Renovation project - Hitch hiking in France

Renovation project - Hitch hiking in France

Picture courtesy of
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brickeys_beware_of_hitchhikers_2012-04-01_001.jpg

We are having a night out this weekend, we are going to visit friends over near Roscoff, I am so looking forward to this, we don’t go out very often, even though friends that visit us do not believe us when we say that.

The weather is not looking good, but hey, we will be inside eating good food, drinking nice wine and having fantastic conversation with lovely people.

As we are driving, we go over the moors, this always looks so amazing in the sun but with the bad weather it looks very misty and quite bleak.

As we are driving we see a couple of young men, hitch hiking, we feel so sorry for them that we stop to pick them up, we have no idea where we are going as the sat nav has taken us a different way, they are looking to go to either of 2 destinations, so I explain where we are heading to, but can't actually remember the name of the town, it is just in our favourites on the sat nav.


They get in and speak no English other than thank you and I tell them to just say stop when they want to get out.

We sit talking and I laugh saying that if my daughter knew we were picking up hitch hikers in the middle of the moors she would freak out.

I then wonder who is more worried about this lift, the 2 young guys that have been picked by 2 foreign strangers on the moors or us for picking up 2 strangers!!

Though I think the worry is still the English way of see everything as a threat rather than the Breton way of some body needs a lift and you have a car!

In the UK we would not dream of picking up hitch hikers (well OK I have done a couple of times) because we seem to see the bad in everything or think that everybody is a mad axe murderer. But in

France we have given lifts to so many people, we were talking to 2 others we picked up a while back and they explained that because they live in a rural area they hitch hike into town every time they go.

The most memorable hitch-hikers we picked up were a couple of years ago, they were on some university competition and had to hitch between different areas in a set amount of time, they were losing so we asked if they wanted to visit St Tropez for a couple of hours as that was where we were heading, they had a ball and then we dropped them at their destination, it is so easy to do something nice for people.

It is still strange to think that hitch hiking is so popular in this area, and still seems to be relatively safe (though do not quote me on that!!!) I remember hitch hiking myself many years ago across

France and it always brings back happy memories. Though if our daughters or granddaughters ever consider doing it, I will kill them!

It really is one of those conundrums, if you see the best in everything life will be a lot nicer but then if you do not look for the danger how safe will you be? (so far we have survived)


We drop them off in Sizun and the weather seems to improve, we arrive safe and sound at our friends and have a fantastic evening.