Don't lose your RAG!

After 5 hours of nervous sleep and a night spent discussing almost military tactics, myself, Sophie Johnston and Will Daubney waited in Beit Quad for 09:00 to pass with trepidation.

At this point in our journey, we were still undecided about which plan of action would be best to follow; we were weighing up either raising enough money to take £32 flights to Antalya, Turkey at 18:15 or hitchhiking across the English Channel and getting as far away from London as possible by car. We were well aware of the pros and cons for both; to get a flight to Turkey we would not only have had to raise £96 for flights, but also find a way to get to Gatwick in time for the 18:15 flight and pay for a £20 visa each to allow us access to the country. Despite being an extremely attractive option, the cold indifference of London gave us pause for thought of this plan’s feasibility. Getting across the Channel also had its own troubling risks: where to hitchhike from? How difficult would it be? Would we be safe? Even after discussing late into the night, we sat squarely on a fragile fence.

With no set plan in mind, we set off in the direction of Victoria to test the water and ascertain how generous a city London truly is, with a heavy cynicism hanging over us. We were pleasantly surprised with how willing people were to give us money, but it soon became apparent that their generosity was not enough and raising the necessary money would be too risky a venture indeed. After raising £15, we called it quits and headed for pastures green.

After looking at the tangled, busy London roads in front of us we identified a large obstacle that we hadn’t yet considered: hitching a lift to the South-East from the centre would be hard in a city where traffic is headed in every direction. Very hard. After a quick Google, we found a helpful site called hitchwiki that informed us that the best way to get to the Southeast was to take a train from Charing Cross to Mottingham, walk to a nearby Shell garage on the entrance of the A20 and hitch a lift from there. So, with a train to catch in mind, we started a brisk walk to Charing Cross station.

As we got on the train, Will had an unexpected phone-call. The 3 Stooges had already gotten to the Eurotunnel. For a moment we sat aghast at how far behind we were already. Before we had even left London, they could potentially already be on their merry way to Calais. We seethed.

After our train deposited us in Mottingham, we power-walked our way to the Shell garage and lay in ambush for likely victims driving to Folkstone, where the Channel Tunnel is located.

After 45 minutes of springing ourselves on unsuspecting drivers, we had success with a history teacher that was driving towards Folkstone to visit his mother. Our first successful hitch was pure exhilaration, which must have surely come across as we eagerly thanked our generous chauffeur.

Our chauffeur, whose name we promptly forgot, dropped us off at a service station near the outskirts of Maidstone and kindly wished us farewell after a drawn out conversation about Ireland and the London housing market.

No sooner had we arrived at the service station, Will received another unexpected phone-call, but this one good. The 3 Stooges had been briefly arrested for trying to hitchhike across the Channel Tunnel whilst on the property’s car park. The 3 Stooges were rapidly losing their lead, and we finally had news to celebrate. Not only was the phone call celebratory, it was also informative: we now knew not to attack the Channel Tunnel head on, so instead we began to cruise the car park for cars heading across the Channel. This plan was easier said than done, and became a lot more difficult when another bombshell hit.

Despite RAG’s forward planning, Warwick University was also doing a Jailbreak that day, which we found to our dismay as two other groups arrived on the scene and started competing for lifts. An urgent race covered by a thin veil of camaraderie ensued.

During our passive-aggressive scrambling for a car, a nice Belgian gave us €20 to cover costs when we crossed the border, further affirming my belief in the kindness of strangers. After an hour and a half of bothering anyone unfortunate enough to pass us by, we scored a lift with a friendly vicar and beat the other two Warwick teams to a ride. Victory was sweet indeed.

The drive with the vicar was long and he was quieter than the History teacher who had given us a lift before, but was kind enough to give us £20 as he dropped us off at the P&O port in Dover. In a theme that recurred throughout the trip, our elation was quickly soiled after being greeted yet again by a horde of Warwick University students, a body of which was growing as every minute passed. After receiving no luck by the ferry port, we began to prowl further up the road from the port in hope of unchartered territory and relief from the piercing wind pushing in from the sea.

After an unsuccessful three and a half hours, we decided to fraternise with the enemy. We sat down with a group of unnamed students, shared cake and energy drinks, then danced to tinny music from a compact speaker to ward off the pessimism that was falling over Dover like a dark shroud. After a further two hours with them, desperately hoping that a driver would take pity on us and give us a lift, we threw our hands in the air and labelled Dover as a waste of time. So, after exchanging a few more dance-offs with a girl wearing a fake moustache and sombrero, we said our farewell to our poorweather friends and used the £20 given to us by the vicar to escape Dover and head to Folkstone to attempt the Channel Tunnel. We sincerely hope that the Warwick students left Dover eventually.

After arriving at a roundabout a few hundred metres from the Channel Tunnel grounds, we waited no longer than 45 minutes until a French guy pulled over offering to give us a lift. We could not believe our luck after our five and a half hour wait in Dover. As he pulled into the hard shoulder of the slip road, we cried with joy and ran towards the car, already thanking him jubilantly as we climbed into his car from the dark, chilly roadside.

‘The French Guy”, whose name we forgot to ask, was an interesting character. Our only record of him is a blurry snap of his number plate that we took as we piled into his car and the knowledge that he had a long, unspellable name. Our French knight-in-shining-armour turned out to be a student from Harper Lee Agricultural College who was returning home to Lyon for a week to visit his family. We were overjoyed by the news that he wasn’t going to stop in Calais and was planning to bypass Paris. It was fate.

However, as he started the long drive from Calais to Lyon, our faith in him deteriorated. Although lovely, he drove 30km/h above the speed limit and veered worryingly near cars as he overtook them. We wondered at the living stereotype for dangerous French drivers sitting nonchalantly in front of us. Although, despite his concerning driving, he made for amusing company.

During a description of a wild night-out where he went home with two girls in a state of pure oblivion, he described how he “fucked everything in the room apart from then”, which after a second of sleep-deprived confusion we realized that what he meant to say that he made a mess by being sick everywhere. We laughed with chagrin at his unfortunate antics as the speedometer hit 150km/h.

At around 04:00 the speed of the once hurtling car declined, and so did our driver. In a bid to keep his eyes open to watch the deserted road, he began to rock back and forth. Just as we were about to raise our concern, a stomach-dropping THWACK assaulted the car. At our great speed, the car had hit a hare. To our bemusement, he was rather distraught by the loss of life and less so by the detachment of his front bumper. After assessing the hare debris spread evenly underneath his car, we set on once again down the abandoned motorway, where he started to flag even further until we suggested he stop.

We pulled into a dark stop-site on the motorway furnished only by a few benches and a toilet block. Outside it was cold and rainy. After telling us to wake him in 20 minutes, we watched our driver pick up a pillow and duvet from the boot and lay himself down on a wet picnic bench and fall rapidly into a heavy sleep. We sat dumbfounded and in hushed voices began to seriously question the sanity of our driver. However, after 20 minutes had elapsed, we awoke our only option and started on the last leg of our journey to Dijon through a rapidly forming dense fog.

By some miracle, we arrived in Dijon in one piece. Shortly after arriving we discovered that we had won the competition. This knowledge of success helped us break through our tiredness and organise our return to England via Paris.

We managed to secure a cheap train down with minimal difficulty and spent the day flouncing around the Eiffel Tower and enjoying our success. We all vowed that we would do Jailbreak again, but bigger and better than even this year. Jailbreak 2014 is not an experience that any of us will forget.