Hitchhiking to Pamplona with Comedian Andy Smart

Hitchhiking to Pamplona with Comedian Andy Smart

Hey guys, welcome to the Armchair Explorer, where the world’s greatest adventurers tell their best story from the road. My name’s Aaron Miller, I’m a travel writer, and this episode, we’re gonna have some fun. Comedian Andy Smarr is taking us on his ultimate adventure hitchhiking across Europe. Let’s just say at the outset, one of the rides nearly takes him to outer space. Are you ready? Let’s go. [Music] Lured by the freedom of the road, but without a car, between 1977 and 1982, just a young whippersnapper back then, Andy hitched some 72,000 miles across Europe. That’s the equivalent of traveling coast to coast across America 24 times. This is the story of his favorite journey during that period, an epic journey across the UK, France, and down into Spain, that changed his life and inspired him to become the very successful comic and TV personality and world street performer of the year that he went on to be. He’s written a memoir about his life and travels, it’s called “A Hitch in Time”, it’s a really fun read, and if you enjoy this episode, you can get it anywhere you get your books, just search it up. Also, Andy still does stand up and improvisational comedy every week at the Comedy Store in London, so you can go and check him out there too, it’s hilarious, he’s hilarious, it’s a great show. And his Twitter finally is at AndyCSP. So we’re just about to get started, but first a quick shout out to my very first patrons of the show, Nathan Gering, Liz from Texas, and Marge from New Zealand. You guys are absolute legends, thank you so much for the support, you are making this whole show possible. The sponsorship pays for my costs, but not my time, so if you are enjoying the show, then please consider buying me a pint. For the cost of a single pint, you will get ad-free shows, membership to our Explorers community, and exclusive travel vouchers delivered direct to your inbox. Think about that, if you just use one of these vouchers a year, you’ll actually profit from being a patron as well, as getting a lovely warm glow for helping me to get just a little bit tipsy. The sign up link is in the show notes, you can look at that right now on your phone. The website armchair-explorer.com also has details, or just head over to patreon.com forward slash armchair-explorer-podcast. Finally, the social media is at armchair-explorer-podcast across Instagram and Facebook. Come and hang out, I want to hear about your travels, we’re gonna get on well. But don’t worry about that right now, because we’re standing by the side of the road, we have our thumbs out, we have no idea where we’re going to end up or who’s gonna take us there, and that is how great adventures begin. I read on the road when I was probably 18 or 19, but it just sort of made me think, well yeah, if there’s a whole world of opportunity opening up, if I just go and stand at the start of a road and put my thumb out. And I loved the fact that, you know, it was sort of that existential dream of his to just travel and see new things, and see new people, and not really take life too seriously. I sort of grabbed hold of it and ran with it, and it became a way of life in a way in that you didn’t know where you’re gonna end up, or who you’re gonna meet, or what adventures it would lead to, and I always would say yes, and end up in the strangest situations. I met people who were on the Earth’s committee for meeting aliens. It was this old guy, and he picked us up and he told us he was going to meet with some aliens on Beverly Racecourse, and that he’d been one of the seven people chosen to meet these people from the council of the universe. That would have been the greatest hitchhike of all time. Can you imagine if you had all the way to Beverly Racecourse, there was a spaceship waiting to take him to the council of the universe. He sticks out his thumb with a little cardboard sign saying “Mars”, and the next thing you know, he’s hitchhiking to our space. That didn’t happen, sadly. But he did have some crazy rides over the years that even Kerouac would have been proud of, including getting picked up by a man wearing nothing but Speedos, not advisable, and by a straight male lorry driver who had had a boob job to try and further his singing career. And now he was driving trucks to try and pay to have them removed, or at least that was the story. But it was early on in Andy’s hitching career that something occurred that elevated him to a kind of mythical status in the annals of hitching legends. And it started with a bet. There was very little entertainment in the late 70s. There was only three TV channels. And so we made our own fun, really. I was in the pub in Liverpool one night with some friends, and we were making each pint last an hour, and we didn’t really have much money. And I’d just been the weekend before I’d hitched to a party in London and then hitched back on the Sunday, and did it all in about, it was about four hours there and four hours back. So I was sort of bragging about this, and they said, “Well, where do you reckon you could get to and back in two days?