Getting hitched: James Priestman is taken for a ride

‘I resolved to spend four weeks hitchhiking, to talk to people about the Quaker testimonies.’

The number of Friends in the UK is declining. Information about the Quakers tends to be passed on by word of mouth or social media, which means that it tends to be communicated to people who are known to existing Quakers and therefore similar to them. By contrast, the early beliefs of the Religious Society of Friends were spread to people of different classes and creeds by itinerant preachers.

I resolved to spend four weeks this summer and autumn hitchhiking around the United Kingdom, to talk to people who give me lifts about the Quaker testimonies. Here is what happened on the first four days of my itinerant witness.

Day 1 (June 1)

At midday I walked out in the rain to my nearest bus stop in Hanwell, west London, and took buses all the way to Moat Mount Park on the A1. This bus stop, between Edgware and Borehamwood, is, or so I had been informed by www.hitchwiki.org, one of the best places to hitch a lift out of London. I arrived at Moat Mount Park at 2pm and two hours later I got a lift from Howard, an antique dealer from Morecambe. He had driven his van to London to pick up antiques, and was now heading up the A1 to Newark for an antiques fair. We hit it off. He is a similar age to me (mid-fifties) and like me had hitchhiked in his youth. When I told him of my plans to spend the next five days hitchhiking to sites of significance to the history of the Quakers, he seemed a little envious (despite not being a Quaker) and spoke of the charming architecture of Quaker Meeting houses. He dropped me off north of Peterborough, at the slip road to the A47.

My plan was to head west to Fenny Drayton, the birthplace of George Fox. After fewer than fifteen minutes, an articulated lorry stopped for me. It was driven by Jag, a Sikh man more than ten years older than me. I described the Religious Society of Friends and we talked about how Sikhs live out the testimonies – truth, love and community are all very important to Sikhs. Family was very important to Jag, and we talked about different attitudes towards the very young and the very old. To me, he seemed somewhat controlling in his relations with his family, whereas I must have seemed to him to be somewhat flippant. He had never picked up a hitchhiker before and was pleased to have been given the opportunity to help someone. But after about thirty minutes he was required to take a rest (the lorry records how long he has been driving). He stopped in a layby, and within twenty minutes I had been picked up by a man in a small family car.

Micky appeared to be aged in his sixties. He was unshaven, wearing torn and dirty clothes, and was smoking a roll-up cigarette. He was driving to see a friend and to repair their mobility scooter. Micky’s work and pleasure had often involved driving. In his youth he had driven a Harley Davidson to a kibbutz in Israel. He said the experience of living in a community based on the ideals of equality had been life-changing, even though the community was not actually meeting those ideals. He had hitchhiked on many occasions and picked up hitchers at every opportunity. At just after 7pm, he dropped me on the west side of Leicester at the junction of the ring road and the A50. He hadn’t asked where I was going, so I told him. He smiled warmly and said he didn’t know much about Quakers but would look them up. At 8.30pm I was still on the A50, so I got a bus to the other side of the M1, where I booked into a roadside hotel. I chose some food from the high-calorie menu and got a good night’s sleep.

Day 2 (2 June)

I woke up a little sore in an area where I had had an operation three years ago. Hitchhiking inevitably involves walking with a rucksack, and hauling it in and out of vehicles. To give myself a rest I booked a cab to take me to a campsite four miles from Fenny Drayton. The driver had lived the first part of his life in Uganda and the last twenty years in Leicester. He said the climate in Uganda was milder than other parts of Africa, and that it looked like Leicestershire did today (lush and green), albeit with different species of vegetation. I pitched my tent, got some food from a local shop, and walked the five miles to Fenny Drayton church, which contains the font in which George Fox was baptised. Parts of the church date from the twelfth century and it still has an active Church of England congregation.

I walked to a pub for some food and got a minicab back to the campsite. The driver had lived in a Leicestershire village for ten years, but had been born in Rwanda. Despite our differences in culture, we were able to talk in some depth about sensitive topics. I brought up the horrific civil war that Rwanda had suffered in the 1990s. He reckoned that a million people were killed in three months. I suggested that the closest thing that England has had to that was the civil war, which killed and maimed a higher percentage of the population than world war one. Leicestershire was one of the areas that suffered most. I told him why I was visiting, and noted that the Quakers had formed partly as a response to the civil war. We discussed whether we had become complacent in England – whether we had forgotten that peace can end suddenly, like in Rwanda or Ukraine. He considered that a civil war in England was unlikely because most people think that democracy has made the institutions of the state reasonably fair, whereas in Rwanda there is still a suspicion that leaders and institutions are working in the interests of family or tribe. I noted that recently we had had a civil war in Northern Ireland, and that one of the reasons for this had been that the Roman Catholic population had not been fairly represented in the political and state institutions. As a result they had been precluded from jobs and good housing. Measures to overcome inequalities had been vital to the peace process.

