Lift-Luck on Southern Roads

Here for you is the tale of my latest solitary ramble. The journey covers, as you shall see, some two hundred odd miles, through five southern counties of England, and was conceived on an unusual plan. To keep clear of the main roads, and, with two exceptions, the great towns; seeking out the least frequented lanes and by-paths. I covered the whole two-hundred-mile stretch of the way, with camera and pack at surprisingly little expense, by means of lifts taken in any chance vehicle that might be faring in my direction. My plan consisted in waiting by the roadside, or strolling gently onward until something on wheels, it mattered not what, overtook me. And thus by fits and starts - slow joltings in lumbering farm-waggons, steady crawls in brewers’ drays, quiet hours on the tail-boards of pantechnicons and a momentous evening in a missionary van - I found myself, after many days of travel, at my journey’s end in drowsy Arundel and a great and all but resistless longing to turn about there and then, and do the journey all over again. (From: Lift-Luck on Southern Roads).... This book is considered to be one of the very first to document the concept of hitchhiking as a method of travelling to your destination by asking to ride in various stranger’s vehicles for different sections of your journey. So then, why not join Mr Edwardes and me on this intriguing and fascinating trip as we go ‘off the beaten track’ and hitchhike our way through a magnificent part of Southern England at the turn of the last century?


By : Tickner Edwardes (1865 - 1944)

00 - Dedicatory Epistle



01 - Chapter I - The Syren City



02 - Chapter II - The Motor Man



03 - Chapter III - The First Step Eastward



04 - Chapter IV - The Culmstock Cat



05 - Chapter V - ''The Blue-Eyed Maid''



06 - Chapter VI - The Harmonious Ragman



07 - Chapter VII - A Family Breakfast



08 - Chapter VIII - Sunday Afternoon



09 - Chapter IX - The Charm of Wincanton



10 - Chapter X - The Art of Asking the Way



11 - Chapter XI - Recantation



12 - Chapter XII - Gloaming



13 - Chapter XIII - Waking in the Hay



14 - Chapter XIV - Porton



15 - Chapter XV - Divided Ways



16 - Chapter XVI - The Led Horse



17 - Chapter XVII - A Start in the Cold



18 - Chapter XVIII - At Littlecott Inn



19 - Chapter XIX - Sunday Morning in Winchester



20 - Chapter XX - The Amenities of Coal-Heaving



21 - Chapter XXI - An Eloquent Signpost



22 - Chapter XXII - A Song Before Sunrise



23 - Chapter XXIII - ''Heigh-Ho! For the Wind and Rain!''



24 - Chapter XXIV - The Last Lift Home

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