From a rabbi to Robert Kubicka: A hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (well, Spain, France, Switzerland and Poland) Part Two: Biarritz to somewhere in southern France

I waited just twenty minutes for my next driver but this time he took me just a couple of kilometres up the road. He dropped me at a toll station, which I figured could be a good place to hitch from due to the slow moving traffic I was trying to hail down. Five hours later I began to review this belief. I spoke to several drivers but all seemed to be heading back towards Spain and not Bordeaux, my next destination.

I trudged back to the town centre of Biarritz and bought a train ticket to the aforementioned French city, sleeping all the way.

Once in Bordeaux I managed to access free wifi at the train station and checked out what hitchwiki had to say regarding a good location to hitch from. I made my way there and got picked up by a guy en route. He dropped me outside an amazing bakery.

There I had mixed fortunes. Great food but I waited two hours in drizzling rain. To add to my chagrin, plenty of people pulled over, only to dash both into the bakery and my hopes too.

When I was eventually picked up I was taken 15kms into the direction of Lyon, the destination that at this stage I hoped to reach by sundown (excuse the cowboy terminology). Sadly, I was, naively on my part, dumped on the hard shoulder of the highway. Just seconds later it began to rain… incessantly.

Luckily the downpour lasted less than ten minutes and I managed to find a toll station once more. I never thought the sight of these road payment stations would be so welcome.

I waited less than five minutes for my next lift. An eccentric lady in her early 60s, who had half of Kew Gardens in the back of her car, managed to make enough room for me to squeeze in beside her (steady).

What was pleasantly surprising was her standard of English - extremely high. And she took me almost 60 kms to the next set of toll booths so I was starting to make some headwind with just over 48 hours until kick off in Warsaw.

From a rabbi to Robert Kubicka: A hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (well, Spain, France, Switzerland and Poland) Part One: Santander to Biarritz

As first experiences go, there was no lack of effort as I attempted to hitch from Santander to Warsaw in three days.

As I left home on Saturday afternoon with my board with the words ‘Bilbao/San Sebastian’ blatantly inscribed on it, little did I know what was in store for me.

Using the website hitchwiki.com, which has plenty of useful suggestions, I headed for a gas station on the way out of my current hometown, Santander, in the direction of the Basque country.

How could I best describe the feeling after the three hours that followed? Forlorn. Dejected. You get the gist of it. I didn’t move one centimetre. In fact, there were ants that had made more progress than I had. And it wasn’t for the lack of trying. I made all sorts of comical gestures as the traffic raced by - imitating flashing lights, pulling faces and a variety of other childish manoeuvres.

After three hours of no success I made my way to the bus station, with a sense of failure, to get a bus to the border, and then try and hitch from there.

I got to the border town of Irun at around midnight and was picked up within an hour for my first official hitchhiking experience. A young lad, about 22, was my driver and, though I speak no French, it soon became apparent he wanted me to drive. Why? I have no idea but maybe you can work it out. I said I didn’t have my license with me and therefore it may be a bit risky to do so. He kept saying ‘Policia’ to me but I have no idea what he meant by that. Was he suspecting me for being a police officer? Did he want me to drive so he couldn’t get caught for something? Or did he somehow know that ‘Message in a bottle’ was number one on the day I was born?

Whatever it was, I was gripped to my seat throughout the 20km journey he took me on to Biarritz due to the scary nature of his driving.

Anyway, we got there in one piece and he dropped me off at the train station and I went in search of my next driver.