Driving a Seven in modern day Traffic

[Roger Goldthorpe]

In the early 60’s my girlfriend (now wife) and I hitched a lift with a circus van in Ireland. It took about 2 hours to progress 5 miles by way of an interesting 30 mile detour of the villages while he broadcast through a loudspeaker information about the circus venue, times and acts, I still remember his words “……….with an all star international cast, featuring Robby from Vienna master of the one hand balance.” I asked if he performed in the circus, his reply, in a thick Irish accent was “yes, I’m Robby.”
This enforced detour rather threw the days schedule and as dusk fell we were grateful to have a lift from an old gypsy lady in her donkey and trap. It was a tight squeeze as the trap was full of empty Guinness crates!

I still give lifts but there seem to be far less hitchers these days. That said I last hitched myself only last year with a petrol can instead of a rucksack!

[Dave Mann]

Following a Porsche Cayenne in the supermarket car park it suddenly started to reverse which I soon put an end to with my Seven's air horns as I couldn't reverse because of another SUV in my rear.

[David Stepney]

One sees very few hitchhikers these days, but thirty years ago, it was quite different and I would give lifts quite frequently. In fact, I made at least one firm friend by giving a lift to a Frenchman whose hire car had broken down on the A5 just after the end of the M54. He turned out to be quite an interesting chap, hailing from Marseilles and having been ex-French Foreign Legion and a mercenary during the Angolan conflict in the late 60's. I even gave him a bed for the night and we sorted out his hire car problems the following morning.

We stayed in touch mostly by letter (he would write in English and I would reply in French, which gave us both much amusement) and he would come over to see me occasionally, when we would drink until the wee small hours of the morning and talk endlessly. Alas, he died several years ago from cancer but I still remember him with fondness.

[Tony Griffiths]

I regularly hitched from Birmingham to Harrogate for weekends home from college in the early 1970s having done several summer holidays hitching around Europe. I had such good experiences (and improved my foreign languages so much) that I saw it as an obligation to reciprocate for the kindness (wined, dined, accommodated etc) I received. The experiences made me a confirmed Europhile.
My best lift ever was a "oner" from Thessalonika to Trieste.

I hitched around Europe in my sixth form years and must have given my poor mother sleepless nights.

Lots of decent lifts but never from U.K. plated cars, despite the GB sticker on my rucksack. The chap who gave me a lift from Lyon to Clermont Ferrand and thought nothing of using the coned off roadworks lane on the autoroute for overtaking did get me very, very worried. 

Reminds me of an occasion on a autoroute which had a lane coned off. A truck has pushed a line of them to one side, giving the impression to the 2CV driver (the usual French 2 mm from my rear bumper) that the cones were finishing. He pulled out to overtake, only to be met by a wall of cones which he simply had to run into - what fun to see those thrown over the top of his car and skittled across the road.