My rather battered first passport that lasted for most of the journey before getting full. Having just left my job as an electronic wireman at Elliotts Automation, I was all set to travel, with the equivalent of five pounds in Belgian Francs and the same amount of German Deutschmarks, plus fifty pounds in sterling, along with my passport and vaccination certificate, all tucked into a pouch under my left armpit, where I could constantly feel its presence, an ex army large pack as a rucksack, my sleeping bag was a Blacks down filled one, groundsheet instead of a tent, into which I rolled the sleeping bag forming a three foot long sausage, strapped to the large pack with sewn on webbing straps, across the top and down both of the sides, to the top flap was stitched my Union Jack, very necessary on the continent.
Towel, washing kit, a couple of shirts, sweater, jeans, underpants, my well dubbined Italian walking boots, an inflatable air mattress, my youth hostel manual for Europe, a map of North Germany, several books to read, bread, plastic pot of butter, cheese, dates and a pound of apples, was about all I needed, it is said who travels light, travels fastest.
My mother was a little tearful as she saw me off, I promised to write often, but as I had already been half way around the world in the army, as well as visiting Norway and Sweden before, saying that I was only going as far as the North Cape this time, with luck I would be back within a few months.
Walking up Star hill to the bus stop on New Road, the Strand bus came along within a few minutes, through Chatham, up Chatham Hill to the ruin of the Jezreels Tower, from here it was a brisk walk to the clock tower on the Rainham road, where my very first lift of this holiday was in a saloon car, a good omen I thought.
The next was a retired Major type, who was going to the village of Dunkirk, at the top of the big hill down to Canterbury, rode the rest of the way into that city in a paraffin truck, after buying a couple of bars of dark Bournville chocolate, a long plod out of the built up area, to a place that was suitable to try for a lift again, I was soon picked up by a contractors dormobile, complete with two genuine country yokel navvies inside, each of them had bright red faces and hair like straw, they both squinted happily at me and grunted, both being tongue tied, but grinned like Cheshire cats all the way to Lydden.
