Two Americans, 1974, Great Britain, and Ireland

Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment for 5 March 2007
Prompt:“All that road rolling and all those people dreaming in the immensity of it” Jack Kerouack

The End

That morning in County Kent, somewhere north of the English Channel, the sun peeked over the ancient emerald hills threaded with single dirt lanes. A solitary yellow VW Bug buzzed into the dawn, headed for the hovercraft back to Le Havre, France. As if on cue, “Here comes the Sun” by the Beatles began as they crested a gentle hillock.

From the Beginning
Day 1

Two hostellers from America stood in London, the hub of the vast web of hostels covering Great Britain and the Irish Republic. Their plan was to hitchhike or travel by rail across the Commonwealth for about three weeks and meet back in London. They rode the Underground as far west as they could, climbed the stairs into the sun, held out a piece of cardboard marked for their destination, and stuck out their thumbs.

A uniformed chauffer in a shiny black car picked them up. After they settled into the back seat, he asked: “Aren’t you two embarrassed to use other people’s energy to get around?” For a moment, an awkward silence like a kinked leash, hung between them and the driver. The chauffeur drove them to a bed & breakfast owned by a widow who was a friend. That evening after supper and a shower, they dried their hair next to a roaring fire.

Day 3

In a castle-turned-hostel near Inverness, alabaster statues loomed haphazardly throughout the wide halls. Their blank eyes seemed to follow the hostellers as they marched to their assigned dormitory. Once there, the hostellers tossed heavy backpacks next to iron bedsteads in a large white room. Its huge windows looked out over a valley and into a mountain on the other side. Far below, in the middle of the valley, a train puffed along a track that ran by the river.

The hostel’s warden wore a plaid kilt, grinned cheerfully, and regaled them with stories about the original owners, Lord and Lady Sutherland.

.... His Lordship speculated in developing the Highlands (the part of Scotland north of Inverness). To that end, he owned the railway that ran daily below his castle. He also had all of the trees in the Highlands cut for his sheep grazing ventures. When the Lord and Lady divorced, she kept the castle. He kept the train and the Highlands. She ordered the servants to lower the blinds whenever the daily train came through the valley.

Early in the morning, a painfully loud amplification of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony roused the hostellers from their beds. The warden wanted to be sure the hostellers would have time to complete their housekeeping chores before packing up and moving on.

Day 6

The Americans’ new Scottish friends convinced them that they must see the highest pub in Scotland. After seeing the pub, the Scots took the Americans to camp at the base of a mist-shrouded mountain in the central highlands. In the evening, a majestic stag with broad shoulders and a trophy of antlers surveyed them and their campfire near a cold clear brook. The American’s new Scottish friends had chosen the site for its beauty. In hushed voices, the Scots spoke of the lore of the heavy mists of the mountain. They told the travelers that many a man had perished in those mountains for want of the direction home.

Day 7

On a hill on the island of Skye, sandal and sneaker-shod hostellers with faded blue jeans, flannel shirts, and worn backpacks sprawled across the wide steps of the large white hostel. The Americans were trudging up the path to the hostel when two voices they recognized from another hostel, called out, “Hey, it’s the Americans!”


Day 8

Near the dock for the ferry to the Outer Hebrides, a large Celtic cross marked the hilltop grave of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The cross, rooted in the Isle of Skye, faced the Isles of Lewis and Harris to the north.

Day 10

On Lewis, the southernmost island of the Outer Hebrides, about seven hostellers, including one of the Americans, ventured out into the harsh cold and hiked west the few miles of dirt road that meandered across the island to the Atlantic Ocean.
Foraging sheep and goats clambered over stingy gray rocks, craggy and worn, both. Some were loosely wandering, others in small knit groups, and all painted with colored hatch marks for identification.
Save for a single woman and several widely spaced, low slung peat cottages, the area was eerily empty of humanity. Celtic songs and prayers clung to wisps of hearth smoke. It was Saturday, a day for religious observance for the area. In layers of faded black dress and with an embroidered white head scarf framing her weathered face, the lone woman politely returned the hosteller’s greeting in Gaelic. When she saw they did not understand her, she looked very sad. They reminded her of all the young folk who fled to the mainland every year for better jobs, leaving the older ones and the children behind. In halting English and great earnestness, she sighed and gave the hikers her most sincere condolences for poor John Kennedy.

After the hostellers arrived at the western coast, the two blond Norwegians swam in the ocean. Fine pale sand defined a shimmering boundary between the ocean and the shore. Wildflowers blanketed the many low-slung hills and the Gulf Stream warmed the air. Like dazed foreign sentries, the other hostellers stood stiffly, sniffed the salt air, and gazed at the horizon.


Day 13

One of the Americans had a few hours before her train left Belfast for Dublin. With all of her possessions were crammed into her backpack, she wandered into the center of the city for a look see. There were great arched iron gates that contained the violent heart of the city. The only person in sight was a solid policeman several blocks away. He looked in her direction and good-naturedly shouted, “Hey you! Tell me, did you ride your bicycle all the way from America?” They both laughed, nervously.

Day 14

The hostel in Dublin was a tall brick building worn down at the heels and fronting on Mountjoy Square, once a very distinguished neighborhood. In 1974, Dublin’s prison was there and children entertained themselves by bashing parked cars with sledgehammers and pelleting them with their thin hard bodies. Gunfire, sirens, and flashing red lights scarred their nights. In 1974, many of Dublin’s children were bussed to the countryside for vacation.

Day 17

The Valencia Island hostel was a former Coast Guard Barracks off the southwestern coast of Ireland. When one of the American hitchhikers arrived at the hostel that evening, there was no room for her in the main building. She was assigned her own little cabin. Cold rains driven by high winds beat on her cabin that night when a battered looking backpacker stumbled inside. She was an American hitchhiker, too. She had been sporting a bright orange Barnard University sweatshirt in the green Republic of Ireland and could not understand why no one would give her a lift. Nonetheless, the two would often hitch together for the rest of the summer, even though they knew very well that a woman hitching by herself always got rides faster than two women together.


Day 21

At the end of their adventures in Ireland, the two Americans met on dock in Belfast to catch the ferry to Liverpool. Because paying the pedestrian fare for the ferry was a hardship, they approached a young family traveling by car. The family agreed to drive them onto and off of the ferry. In between, the Americans lunched on dry soup from their backpacks and hot water from the ferry’s kitchen.

At Liverpool, they thanked the family, navigated the city by map, and found Beatle Street - a very narrow and uneven cobblestone street sandwiched between two walls of tall, drab brick houses. Hanging over a nondescript wooden door in one of the buildings was a plaque with three dimensional figures of the four Beatles underscored with the words, “Four Lads Who Shook The World”


Day 22

The walk from the train station in Bath was long, downhill, and shaded by a canopy of shimmering green leaves. British tourists arched their eyebrows in disapproval of the two Americans as they soaked their tired feet in the largest of the Roman Baths.


Day 25

The Americans ended their adventure at the home of a new friend and his guests: a respectable white townhouse in King’s Cross, London and two other hostellers. Early the next morning, they crammed into a small car and, sharing a sense of adventure and a free ride, drove off into the sunrise to the ferry at Portsmouth.