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thetravellingvagrant · 5 years

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Day 1: Glasgow-London - In Which I Ride Three Too Many Buses

I was awake before my ludicrously early alarm even had a chance to punch my ears in all to buggery with its obnoxiously soothing little wake-up ditty. Sam had – rather selfishly I felt – had a flare up of hay fever symptoms in the night and subsequentially had honked both her and myself awake a fairly generous length of time before we were supposed to be.

Desperately trying not to go into a grump before even the Pre-Vagrancy had properly begun, I decided to think of my premature arousal as me having beaten my alarm by a clear twenty minutes (which is actually loads. Step you game up, alarm, you fucking loser) and hoisted myself into a no less bleary eyed but now substantially more vertical mess of hair and unhappiness.

Thanks to Sam's...enthusiasm for over-preparation (which some people more calloused than I might describe as withering anality, but not me, because I'm a good and supportive boyfriend and not one of you has the stones to say otherwise) we left her flat with an unnecessarily long time buffer to play with before our Megabus to London was due to depart at 7:00am. At the very least it did seem that travelling with Sam would be a pretty effective prophylactic against the first-day-curse.

And so, after a quick detour to take some bin-bags out, we were officially ready for adventure

To Adventure! (Not pictured: Peru)

We made the brief journey to Hyndland train station, literally screaming with laughter over how much time we had to spare, though as we began our ascent to the platform, Sam stopped in her tracks. To be honest, I thought she was ironically killing time, because we had so much of it to spare that she felt entirely comfortable making a mockery of it on a conceptual level. I was, however, as the sharper readers out there may already have figured out, wrong about that.

“...I've forgotten my lunch”

I blinked and sighed. I slinked, or blighed- whichever one reads better in text (slinked I think...)- and, without speaking, spun on my heels and headed back flatwards, annoyed to have to backtrack carrying the heavy backpack that I was, but also quietly vindicated that we didn't get up early for no good reason and secretly overjoyed to have not been the first one of us to have fucked up in any sort of significant way.

Sam hopped back up to her flat to collect her food while I sat outside, pretending to be okay with the situation. A few minutes later, she reappeared, visibly distressed.

“I can't find it!”

...It was a bright orange Sainsbury's carrier bag, which- owing to the fact that she had definitely had it in her hands moments before leaving- would presumably have been placed in a very noticeable location. How on earth could she not find it? Slinking again, I stood up to venture inside for a poke around of my own. As I did, however, a thought hit me.

“Did you...” I mused, “Did you, uh...when we took the bins out...” I motioned to the trash can, by which I was sitting. A moment passed. Sam Slinked, except without the sighing part – if only they had a word for that – and without speaking, lifted the huge, perforated, leaking bag of trash from the bin into which she had placed it minutes earlier, rooted around a little and with an almost exactly equal mixture of triumph and defeat, which I have never seen before and venture that I never will again, hoisted her bright orange Sainsbury's bag full of food from its stinking tomb. It seemed that Sam would be instrumental in my avoiding the first day curse, after all. By transferring it all to herself instead. To be honest, I was still fine with that, being the supportive and good boyfriend that I absolutely am.

With one train now missed, but still ample(-ish) time, we boarded the next available one, trash meal in hand (Sam's hand, that is- I want to stress that my food did not go in a bin) and finally, were away, but like, for real this time.

We proceeded to Buchanan bus station with ease, being the seasoned travellers that we both undeniably are- and found ourselves eagerly awaiting out cramped, uncomfortable carriage to London a full 17 minutes before it was due to depart. Smashed it, lad.

It was hot. Even at 7am the heat was unpleasant and irritating. This, compounded by our lack of sleep, heavy bags and our being surrounded by irritating and unpleasant Megabus passengers meant that grumpiness was very much the order of the day.

