Wanderlust: The End

What can I say about Amsterdam? It was very different to home. Drugs for a start. Lots of drugs. The red light district. Hippies. The emperor of Japan – I kid you not – loud demonstrations, museums, canals, so many bikes. We spent three hours in the Ryksmuseum, it was fascinating.

The Student Bar was a popular hang out and as we were kicked out of the hostel at 9:30am we spent another day wandering around the capital city. There were no shortage of young men vying for our attention with suggestions of accompaning them to Switzerland, Morocco, Afghanistan. All of which we turned down, of course. Finally we needed to move, the youth hostel was full and so we had to leave, we went to the nearest town of Harlem where we spent a couple of rainy days before setting off for the coast.

We reached Oostende at 12:30pm this time successfully avoiding Antwerp. It did take a while though with many short lifts, one amusingly crammed into a two-seater Triumph Spitfire. Still raining we found the youth hostel for one last night. It was very clean and also expensive, but dry. We had an enjoyable evening chatting to a couple of Americans and some Canadians who were heading for India.

The following day we walked around the city, telephoned home and used up the last of the camera film as the ferry wasn’t until 7pm. On board we got talking to Kim who was from Watford and a folk singer! He apparently had written a poem which had been used by The Incredible String Band on one of their early albums and whether that was true or not he did entertain us with his hilarious tales of travelling in France. He even offered us a lift but his car was full of gear – guitars, amps etc. Plus we were so tired when we reached Dover – the sea was so rough that it took several attempts to dock and by then it was 1:30am. We stayed in the waiting room until daylight before setting off for London.

Not the best of days. It was raining, there weren’t many lorries about and lifts were scarce. It took us all day to get through to the north of London. Calamity stuck when the lift we were in broke down and we were stuck at the side of the motorway waiting for a breakdown truck. Obviously we weren’t in a good location to hitchhike. At Leicester Forest East we finally got a lift by a lorry driver going all the way to Leeds. The relief! By now we were soaked though, cold and miserable. Our time on the Greek islands seemed like a dream.

Total time away: 10 weeks.

Within weeks I was desperate to travel abroad again, but Cathy had met a boy and reluctant to leave him and without any savings this meant finding work. So it was that on 1^st January 1972 I was flying for the first time, to Switzerland, to begin my job as an au pair in Geneva.

And so my life as a rolling stone began.