The Challenge:
Using no money get to 5 major cities in 24 hours. The cities we were given (starting in Coventry) were:
Birmingham
Leeds
Brighton
Central London
Cardiff
The Journey:
Gay sunglasses are supposedly compulsory:
It all started at 12 noon on a rather hot Warwick University campus. Having succeeded in arriving at Warwick campus unscathed after being forced to use the bus… we were ready for the off. 12 noon came round and we were let loose on the UK. A lot of teams went off running left right and centre, mine and Russell’s start was probably one of the most casual starts to a Jailbreak ever… Strolling off Warwick campus past people attempting to hitch a lift off cars heading back into campus we headed for the main road in the direction of Birmingham.
After being stood on the main road for around 10-15 minutes a Volvo XC90 pulled up and offered us a lift through to Nottingham, despite us wanting to go to Birmingham to get it out of the way as soon as possible we thought it silly to turn down any lift as it could have resulted in standing there for another hour kicking ourselves and going nowhere so we changed destination and went towards Leeds instead! The guys had actually been at Warwick campus not long before for an open day and were heading in the direction of Nottingham university for another open day and after giving us a few crisps and Jaffa cakes dropped us off at a service station just outside Nottingham on the M1.
We then setup camp at the petrol station, Russell wandering around asking people as they filled up with fuel and me sat there with the sign catching people as they exited the services, after a short while a guy on the way to Durham university to help his son move back all the things from his house spotted the sign and pulled over to offer us a lift further up the M1 to another service station.
Having arrived at the service station outside Durham we were dropped again at the petrol station and spotted a Dogs Trust van, the driver said he wasn’t supposed to give lifts but said that he would do it on this occasion; however he was heading in the wrong direction entirely! After moving on from there we approached a girl on her own in a Fiat Punto, putting on our least rapist/murder faces we asked her if she would give us a lift further down the M1, it turned out she was going to Leeds and agreed to take us and drop us in the centre of Leeds, Kate dropped us at the train station in Leeds.
We were then faced with the task of locating Leeds University and our first escapee, using Google maps on my phone we managed to work out where the uni was, and as it was only a 15 minute walk thought sod it and set off. What Google maps didn’t tell us was about the bloody big hill, it was around 3pm by this point and bloody hot! After arriving at the university we couldn’t find the escaped convict and luckily had a phone number for them and they turned out to be in the pub! So we sat around and waited for a bit and saw quite a lot of weird people hanging around Leeds uni… once we had found our convict or rather they found us! We decided to head back to Leeds train station to check out the barrier situation and attempt to get on the train to Birmingham.
Instead of spending another 15 minutes walking in the burning heat we though we would get on the free bus from the university to the train station. Buses are shit at the best of times and I hate them. The fact that this particular bus was free allowed it to be even shitter than regular buses… it was crowded, hot and smelt like poor people but after waiting 5 minutes for it decided to board it and head towards the station. The pleasant 15 minute walk in the sunshine turned into a 30 minute bus journey sat opposite a middle aged man in a wheel chair who didn’t feel the need to wear any trousers, just a pair of rather dirty Y fronts. But then when you go up north what do you really expect?
One positive thing that came from that bus journey was some girls after spotted our t-shirts started chatting to us about what we were doing and turned out were also getting off at the station. They agreed to form a spoon train with us on the floor in the middle of Leeds train station – 5 people, 5 points in the bag! After thanking them and working out what train we wanted to board to try and get to Birmingham (again!) we had to work out exactly how we were going to get onto the platform… after scouting around and realising all the barriers were down and pretty well guarded it looked to be pretty difficult. While milling around trying to come up with a solution the guard who was on the ‘open’ gate and checking tickets handed to him turned away to talk to someone asking him a question behind him, we took out chance and walked rather quickly past him and through the open gate! Once through we proceeded to continue to walk quickly until we were quite a distance away before turning round to make sure no-one had spotted us! They hadn’t and we were now on the platform of Leeds station!
We then had a 10 minute wait for the train heading to Birmingham Bullring to find our second convict, once on board we ended up stood in the isle as there weren’t any seats left that weren’t next to people who looked like rapists. While stood there Chelsea who had spotted us on Leeds campus started chatting to us about Jailbreak and after deciding she looked enough like Katy Perry to net us 15 points we got a photo. We were then moved down the train and found some seats only to be caught by a train womble and asked for tickets. Before I had managed to say ‘erm well we don’t have tickets… you see we are doing a char…’ he had started shaking his head in a reverse tribute to Churchill the nodding dog. He was bullied at school, he now had a job with a small amount of authority and he was now he had finally got chance to use that authority! He was in his element, a vigilante protecting the trains from the scum who try and fare dodge. After Hitler Jr had had his moment of glory it was agreed that we would leave the train at the next stop which was Sheffield. Having heard this a women and her daughter got chatting to us, again about Jailbreak and it turned out they were visiting universities as well that day so we handed out some advise as to what the different cities were like. As we were about to get off the train the women stopped us and gave Russell £40 to donate to Amnesty and also gave us a pasta pot and a ginger cake to keep us alive!