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know.” And someone said, “What about Ben Nevis?” And I said, “All right, then. Oh yeah, I could do that. I could get to Ben Nevis and back in 48 hours hitched hiking.” And they said, “Okay, off you go.” And I went, “What?” Ben Nevis, for those of you that don’t know, is the highest mountain in Great Britain. It’s located just outside of Fort William in the middle of nowhere, Scottish Highlands, about 350 miles due north from where he was sitting in the pub, sipping his pint, making it last an hour. And though Ben Nevis is only 4,400 feet high, the base is pretty close to sea level, so he’d be climbing up just about every single foot of that, and you’d have to get to the top and back in two days. It’s the sort of thing your mate might say down the pub as some far-fetched, impossible target, and everyone laughs and moves on because no one in their right mind would ever seriously conceive of hitchhiking to the top of Ben Nevis. No one, that is, apart from Andy. I was starting to get dark, and I was like, “Oh, well, I’ve got to.” So I ran up, took me three and a half hours to run up. The boys had given me a disposable camera to take pictures of me with a trig point on the top. But the top of the mountain was covered in cloud, and eventually I got to the top, and there was loads of people going back down as I was going up, and I thought, “Oh, it’s not going to be anyone up there.” And when I got to the top, there were two Canadians. They’d set off at nine o’clock that morning, and they very kindly took a picture of me and the trig point in the cloud, and then I had to hitch back. I ran back down the mountain in an hour and a half, which was very dangerous, but it was very exhilarating. And then I hitched from there to Glasgow, and then I hitched all the way down, and eventually I got to the Lake District and got to a service station there, and I thought, “I’m not going to make it.” And I walked into the canteen of the service station, stood on the chair and said, “Look, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I’ve made a bet with some friends that I can’t hitchhike to bend everything back in two days. And if anyone’s going in the Liverpool direction, I’d be very grateful.” And this young bloke sales rep said, “Yeah, I’ll take you.” I was actually at the pub an hour before the allotted time, because I’d left at 10 o’clock two evenings earlier. So I waited till five to ten and then just walked into the pub, put the camera down and collected my money. Can you imagine their faces when he charged through the door, five minutes to spare, laughing his head off, taking their money and heading to the bar? But then shortly after that epic bet, a pivotal moment in his life took place. He’d been getting deeper into acting and comedy, and he decided that that’s what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to become a comedian, and he knew to do that he would have to risk everything, leave his entire life behind and go after that dream. But first, maybe a little holiday. “There had been the riots in Liverpool, and it was a tough town to live in at that time. And I just thought, I need a change, and maybe I need to go to London to become a comic. And I thought, well, before I do that, my birthday was the 16th of June, and that was the day that England were playing France in Bilbao in Spain. So I thought, well, I’ll just go down and do that and take my time getting down there and have a bit of a beach holiday in Biarritz, which is a place that I’d read in a Scott Fitzgerald novel and like the sound of. So I just sort of headed off, really. Stopped paying rent on my flat, sold all my possessions, everything I owned, I carried in a red rucksack on my back. I had a hammock with a bit of string and a plastic sheet and a sleeping bag. That was how I slept. I would go off into the woods and put the hammock up, throw the plastic sheet over the hammock, and then get in my sleeping bag and climb into the hammock.” And so began the greatest hitchhiking adventure of Andy’s life. He’d sold everything. Everything he owned was on his back. He had a destination, Biarritz in the south of France, and then on from there to Bilbao in the World Cup. But he had no idea how he’d get there or who would take him. He caught a bus out of town to the end of the East Langs Road and put his thumb out. He didn’t know then that the journey he was about to embark on would shape the trajectory of his life forever and lead him ultimately to exactly where he needed to be. He felt free. He felt on the cusp of something important, something great. But then his first ride pulled up. “There was a rust bucket of a van pulled up. And when I came up to the side of the passenger window, they round it down and this big cloud of dope smoke poured out. And I thought, oh no, what’s this? And eventually they got me in the car and there was two lads about 18 and one of 16. They were going to an all-night rave in Stoke. And it was quite an interesting van because as they pulled off, it took them four miles to get into fourth gear. That’s how old and knackered the engine was. And then when it got to the top speed of 55 miles an hour, the bloke just reached between his legs, grabbed a breeze block and put it on the accelerator and then put his feet up on the dashboard, which is quite worrying. And then they were rolling joints in the back and oh, yeah. But they got me to Stoke and they wanted me to come and party with them. And I said, no, now I’m going to the World Cup. And they just laughed. They thought I was mad. They thought he was mad. These guys were dope smoke pouring out the car, sniffing something naughty in the backseat, putting a brick on the accelerator so the driver could put his feet up and relax as they sputtered at 55 miles an hour down the motorway. But he survived. And from then it was relatively clean sailing. From Stoke, he hitched to Oxford, got a ride from there down to Newbury. And then Portsmouth on the south coast where he missed his ferry to France by minutes. So he ended up going to visit his gran who lived nearby and he spent the next 10 hours drinking brandy and milk, a cocktail that is apparently known as a kangaroo because it looks soft, but it has a hell of a kick. He got drunk with her. They told all stories. They cried. They laughed