h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Hitch hiking through France and Spain - A2514296
Author: Erklehammerdrat - U240824

i have just been hitch hiking and thought i would spead the word about this amazing form of transport

Interesting entry. I'm not sure what we already have on hitch hiking generally, but there may be some overlap.

You might want to add:

Paris is notoriously difficult to leave.

As with hitchhiking anywhere, once it gets dark, it's very difficult to get a lift. Leave yourself plenty of time to find somewhere to spend a night.

The minor roads you refer to as being the best are 'route nationale' in France, I'm guessing, so the equivalent of A roads here. On the really minor roads you wouldn't get anywhere fast.

Finally, reinforce the safety section - just because someone stops, doesn't mean you have to get in. You can always pretend they're not going far enough/right direction. You have to go with your common sense on this.

sprout

thanks for the tips
i will add them in
i am notoriously bad at taking heed of any safty but i can understand other peoples concerns

one thing, how do i put in those nice big yellow titles??

Duct tape??? What do you need duct tape for?

Check out EG entry A225866 on Hitchhiking. Also do a search on hitchhiking and hitchhikers to see what else is in h2g2 on this subject: there are a lot of references but I've not checked them all.

Also it'ld be worth your while having a look at the guidelines for writing for the Edited Guide on A53209 which will link you to GuideML help - for headers in particular which would really improve the look of your entry.

As for the content - it looks great! Good start

At the moment, the entry could be about hitchhiking anywhere though. Is there any way you can make it specific to France and Spain; by mentioning particularly good places to hitch from and to - or particularly bad ones? How long does it take to get from one place to another? (I know, it depends on how many lifts.)


Fb

help me!
ive tried doing the sophisticated job of GuideML and when i preview the entry it looks fine but when i update the entry it doesn't work but just shows the syntax! what do i do?

Have you clicked on the button to change from plain text to guide ML - if yes, it might be a problem with browser caching - maybe pressing refresh might do it?

sprout

oh and you'll always find uses for duct for instance sealing packets of biscuits and tea, mending waterproofs, handcuffing dodgy drivers the usual you know

oh and thanks frenchbean for the compliment. this is my first entry so i hope it does well

The entry is in text only - so this needs to be change to Guide ML for the entry to be interpreted.

I'm afraid the 'I' references will need to be removed. Most guide entries are non-personal.

Hitching in Spain - it is worth mentioning that in Southern Spain the traditional "thumbs up" signal has a different meaning, and hitching is usually done by waving your hand flat by the side of the road.

I see your point McKay The Disorganised, so i have changed some references from "I hitch hiked for five days" to "expect to hitchhike for five days". However there are a lot references where it is hard to generalise. Hitchhiking is after all very unpredictable, so its hard to say what to expect. The best part of hitch hiking are those instances that are unique to you personally, and thats what i'm trying to get across. Out of ten other hitchhikers that did a very similar route, we all had completely different stories, and those quirky situations are what makes a brilliant hitchhike.
If i generalise too much, it will only come across as dull.

Also in Spain we never used the movement you refer to and we still got picked up frequently

aha! i was being a bit stupid failing to get GuideML to work but its all sorted now and i think the article is almost complete!

Hi Erklehammerdrat

that looks much better with headings. Well done!

But you still have a lot of 'I' references, which all need to be changed to non-personal references I'm afraid.

Overall, looking good...Remember to check out those other entries in h2g2 about hitchhiking and make a link to the Edited Guide entry if you think it's appropriate.

Keep working at it. The purpose of Peer Review is to help you polish your entry so that it's good enough to be picked for the Edited Guide. Everybody here has been through it and learnt the hard way how to get entries looking good. So don't be disappointed if people keep coming back and making comments: we're here to help!


Fb

What! keep working at it! I'm content with it at the moment and i stand by my previous argument that hitchhiking is a speacial case where the experience is very unique and unpredicable. Therefore making no "i" references would make the entry sound just like a long and dull car journey. come on guys, theres no need to be so pedantic! I've corrected most typos now and i have deleted two more "I" references but i really dont want to delete any more without the entry losing what was speacial about the journey to me. I dont want to sound obstinate but i think i have made enough changes. can i leave it as it is now. pleeeeeeaaaase
(damn can't do smileys but imagine a nice friendly smiley face here)

It's a great entry as it is and a marvellous part of the unedited part of the Guide, but I'm afraid to get into the Edited Guide the last few 'I's will have to go - it's for future-proofing, you see. The reason the first-person references thing is there in point 12 of the Writing-Guidelines is because it sometimes happens that an Edited Guide entry will be updated by someone else at a later date - and if there's more than one researcher listed as 'author', then if the entry says 'I' it gets a little confusing.

However, all is not lost I reckon there are ways of getting round the problem of losing those last few 'I's without losing the flavour of the entry.

There's a handy trick that you can use to include personal opinion - quote from yourself in a blockquote. Like...

One researcher reports:
I myself hitchhiked all the way through France and Spain from England ending up in Morocco. To get an idea of what to expect, on my hitch I got thirteen lifts in total that included two lorries, a funny Volkswagen type van and the rest being cars, one of which was a learner driver.

The next one isn't too bad to get rid of, I think - you could change it to "Recommended places for stopping include Jerez in the south of Spain, Bayonne in the south west of France and Granada in the south of Spain, which is reportedly a relaxed place to be and meet other travellers."

Again, you can do the one researcher reports trick for Is it safe?

There may be some talk around that hitch hiking is dangerous, but within Europe this is generally untrue if you act sensibly. One researcher reports:

I knew more than ten other hitchhikers doing a similar route whom all got lifts from people that were fine. If you feel unsure about anyone that stops, you can always turn down the lift by pretending that he isn't going in your desired direction.

Next one is also relatively painless, how about "Hitchhiking in a lrage group isn't necessarily impossible, for example it's not unknown for a group of five ti make it all the way from England to Barcelona - despite being philosophy students! Generally three people or less is the best group size."

How long do I wait for? - again, I think the blockquote trick would be good here.

In Spain expect the average waiting time to be around half an hour, as the people are friendly and will take you quite far. In France the waiting time may be a bit longer, although it usually depends on where you are and how lucky you are. If you are in a small group and after four hours you don’t have a lift you have probably got the wrong road.
One researcher reports:
The worst wait was in the middle of France where we had to hang around for two hours for a lift, and when at last some local picked us up he seemed happy to dump us only five kilometres down the road on his way to the tabac. Aaarg!

I think that's all the first-person references sorted, although I might have missed a couple. But d'you think doing it this way would be too bad?



Cheers,
Number Six

Thanks number six
but i am not too fussed about getting the entry into the edited guide. So i think i will leave it as it is in the unedited guide if i can do that. thanks for the hints but personally i think those changes would break up the flow of the entry.
erkle

OK, you can do that, but in that case you need to remove this from Peer Review, as PR is for articles that are intended for the edited guide.

Or you could maybe put it into AWW as a personal piece for the UG, except that it will look a little strange there as it is so nearly ready for the EG...

sprout

No worries then erkle - sometimes the straitjacket of the Writing-Guidelines is too much for a geographical entry to be able to cope with without losing all its flavour.

A couple of suggestions:
As you've opted not to go for the Edited Guide, please could you take it out of Peer Review? Saves us Scouts a job, and if you're not sure how, you can find out here on Z's handy help page - A849189 (How to remove an Entry from Peer Review).
You might like to submit it to the good folk at <./>ThePost</.> - is h2g2's own newspaper, published weekly and might be a nice way of getting this article something of an audience.
And why not come and join us over at A1286886? We could certainly use a few more researchers like you.



Cheers,
Number Six