The Somerton Hitch-hiker

I left Glastonbury early - around 11.30 am - to return to Exeter. This meant collecting the car up at Manor House Road, next to the grey stone wall and single yellow line that marks the northern perimeter of the vast Abbey estate.

At Street, there comes a point where you must decide whether to go back on the M5 or the A303; this means choosing between the A39 to Bridgwater or the B3151 to Ilchester, respectively. I chose the latter, as usual, taking the turning by the Street Inn.

I have developed what I hope is a sort of good Samaritan philosophy, certainly with regard to driving and hitch-hikers. I have stuck my thumb up a few times in the past and I know the relief when someone eventually pulls up. There is the hope, as you trudge along the road, that someone will take away the giant trek ahead; there is the disappointment when car-after-car passes, ignoring your plea. That's why I always walk as I hitch - if you stand there, watching the cars as they pass, you are not actually going anywhere and you are also making more of a direct challenge to the motorist. To me, it is a more aggressive form of hitching; it is impolite and is designed to make the driver feel guilty for passing you as you look him right in the eye.

Anyway, at about Kingsdon Hill, just past Somerton, I noticed a tall man, dressed in black, limping along the road. He held his thumb aloft as he walked - my preferred method of hitching - and was also struggling, quite badly. If ever there were a worthy candidate for a lift, it was the man ahead. So, I drew up beside him and came to a halt just as he looked round, surprised that someone had finally stopped; he opened the door to climb in.

'I'm going to the A303; is that any good?' He said he was going to Yeovil and thanked me for stopping; I said I would drop him at the big roundabout at Podimore.

There is, of course, something odd about inviting a stranger into your car, no matter what they look or sound like. This man looked the worse for wear, like he had been through hard times. He was not old but his face was craggy, lined and pock-marked; he was still respectable in appearance, his clothes not worn-out, though he needed a shower.

After last night, I wasn't in the mood for polite conversation so we both just sat there, me driving, quite fast - about sixty where the road allowed - towards the Podimore roundabout. I don't think he was the talkative type, either.

The only occasion when the more aggressive form of hitch-hiking is allowable - even necessary - is the long-distance hike which begins at a motorway slip-road, or certainly a major A road or dual carriageway. If you were hiking from, say, Exeter to Manchester, then you would have to employ some form of advertising or promotion, probably a piece of card-board with the destination written on it. You might even have to turn down some drivers, the ones that are not going far enough (say, only going to Bristol).

'I've been to the memorial service.'

He just spoke out - in a London accent, not local - with no further information. I then asked him if he meant the Armistice Day remembrance service - only just remembering that it is the first Sunday after the eleventh of November - which he did, of course.

'Were there many veterans at the service?' I asked him.

We went into a brief conversation about Somerton, where it was held, and the oldest survivors. He said there were some survivors of World War One, but I find that hard to believe. Of course, he was probably a veteran himself, which would explain the chronic limp.

Near Podimore roundabout I suddenly realised I might have a genuine war veteran on my hands and that it would be almost cruel to drop him there to continue limping. It would be like insulting The Jackal (Edward Fox) in the film, the Day of the Jackal, near the end when he appears at the checkpoint/security cordon as an ancient veteran with only one leg.

Well, I offered to take him directly to Yeovil - a ten mile detour for me - and he gladly accepted.

'I'm going to Exeter but I'll go on the A30, instead', I told him.

At Cartgate, I was taken aback, as usual, by the sight of the luminous Ham Stone, visible on the hill to the right, just as you leave Cartgate and travel on to Exeter.

Of course, the A30 goes through all of the old towns... Yeovil, Crewkerne, Chard and so on. It would make a change. I dropped him off at Yeovil, right in the town centre, near a small side road - Clarence Street - that runs alongside Tesco, site of the famous old Huish ground and its notorious slope. The slope was still there.

Yeovil is built on a big slope that runs down to the River Yeo, forming a wide valley. This explains the great mist that descended one Saturday afternoon - buried deep in local folklore, back in the old days when all football matches started at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon - during the famous FA cup game against Sunderland, on 29 January 1949. Looking at Tesco, now, I can still imagine a record crowd of 16,318, watching their famous team of giant-killers, built by the great Alec Stock, player-manager, of Radstock. Yeovil Town won that day, in extra-time, against odds of 500 -1 and a Sunderland team who at the time were one of the most formidable in the land, and they established forever their reputation as one of the greatest amateur sides of all time. Worldwide.

