Lille
Trip Start
Feb 2008
1
2
26
Trip End
Ongoing
Lille,
France
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
We begin our journey at dover ferry port, just after my mother dropped us three at the departure zone. after a minute or so I spoke to a fellow passinger called john, as it turned out he was travelling to France himself and was happy to drive the three of us to a service station on the motorway near Arras in france. Pritty good for the start of the journey, getting the first lift in France before even entering the country!
After John dropped us at the station, we encountered our first "omen" in the last few minutes of the fading light. A flock of 15 or so birds took off suddenly from a near bush circled in the air above us and the formed a flying V as if a arrow was created for us pointing the direction we should follow (East) we made camp at the service station that night and for the first time encounted the cold, not from the outside temp, but from the ground sucking out our body heat!
the following morning we decided to hike across a farmers field to get the nearest B road (D939) and continue our journey, after sitting at a roundabout for an hour or so, in the prossess we refused three lifts to Lille since our minds were set on heading south and to the sun. the fouth person to stop, Pablo gave us a lift to the nearest entry point to the motorway and our second camping spot for the night. After trying for a time to hitch, we found a oil drum cut in half and used this to contain a fire for cooking and warmth for the night
cooking Roadside
. We had a little jam together and spent the night in good spirits with warm food and beds to fall back into (we by this point had some cardboard signs and used these and our clothes to create a ground mat of sorts).
First real night
The morning arrived with a cup of coffee provided free of charge by the motorway security whom im sure were as supprised to see us as we them. We spent the morning packing and standing around the entrance to the motorway. I played some blues music on the CD player, which then led us to start out own inprov blues jam, this caused the motorway people to come and join us and listen to kimmy play, one even had a go at playing.
Securty from the motorway
With the motorway security standing with us the whole group stuck out our thumbs and tryed to flag down rides!
the very next car that stopped (within 5mins) once again offered a lift to Lille, at this point we had decided that if we were offered another lift to Lille we would take it. So we jumped in and took a ride!
We arrived in Lille,
Lille
aimed for the town center and started walking. After spotting a nice looking church tower we changed direction a little, this led us directly into the path of Perre the 1st "normal" looking man in Lille! We jumped on him, asking questions from locations of squats or such to locations of reggae bars :) He pointed us in the right direction to Lilles central square, we spent a few mins sitting sharing a joint with a local man who needed some papers to roll with. even before we had finished smoking Perre found us, he had gone home and spoken to his housemate who told him to invite us to stay the night! So we followed and dumped our bags at his house where we met Annesophie. Both very friendly people who we spent the night with.
Perre and Annesophie
I cooked a stir fry for everyone and we sat around drinking wine, smoking and exchanging music! Two of Perre and Annesophie's friends came round later ( Sasha and Max) who had just come back from a three month trip to India, we spoke of travel, the sunsets over the Indian Ocean and many other topics as the night progressed.
Perre and Annesophie house
That night
That night
Again we had another jam session, inprovised music and conversation in musical form :) after a long night of merryment we retired to bed and the film Peter Pan, although we were all asleep before wendy even made it to never never land!
Now it is the morning, a new day, direction and experiances to discover! So, armed with coffee and essential "herbs" we plan our next leg. The ideas floating about now are for Holland, Spain (Bilbao) or Berlin, guess I let you know when we get there! untill next time ;)