Katy Perry:
Free Pasta:
After leaving the train at Sheffield we were relieved to discover that there we no barriers and as the next train wasn’t for another hour decided to start hitching again. After been stood out on the main road by a bus stop for around 5 minutes a big pink hummer limo went past but was going the wrong way otherwise that could have counted as an unusual mode of transport! After another 10 minutes or so a guy and his girlfriend stopped off and picked us up in their Ford KA (there isn’t a lot of room in the back of these!) and on their way back from a gay pride rally (that would have explained the car full of people dressed as the village people that went by then?!) went out of their way to drop us at a service station heading south. We were still heading to Birmingham at this point!
After arriving at the services it was decided that we would attempt to blag ourselves a bottle of water before moving to the petrol station in order to try and attain a new lift to Birmingham. While discussing our options in the queue a guy called Steve asked us where we were heading. ‘well we are heading towards Birmingham but we need to go to Brighton, London and Cardiff too’… ‘ahh well I am on the way to Brighton at the moment, want a lift?’ ideal! A lift all the way to Brighton was awesome! We could always come back and do Birmingham afterwards. So in we jumped with Steve in his Nissan Micra, with the warning that the petrol gauge wasn’t working so we might have to get out and push if we ran out of fuel! Fuelled by red bull Steve did an awesome job of driving without a break all the way to Brighton and dropping us at the train station 1 up from Brighton, we arrived at the train station with 8 minutes to spare before the next train. We then hopped on the train down to Brighton and arrived there at 11:30.
Also found this rather nice sign on the way down:
Once in Fort Knox, sorry I mean Brighton train station it was evident that we were not going to get away with either jumping the barriers and running or attempting to explain that we were taking part in a Charity event and could we please be let off? Much to my reluctance as I was quite prepared to jump the barriers, leg it and hopefully not get caught and arrested Russell’s desire to avoid arrest meant we got the train 1 stop down the line to a little further outside the centre of Brighton but still only around 15 minutes walk from the water front. This was actually a lot better idea and Russell was pretty smug about it, and you will see him demonstrating as much in the video, he wasn’t rubbing it in at all!
Arriving at Brighton station:
So it is now around 12 and we are in Brighton, we have not been arrested, raped or murdered so we are doing pretty well so far and have got to the two most difficult cities. Now it was just finding out next convict – Adam, we got to the sea front and he was no-where to be found… tried ringing him… nothing… hmm… right… keep trying I guess… Eventually managed to get through to Adam and discovered he was in a strip club having latched onto a stag party and pissed out of his mind! Luckily he found his way back to the sea front and met us so we could be ticked off and be on our way, not before going swimming to earn ourselves a few more points, this defiantly counts as swimming.
Finding a rather pissed Adam:
Swimming:
Heading back towards the main road out of Birmingham towards London we encountered another team for the first time and only time on the trip, we staged a fight with them for some more points, they said they had been trying to hitch out of Brighton for the past hour and hadn’t had any luck so were going to spend the night on the beach and get the first train out in the morning. We thought we would give it a shot anyway and carried on heading towards the main road. On the way I spotted a plinth where it looks like there should have been a statue, after checking it wasn’t a WW2 memorial using my cat like abilities gracefully (or not so much) clambered up onto it and got a photo continuing my trend of statue photos.
We reached the main road and set up camp not expecting many lifts at what was now 1am in the morning. After around 5 minutes Russell was sexually assaulted by an old women who I can only assume was on MDMA and attempted to invite us to come and visit her communal garden, that apparently grows people or something… not wanting to discover if this was a euphemism or an actual garden we politely declined, several times. While the hippy had attempted to kiss Russell 'your a beautiful person! I can feel it coming from you!' the person she was with who seemed to be less intoxicated on class A drugs informed me that we were in fact standing on the wrong road and pointed us in the direction of the right road. We also managed to raise a pound for Amnesty donated by a Jamaican man with a bongo drum who was hanging around. After working out which road we wanted to be on we set off in the direction of London Road… duh! On the way we encountered an usual form of transport, a dump truck, that’s a few more points in the bag then!
