before going to train as a teacher back in UK.

I wondered what was going on, then fantasy of fantasies, he went to the passenger in the front of the car who was a rather pretty young lady, and told her to get in the back of the car with me!!!! Huh?  Very soon the arrangement was brought down to the cold detail of a financial transaction.  I won’t try to do the accent but imagine his almost perfect English with a slight Swiss German accent.  His daughter was at a boarding school (where else) and was about to be examined in oral English and he would like her to practice her technique with me, (sorry the fantasy clicked in) wanted to practice speaking English with me and in return he would take me to the best hotel in Vaduz where I would be suitably rewarded (stop it) with lunch.  Well my chat up line in Cumbrian might be less sophisticated than a Swiss banker’s daughter might be used to so on my best behaviour I duly conversed without any ogling and the drooling was honestly because of the thought of the free lunch reward for my chat up.

Oh dear, the chat was fine but this sophisticated father and daughter didn’t realise what a country working class lad from Carlisle had as an upbringing.  I had never been to a fancy restaurant.  Somewhere else I will recount my childhood with tin bath, outside toilet and cold water and the wonderful allotment that fed us.  So when the menu was indecipherable to me, he ordered trout for lunch and I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with the head and tail and bones and … I think he was setting a challenge which thankfully I failed and from then on I am happy knowing why simple British fish and chips was invented.  We parted in formal almost half bow farewell and I set off to find a postcard and stamp to report this odd experience in a few words truncated on the rear of a postcard, but where to post it?

Oh I’ll ask this young lady whilst we were both crossing the main street, where’s the post box – oops she won’t understand Cumbrian, but aha you’re English, where are you sleeping tonight, come to my house, she said.  Well I did have longish hair and goodish looks or so I thought but really, to score twice in one day, I love this age of happy 60s peace and love.  Well the love bit would have to wait because her boyfriend lives with her and after they fed me it was time for sleep, so I was to sleep in the cellar with the machine gun. Yes, the proper bang bang shooty up make people very unhappy on the receiving end type machine gun.

Apparently Switzerland takes its neutrality so seriously that all houses have to have a cellar with a horizontal 30cm high window at street level so charismatic friendly ladies who live with a nice boyfriend can stick their machine gun out of said window and spray bad people with go away messages.  And it was honestly there, beside me on the roll out mattress on the floor, both of which he bundles together and goes off to do practice shoot em up on weekends. 

Oh where was I, digressing rambling, back to hitching out of Italy, thumb out, bored, daydreaming about that memorable … surely won’t happen again but what’s that fancy red Porsche two seater sports car doing pulling up just in front of me, huh the passenger is speaking American and – yes I’m English trying to get home before I get tomato poisoning cause I’ve got no money and … Don’t stop talking, he said, just get in the back and stop us from arguing!  It turns out that the lads had been mates at college together and had always said they would do the tour of Europe but one went to work for an arms company designing ways to be horrible and the other became a sort of hippy peace and love, and this was at the time of the conflicts in America when things were a bit confrontational and this had become apparent when the arms man got wealth and came to Europe for his Porsche and the peace man came for – peace, and my job was to keep the peace between them.  This was a bit difficult because the luggage shelf in the back of a Porsche is supposed to be used as a seat and I was 6ft2ins with a huge rucksack on my knee and couldn’t see around it.  So I sat with my face stuck against my sac trying to have a muffled conversation over the noise of the rear engine sports car with the bickering couple in the front seats.

I must have done a reasonable job of keeping the peace because they not only transported me but also fed me, perhaps out of pity that all I had to share were tomatoes, pretty squashed by now.  One of my new found friends worked in the USA with a lady whose family live in a French village which she had insisted that we must visit, so we duly parked in the village square outside a low key rural bar restaurant.  The local French quietly and politely surveyed the rich American with the fancy Porsche; remember it is a car made in the German vehicle factory which used to make … oh dear, remember this was 1969 in living memory after WW2, and the rural French were still remembering the rich Yanks.  The atmosphere was very reserved but when I mentioned I was English suddenly an old man hunched over his glass of wine erupted from his studious boredom and embraced me, kissed me on both cheeks and thrust a glass of something in my hand.  My schoolboy French and sign language seemed to translate into parachutists landing in the village, one tangled up in a church spire and he … I wish I had learned more French, what a story that would have been.

We parted company at the Channel for their car to be shipped to America and my weary body to be shipped back to good ole Cumbria to prepare for teacher training college in Newcastle in September 1969.  It’s time to learn to be sensible (ish) and settle down (oh yeah!).  More adventures later.

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