In those distant days - long before saturation football on Sky, delayed kick-offs and delayed draws - Alec Stock and his ecstatic team sat down, together, next to the radio in the early evening, right after the match. All in a quaint and whimsical, mid-Somerset town surrounded by green hills. At 5.45pm, huddled around the radio, they listened to the draw and then another team quaked when they heard that Yeovil Town were their next match.

Len Shackleton and Sunderland were delivered from this pastoral, halcyon, footballing idyll in the hills of deepest Somerset back to the pits and docks of Wearside. The Glovers - and in those days the Yeovil Town team included real glove-cutters - had produced a footballing parting of the waves. Alec Stock went on to manage Arsenal and Roma.

I even have a fantasy - utterly ridiculous - that on that epic day my grandfather, Gilbert H, took a walk down the hill from his house, Kia Ora, that overlooks Chard Junction station and the Three Counties milk factory where he worked, by the River Axe, and made the short journey by train to Yeovil Junction and then made his way into town to witness the famous encounter. All on a Saturday afternoon. I can picture him going into Chard that very evening, returned to boyhood as he described the miracle he had just witnessed eighteen miles away, yonder. And this was all before Match of the Day; it was on the radio but then vanished, its air waves petering out into the atmosphere. Did it really happen?

I dropped off my passenger.

'Thank you very much indeed. Much appreciated. You didn't have to but you drove the extra distance just to drop me off; most appreciated. Thanks.' He was sincere. I thanked him, and drove off towards Exeter.

I only put £3.66 of diesel in the car at the Texaco garage, at Wirral Park Road in Glastonbury. It was nearly empty anyway, so this meant an agonising journey back to Exeter, not knowing whether I would make it or not. It goes without saying that I had no money on me, just the 16p in coppers in my pocket. I could not even afford a phone call if I broke down or ran out of fuel along the way. This is driving on the breadline - it is a bit like hitching but with no back-up money for a bus.

I don't have a mobile phone, mainly for financial reasons, ridiculous though that may sound. The few remaining AA phone boxes - there is one on the A3052, at Half Way Inn, near Farringdon - are mere nostalgia, listed items, I would guess. How did they work in the past - say, fifty years ago, before mass telecommunications - when you could break down twenty miles from the nearest one?

I was now at a critical point, the point of no return, just like in the film Falling Down (1993): to continue any further would make return impossible.. As D-Fens says, in the army surplus store, at this point it is 'longer to go back to the beginning than it is to continue to the end'. I chose to press on and I set the tripometer to zero.

Well, to cut a long story short, I economised with my driving - coasting in neutral whenever the terrain offered the chance - and continued along the A30 right until past Chard where it joins the A303.

This meant passing Cricket St Thomas, the wildlife park near Tatworth and Chard Junction. I would have taken a detour to see Batch Cottage, Kia Ora and the old woodyard and milk factory but the fuel situation was critical; better to break down on a main road than in a country lane.

It is only when you are running low that you realise the heavy toll in fuel taken by the steep climbs of the Blackdown Hills, particularly the sharp bends and steep, long climbs around Yarcombe. But, when I made it onto the duel carriageway at Honiton - and the orange empty light had not yet flashed - I knew that I was home and dry.

Recently, I have become all-to-familiar with a flash of the orange empty light, which means about eight miles left in the tank. However, I eventually made it back to Exeter, which was 48.7 miles from Yeovil.

I was lucky I didn't have to go hitching.

The obituary of Alec Stock, passed away 16 April 2001:
http://www.ciderspace.co.uk/ASP/history/stock-alec-tribute.asp

Ciderspace - unofficial Yeovil Town Football Club website (highly recommended):
http://www.ciderspace.co.uk/

Yeovil Town vs Sunderland, 29 January 1949:
http://www.ciderspace.co.uk/ASP/history/yeovil-town-story14.asp