RDQ - last time you picked up a hitchhiker?

About 7 years ago in the lakes....a couple and their dog were hitching back to where they'd left the car. It's not a common sight anymore

I picked up a guy years ago and as we drove on he commented that most people don't pick up hitch-hikers as they fear they might be a psychopath - to which I laughed and said it would be a million to one chance to have 2 in a car.

Never for me too

About 8 or 10 years ago. Picked someone up in Chipping Campden, in my previous Benz estate. He commented on how smoothly it rode over the level crossing on the Ebrington Road. Previous to that would probably have been in the 1980s.

Nor me, even when I was young and foolish!! 

Probably about 15 years ago.
I was driving to work one morning and a lady waved me down, she was late leaving and going to miss her bus, so asked for a lift to the bus stop. It was on my way so I obliged and she got to the bus in time.

About 1990. I was still living in south London and was driving home from somewhere "up north" after a long work day and somebody to chat to in the car seemed like a good idea. Guy was hitching down the M1, getting dropped off at service stations, so I reckoned he had not murdered the person who must have dropped him off and I'd be safe.... I'm still here.

I did have one very funny experience with a hitchhiker many years ago.

We were having a big family get together for Easter on Islay. This involved me flying back from Moscow, going to some meetings in London, then picking up the Z1 from my flat in London after work and driving all the way up. The timings involved meant me driving up through the night to catch the first ferry from Kennacraig in the morning.

At a certain point on the M74 around midnight, I found myself really struggling to stay awake, even with a door open. So I pulled into, from memory, Abington services (or thereabouts) for a Red Bull and some fresh air.

Upon returning to the car, a young bloke of about 18 came staggering up to me out of the darkness beyond the forecourt lights, clearly pretty pissed, and desperate for a lift home. Apparently he was making his way home after a lock-in in a local pub and I was the first car to pass in ages. Ordinarily I'd have said no, but he was so patently harmless and pathetic that I relented and asked how far it was - to which the reply was just a couple of miles.

Well the fun started when I opened the door (on, for him, the wrong side) and it did its vanishing trick. Then it seemed wise to leave the doors down in case he puked, so off we roared breezily into the night (and it was a noisy little car that one). As we are bombing along, he asks me where I've come from and without thinking I replied "Moscow". The other detail to note at this point is that I am still wearing a dark business suit and white shirt, having not bothered to change after my meetings. Wee laddie takes a long sideways look at me, gulps and utters the immortal words "ma friends'll ne'er believe me but ah've met James Bond". Brilliant.

Any way, soon enough we arrive in a village, he points out a house and I drop him safely off, and that was that.

But I have always wondered, if he remembered anything in the morning about how he got home, whether anyone ever believed a tale about how he got a lift home with a man from Moscow in a car with no doors.

"ma friends'll ne'er believe me but ah've met James Bond". Brilliant.



I expect the drunk Scotsman is still dining out on it too.