their heads off. That’s my kind of grammar, by the way. And then eventually the brandy ran out. Gran fell asleep and Andy staggered back to the port to carry on with the adventure. So he came off that had had trouble starting his engine. That’s why he was so late coming off the boat. And there was a young French guy who had been visiting his girlfriend who was a French teacher in Salisbury. So he gave me a lift from Sherburg all the way down to Saint Lo at the bottom of that peninsula. And then we had some beers and I realized how close I was then to Laval, which is where I had a friend of mine. She was living there. So I hitched down and had lunch with them. Then I hitched from there down to Bordeaux. And I fell asleep on the last bit of that journey and woke up on the docks in Bordeaux. And it was still very industrial and there was nowhere for me to hang my hammer cup. I sort of found some long tall grass and went to sleep and woke up about three in the morning with something sat on my face. When I woke up, the sleeping bag was covered in about five or six rats, giant rats. He woke up with giant rats on his face. Beerez is known as a glamorous town, apparently not when Andy’s there. But in the weeks that followed, he did have a kind of glorious vagabond existence. Beerez in the 70s was sort of a faded jewel, really, because it was really big in the 20s and 30s after the First World War as a sort of place for the rich to go and spend their spring before they went to the south of France for the summer. So people like Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and Scott Fitzgerald used to go there. And it’s a beautiful, white, sandy beach in the Bay of Biscay. So it catches the odd storm, but it’s a good surfing beach. There’s a beautiful fishing port with a sort of rock with a Catholic shrine on it that you get to by a real-time bridge. And in those days, it was all glass bottles. There was no plastic in those days. At the end of the day, we used to go around and collect all the Coke bottles and the lemonade bottles and take them up to the supermarket. And we got 10 cents or 20 cents for each one. And so we could actually live off that. We could buy some French bread and some ham or cheese and some tomatoes or lettuce and a couple of bottles of wine for 30p of time. And then we just sit on the beach and someone would get out of a guitar and we’d sing Beatles songs and we’d tell jokes and go for midnight swims. It was a fantastic holiday, really. And it was here also that he started developing his comedy act, telling jokes and juggling for tips that would later turn into the Vicious Boys Act, which would then go on to win the street performer of the year and catapult him to become one of Britain’s most successful comedians of the 1980s. And it started there in Beeretz, desperate for some money to buy cheap wine. But the idle days of sleeping on the beach were about to end because he had a football game to get to. I got to Bilbao and managed to get hold of a ticket from a very jolly Spanish bar squad who then found out it was my birthday when I showed him my passport. And he said, “Oh, right, right.” Come on. And he kept buying me drinks and they wouldn’t let me leave the bar until five minutes before the game started. And I came out of the bar and it was opposite the entrance. And there was a massive queue of England fans waiting to get in down one wall of the ground. I walked over and just as I walked over, I couldn’t work out why they were all up against the wall so tightly, but it was because the Spanish police had electric cattle prods. And they were basically, if anyone stepped off the curb, they’d give you an electric shot. So they saw me walking down the line and one of them came towards me. And just as he was about to stab me with the cattle prod, a load of hands came out from the crowd and dragged me into the crowd. And then he actually missed me and got the guy next to me. But we all got the electric shot because we were all touching each other. And then I was right at the front of the queue and we went into the ground. And I love going to night games. Fudlights are on and you walk in and you see that green pitch from the top of the stand. And as we looked at that amazing view, Brian Robson scored the fastest goal in World Cup history at that point. 35 seconds into the game, we went on to win 3-1 in the end. And we’re just going to take a little side note here because despite the cattle prods and drunken Basque lads, that game was not even close to the craziest game of football Andy’s seen or indeed taken part in. Because just about every year Andy goes to Ashbourne in the Peak District of England, where an absolutely insane lawless game of medieval soccer is played twice a year for the last 400 years straight. And it’s called the Royal Shrove Tide Football Match. It was about 400 a side and the goals are three miles apart and you’re allowed to pick the ball up and run with it. It’s how football was played in the 1600s really. And it’s the north side of the town versus the south side of the town. So if you’re born north of the River Henmore, you play for the upwards. And if you’re born south of the River Henmore, you play for the downwards. And they throw the ball up at two o’clock and if no goal is scored by 10 o’clock at night, then the police come and take the ball away. So you play for eight hours some nights. And so one player from each team will grab hold of the ball and then two people will grab hold of them and then three people will grab hold of each of those. And then they push and pull it in different directions. And the trick is to get the ball up. And then if you get the ball up in the air and someone can bat it to the outside of the hug, which is probably about 