A Roadside Camp

This is a picture of a typical roadside camp during the weeks Michael Atkinson and I spent hitch-hiking in North Africa in 1964. Michael is to the left, still rolled up in his sleeping bag asleep even though the sun has been up for some time and the air is hot. My belongings are on the right, 'airing'. To the right of them the bank slopes up to a road very like any long, straight road in France with trees lining it, but this isn't France, it's Algeria, recently independent from France after a truly horrid war.

At this stage of the outward journey we were still trying to get back to Southern Rhodesia but, instead of crossing the Sahara as we had originally planned, we were heading for Egypt in the hope of going up the Nile.

Looking back, the whole journey was a terrible risk but we seemed, in those far-off days, to be capable of carrying on whatever the journey threw at us. In a few minutes Michael will wake and we'll make breakfast out of whatever we happen to have in our rucksacks. Then we'll pack them, walk up to the road, and hang out a thumb - and we never knew who would draw up and offer us a lift. It was part of the excitement of the day.