So now on the correct road we started hitching again, 4 out of 5 cars seemed to be a taxi so it was looking pretty bleak and chances of getting a lift looked slim. We were anticipating being stuck in Brighton for the night. However after around 15 minutes we saw a car reversing back down the 1 way system towards us. The guy wound down his window and asked where we wanted a lift to ‘London’ ‘oh cool I am off to London too!’ we were back on track and had a lift into central London! The couple we had got a lift with were heading towards Brixton but after asking where we were going offered us a lift to Nelsons Column to meet our third convict. After a really quick meeting with Lawrence we jumped back in with them and they gave us a lift to the first petrol station before the M4.
We were now heading towards Cardiff, we had bags of time and though it would be a pretty easy shout from here to Cardiff, it wasn’t. Why will become apparent later on… From the first petrol station we managed to get a lift from another couple who gave us £12 to buy food with in a BMW 3 series up to Heston services… Heston services… where do I start… we arrive there at 3:30am the place looked like it had been deserted for the past 10 years. There was no-one in the service station and the petrol station was closed… bollocks. After half an hour of sat in the service station waiting for people to come in we didn’t see anyone apart from an old man playing on the gambling machine. At 4am we decided to get out by the exit ramp with out massive charity hitchhike sign and an ‘M4W’ sign that I found on the floor (maybe belonging to another Jailbreak team?!). There we sat… and waited… no-one seemed interested in stopped and when the odd person did they all seemed to be heading to Heathrow and not down the M4! It was looking dire, very very dire. Eventually we managed to get a lift at 7am to the services just before Swindon; we were on the move again! I never ever want to visit Heston services ever again, I now absolutely hate the place… if passing I might stop just to see if there are any Jailbreak teams who are stuck in that hell hole throwing stones at traffic cones to keep themselves amused…
Hellston Service station:
Anyway… after 3 and a half hours we had been rescued and were en route to Swindon in a VW Polo! The guy who picked us up was a film producer working on a British version of ‘My Super Sweet 16th’ for MTV, apparently it was some 21 year old lad’s birthday and he had been sent to film the ‘posh twat’ as his family. He also donated £10 to amnesty and £10 to us to buy some more food and water with!
We were dropped at Swindon services and informed that it wasn’t very busy and not many people were stopping by due to the road works… damn. After waiting around for around 20 minutes we managed to get a lift with a guy who was heading to Bath for his brother’s birthday (presumably not the one our previous lift was heading to!) We jumped in with him is his Fiat Bravo and got a lift onto Leigh Delemere service station just before the Bath turning off the M4 he also donated a further £10 to Amnesty!
We didn’t have long to wait until our next lift I risked asking some Newport chavs in a Saxo for a lift but I didn’t notice their mate passed out in the back seat because he was ‘proper steamo last night innit butt’. So we waited a little longer and managed to get a lift with a lady who had been to drop her friends off at the airport and was in her friend’s car driving home, she lived in Abergavenny and said she would drop us at Magor services futher along the M4 and into Wales! While chatting to her and explaining what we were doing she asked where we were going and I said we were heading towards Cardiff (Russell had fallen asleep in the car at this point and left me to it!) she said ‘oh sod it I will take you to Cardiff – its not my fuel anyway!’ So we had a lift all the way to Cardiff! Once we arrived at Cardiff castle we had a quick run into the park to find our 4th set of convicts laying there in the sun.
Cardiff:
After jumping back in the same car we were heading back towards Abergavenny in hope of catching a train from Abergavenny through to Birmingham, we were cutting it rather fine and realised that we were going to miss the 12 o clock deadline by a small amount even if our train ride went swimmingly and we didn’t get kicked off again! What was weird about this particular lift was that the women knew a lot of people that I knew been in the same area including the man who lives in a flat on the side of my parents house! After realising we were going to miss Birmingham and had no conceivable way of getting there in an hour she dropped us both off at my parents house in Abergavenny where we stayed for some cheese on toast and cups of tea before heading back to Coventry so I could retrieve my bike!
641 miles hitched in 24 hours!
Special thanks goes to:
Russell
For putting up with me for over 24 hours, ensuring I didn’t get arrested and keeping me amused for the duration of the trip!
Rach
Making our sign!
Maja
Giving me a place to park my bike in Coventry and letting me sleep on the sofa after getting back having had no sleep and being absolutely shattered!
Everyone we got lifts with
For giving us lifts, met a load of interesting people and made the whole trip much more enjoyable!
People who donated money to us and Amnesty
Thanks for the money for food so that we could eat! We also raised another £61 during the event for Amnesty!
Sam and Ruth
Taking me and Russell back to Coventry to retrieve my bike.
My Parents
For giving me and Russell some much needed food and drink! When we turned up unexpectedly at the gate after travelling a massive distance.