200 people, 100 from each side pushing in different directions. If you can get it up and over the heads of those, there’s runners waiting on the edge and they’re like whippets in sort of tracksuits and running shoes. And if they get hold of the ball, they’re off. In fact, we had one this year where this guy just grabbed it and he was gone and we were chasing him. And I mean, obviously they set up defenders further out from where the hug is. And so we ran to where we thought the goal was going to be scored and it never reached us. We would have two hours going, it’s got to be soon. It’s got to be soon. And we just went to the local pub and heard on the radio that the ball was right down the other end of the village by then. You play for an hour, you have a pint. You play for an hour, you have a pint. You do that for 10 hours. There are only three rules. The hug, which is basically a kind of giant rugby scrum and has absolutely nothing to do with hugging, must not enter the churchyard or people’s back gardens. Rule two, the ball cannot be taken on any form of transport. And rule three, no murder. And though he succeeded in not getting murdered, he did get crushed against the car and passed out and he accidentally trampled someone’s roaded engines and was penalized quite severely. At the time, Ashbourne had more pups per capita than anywhere else in the country. And with the show tie football happening twice a year, it’s easy to see why. But now back to the story because at this point there’s a bit of a twist. He’s watched the match, that’s what he came for, but he wasn’t ready for the adventure to end just yet. And there was something he’d always wanted to do and he realized it was only a couple hours away and the timing was perfect. The opening ceremony was about to begin. He was going to run with the balls in Pamplona. The festival in Pamplona is called San Famine and it’s the 7th of July to the 14th every year. And the whole town dresses up in white and then they have a red bandana around their waist and a red neck chief around their necks and sometimes a red beret as well. And so everyone looks the same, it’s incredible. And they basically drink all day and all night and then at eight o’clock in the morning they run with the balls through the streets. And I read about it in The Sun Also Rises, the Hemingway book and I thought well I’ll give it a go, can’t be too hard. I later found out Hemingway never actually did it, he was too chicken to do it but there you go. I got in the run that first morning and what ham was, I got drunk didn’t I and I fell asleep on a landing and woke up to find that my passport and my money and my camera and everything had been stolen. And I realized then that I’d have to stay another day so I borrowed some oranges and and bussed in the street and made quite a bit of money. But then the following morning I actually did my first run. I’ve done 61 runs now and that was probably the least frightening because I didn’t really know what was going to happen. Knowing what I know now I probably wouldn’t have done some of the things I did. You get in the run at seven o’clock then you have to stand in front of the town hall and wait till eight o’clock. So it’s quite a stressful situation because you’re about to face death and you’re standing with a thousand other people who are about to face death and most of them are sobering up very quickly and wishing they hadn’t had that last brandy. And then a rocket goes off to let you know the balls have been released and then you wait to hear the second rocket because that means that the last balls left the corral and you want them to be close together. You don’t want the balls spread out. You want them all in a pack and then you start running and most of the time you’re running with your hand on the guy in front’s back. The balls pass me in Telefonica which is a slightly wider bit of the run just before the ball ring and then you go down a steep slope into a dark tunnel under the stadium and into the ring and then the balls are taken out the other side and and then I thought well that’s it and then they let these young balls into the ring called it’s the Enciro. They let these year and a half old fighting balls into the ring. They’ve got leather padding on the horns so they can’t gaw you. I’ve seen a few people get knocked out with hooves that have been kicked in the head. In fact I got hit one year by one of the young balls. They let two in at once and I was watching my friend Angelo being chased by one ball laughing my head off and someone shouted Andy and as I turned around this ball hit me. Luckily the horn went either side of me but I was sort of laying along its back with a leg over each of its eyes so it couldn’t really see where it was going and it was really weird because I heard 25,000 people all go at the same time which is one of the most frightening noises in the world and the ball as it got to the safety fence I lifted one of my legs over its eye to sort of slide down the side and it saw the safety fence and it planted its front foot and tossed me about 12 foot in the air. It threw me a high than the most ceilings you know I was like I was just hanging in the air just thinking what is going on why am I doing this but the adrenaline you do it for the adrenaline rush after a bull run the sky is so much bluer the wine tastes so much better and everything seems much rosier and you know you’ve survived. I’ve seen two deaths in the time that I’ve been running one in 95 and one in 2010 and you don’t want to see them it’s horrible. The 95 guy was a guy from Eichler-Hainreich the horn went into his stomach and up through his lungs and into his heart and he was dead instantly. I’m assuming after hearing that you’re not Russian down