I spent the evening sitting outside my tent in front of a small artificial lake. Birdsong accompanied the splash of fishing lines and the paddle and quack of ducks and geese.

Day 3 (3 June)

I got to the A5 at 08.40 and waited just over an hour before I was picked up by Tom in an Aldi supermarket articulated lorry. He was going to East Midlands Airport to collect another load of frozen food for the Aldi depot in Warwickshire. He had been doing the journey back and forth since 4.30, and would finish at 13.30. He grew up in Warsaw before moving to the UK. He is more than ten years younger than me, but we are in a similar situation with regard to relationships, so we talked about that. He dropped me off near the airport at a slip road to the M1.

After about three quarters of an hour, I was picked up by Taz, a minicab driver in his fifties who was returning to Stoke after having dropped someone off at the airport. He was happy to take me without charging. He is a Muslim and had not heard of the Quakers, so I described Quaker beliefs and ways of worship. We talked about the similarities and differences between our religions, the main similarity being the simplicity of worship: no rituals, no priests, and no icons. I decided that I would head towards Pendle Hill, near Clitheroe in Lancashire, where George Fox had his vision of a ‘great people to be gathered’. At midday, Taz dropped me at a roundabout on the A50, east of Stoke.

I walked into the Hungry Horse restaurant and found the menu to be as unhealthy as the roadside hotel on the first evening of this adventure. I then realised that the two menus were exactly the same, the two eateries being part of the same chain, run by a well-known brewery. A man on the neighbouring table was eating an ‘Onion Ring Horseshoe’, which, as the name suggests, is a carthorse-sized imitation horseshoe loaded with battered onion rings.

After lunch I waited an hour and a half for a lift. Peter was a friendly guy who appeared to be in his late fifties. He said he was jealous of my hitchhiking. He provided a short but very helpful lift, dropping me on a slip road of the M6. After about half an hour I was picked up by a black Volvo. ‘M’ was another man in his fifties and he greeted me with a handshake. We introduced ourselves. He was going back to Glasgow to see his birth mother, who has dementia. As a child he had spent some time in care and he expressed a dislike of social workers. I explained that I was a social worker in mental health, and we were able to discuss and agree on some of the ways that social workers get their job wrong. M said that he had been in the military. I did not reveal that I had spent some time in the army because, although I did believe that M had been in the military, I did not believe the stories he was telling me. By this stage he was undertaking other cars at one hundred miles an hour, with one hand on the wheel, easing down to eighty to light a cigarette. M seemed to be an angry man, and I feared that he wasn’t going to be slowing down any time soon. I asked to be dropped off at the next service station, which he agreed to do. We shook hands and I didn’t sense any ill-feeling. I wonder whether, instead of asking him to drop me off, I could and should have just asked him to slow down and then continued the conversation. Of the people I met on this trip, he was the only one I did not speak to about being a Quaker, and I think that we might have had a good conversation about that.

There was not a lot of traffic going in or out of the service station (it being an evening in the middle of the Queen’s jubilee weekend), so I gave up and used an cab to get the rest of the way to Clitheroe. I booked into a cheap but clean hotel in the town centre.

Day 4 (4 June)

I went to Pendle Hill on the bus. I wonder if when George Fox had his vision of a ‘great people to be gathered’ he was looking at all the sheep. I didn’t get all the way to the top of the hill due to the physical problems I was having; yet even on the side of it you get views of breadth and distance, and a sense of the vast intricacies of the natural world.

Day 5 (5 June)

I checked out of the hotel and went to the Quaker Meeting in Clitheroe. Six years ago, they moved from a charming and historic – but relatively inaccessible – Meeting house in the village of Sawley, to one in the middle of Clitheroe. The new Meeting house is visible to the community, and convenient: close to the train station, bus stops and a car-park. It is easy to enter and leave, even for the Friend who lives in the local care home and requires support for his mobility. The decision to move the Meeting was not taken on a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages, but on the principle that this would best-serve future Quakers in the area. In the afternoon, I took the train back to London.

I enjoyed hitchhiking, despite some long waits, and I found it a good way to witness to a diverse group of people about the Religious Society of Friends. I am about to turn fifty-five and I am not as strong as I was in my twenties, so next time I need to travel lighter.  Jesus advised his disciples to ‘Take nothing for the journey – no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt’ (Luke 9:3). I would not want to become a burden on others, so I will take just enough to be able to survive a night out if I need to. I am looking forward to my next trip.

James is grateful to the Francis Camfield Trust for support.

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Comments

Well done! A brave journey. Sometimes it’s not easy to talk about Quakers. It’s great to have this article in The Friend.

By rosete on 1st July 2022 - 15:08

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Thank-you Rosete, I appreciate that. I plan to set off again in August and submit another article. James.

By James Priestman on 18th July 2022 - 20:05

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