to Pamplona and it’s worth mentioning that although human deaths are rare, bull deaths are not and that’s something you should consider before taking part two. It’s an ancient tradition, it’s an important part of their culture and I do believe that we shouldn’t necessarily judge all cultures on our own values but it is also pretty brutal too and though it is on many adrenaline junkies bucket lists it’s also rightly on many animal rights activist lists too but if you are considering it if it is on your bucket list then here’s Andy’s tips for surviving the bull run. Stay on the inside of the curves because the bulls go wide. If you want to get out of the run don’t go over the safety fence, hit the ground and roll underneath because if you try and go over the Spanish police to just wrap you on the knuckles with their batons and push you back in because you’re a danger to the other runners and also if you go down stay down cover your head and don’t move until the bulls have passed. You can hear the hoofbeats through the cobblestones as they get closer and then there’s this silence as they jump you. If you’re perfectly still they will jump you. You can hear the hoofbeats through the cobblestones as the bulls get closer. You have to lie still so they jump over you. Oh my god and he’s talking from experience and if you don’t fancy the bulls but you do fancy some hitchhiking well Andy has some tips for that too. I’d say be polite and always put where you want to get to eventually on your sign so that people know that they’re moving you in the right direction and just be nice you know. I used to take a packet of toffees or peanut brittle or something like that and then I’d offer them some sweets just to say thank you really. Every one of those people that stopped and picked me up took me further on my road in life and they all helped me or all gave me something even if it was just the movement from one place to another. Just stay open to experience and open to people. We’ve all got to sort of be more understanding of each other and try and get on a bit better. That’s that’s what I’d say. And perhaps that’s the biggest lesson of the more than 72,000 miles hitchhiking that Andy has done in his life. Stay open to experience, open to people. Hitchhiking is different Andy says these days in that back then there were no smartphones and digital radio and podcasts. People wanted company and aside from a couple of speedo clad drivers and big breasted truckers they were mostly just normal people helping out a stranger and that’s the thing. The world is a friendlier place than it’s made out to be. Keep your wits about you don’t be stupid and don’t accept lifts to the council of the universe whatever you do but do be open because the world is a mirror. It reflects our judgments and fears and small-mindedness back at us. That perhaps more than anything else is Andy’s lesson. See the good in the world and the good of the world will look back at you too and if you’re lucky and you stick your thumb out it might just take you for a hell of a ride. Thank you Andy thanks for taking us on this adventure today. His book is called A Hitch in Time you can get it anywhere and you can connect with Andy directly on twitter as well. His handle is at AndyCSP. If you enjoyed this episode please consider supporting it by buying me a pint for the cost of a single pint you will get ad-free shows membership to our explorers community and exclusive travel vouchers delivered direct to your inbox. The sign-up link is in the show notes on the website armchair-explorer.com or you can go to patreon.com forward slash armchair explorer podcast. Caleb Linville did the sound editing for this episode thank you to him his podcast is called novel check that out it’s awesome and thank you most importantly to all of you for listening and helping to spread this message our message of love for the outdoors living life to the full and celebrating the pure joy of exploring this amazing planet and that’s important because the more we look for wonder in the world the more the wonder of the world becomes a part of who we are. Dare to be truly alive.

*This episode was recorded before the passing of Andy Smart on May 16, 2023. Andy was a brilliant comedian, storyteller, and friend to many. It’s an honor to share this conversation and remember the joy he brought to the world.*

Between 1977 and 1982 comedian Andy Smart hitchhiked 72,000 miles across Europe – the equivalent of crossing America coast-to-coast 24 times. This is the story of his greatest ride ever.

At 20-years of age Andy sold everything he owned and left his home in Liverpool to move to London and pursue his dream of becoming a comedian. But before he did, he had one hitch, one last great adventure, left. It was the World Cup and England were playing France in Bilbao, Spain on his birthday. He planned to hitchhike through UK, down the length of France and into Spain to watch the game. 

It wouldn’t be easy. He carried a hammock, a piece of tarpaulin and some string to sleep by the side of the road. He had a small backpack, hardly any money and barely more than a change of clothes. But as he stood on the East Lancs Road on the edge of Liverpool, thumb out waiting for his first lift he knew, somehow, that this was a pivotal moment, that his life would never be the same again. He was right, but he never could have anticipated what a wild ride it would be. 

Highlights include:
·    Hear about one of the greatest hitchhiking adventures of all time
·    Catch a ride to the Council of the Universe (well, sort of …)
·    Take part in an insanely violent game of medieval soccer 
·    Run for your life in the festival of San Fermino

Let’s Hang out
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