We waited in as orderly a queue as I think it is possible to do while waiting for a Megabus as our poverty-chariot sat idling for 20 minutes beyond its scheduled departure time. While the rest of us witless dullards waited in what was very clearly the correct (and only) queue, however, a couple, who I can really only describe as fat Nikki Sixx (a phrase I have stolen wholesale, from a friend, but will not be crediting) and his child bride defied this most basic piece of bus-etiquette like the true mavericks they were and began a second, auxiliary queue, slightly round the corner from us, in which they were the premiere members.

The rest of us, being British and therefore spineless in the face of low-level conflict remained quiet and privately seethed over the sheer gall of this undeniably brazen act. Finally, however, we were allowed to board and Fat Nikki Sixx and his jailbait queen were summarily informed by the stout, smelly driver to join the very back of the actual queue. A hero's move and one that was met with an audible cheer from the crowd. Or rather, one person in the crowd. Sam. It was Sam. Boy she hated those people. With that little victory in our pockets, we took the available seats least likely to make Sam vomit into a carrier bag during the journey and were finally London-bound.

Our first bus journey of the day was remarkably uneventful- Aside from a young woman managing to lock herself in the bus toilet and screaming at the top of her lungs “HELP. HELP, I'M TRAPPED IN THE TOILET” before managing to unlock the door for herself, literally seconds later- an episode which I missed due to having headphones in, but am told by Sam, was very funny, not much of any note happened at all. No drunk Scottish person being ejected at Preston despite the fact it was still before 10am, no African woman who had booked a ticket for the wrong day, though still inexplicably expected to be allowed on board. Nothing. I listened to podcasts and watched films for the duration and Sam ate her bag of trash like a little raccoon and that was it.

We soon arrived in London and upon stepping foot of the bus, immediately realised how good its air conditioning had been. It was literally like opening an oven door. While on fire. That bit was a little less literal. It was very hot though; something like 34 degrees, which, if you're interested was actually 3 degrees hotter than the Amazon rain-forest was, that day.

We lugged our shit from Victoria coach station to the nearby Sainsbury's for the evening's rations and a little ice-lolly and back to the station to catch our second bus of the day, to Gatwick Airport. This round-trip took less than twenty minutes, but was enough to reduce me to the most disgusting, sweatiest, unhappiest mess I have ever been (and people who know me will tell you, that is an incredibly low bar for me to have to limbo under). If I had even a little moisture left in my body, I would definitely have been weeping it out.

Pictured: A happy, dry man.

An agonisingly uncomfortable 25 minutes later, though, and we were aboard bus number 2, literally (not literally) flying towards Gatwick. The AC on this bus – and I know this is a boring thing to write about. Write your own sweet travel blog if you don't like it – was truly top notch,. I honestly felt the majority of the journey feeling a little chilly, if anything. I could probably quite comfortably have put a hoodie on. I didn't; that would have been ludicrous, obviously, but I could have. I stress again, start your own travel blog if you don't like this bit.

After a lot longer than you would expect it would take to drive to an airport with the name of the city you are currently in, in its own name, we arrived; tired, bedraggled and in desperate need of dinner and a sleep. We stepped back into the unpleasant idiot-furnace that was the world outside and headed towards our final bus of the day: the airport shuttle to our travelodge.

We (I) found the right stop and waited in the blazing, horrible heat. After a brief interlude in which Sam, who can be...a bit stressy, insisted we get on the wrong bus because it was there and she didn't want to miss it, despite it going to the wrong Travelodge, we boarded the /correct/ bus and undertook the arduous four minute journey which cost us both that many pounds per ticket, which obviously I was utterly thrilled over, because I hate money and always wish I had less of it,

Now, utterly befuckled on a frankly cosmic level, we dragged ourselves through the doors of the lodge, to the horrified gasps of the other guests. Fifteen hours after we had started and around a stone lighter each in sweat, we had arrived. I don't think anyone has ever been as pleased to step foot inside a travelodge as I was at that point and honestly? I don't think anyone ever will be, again. I was so happy that I nearly didn't even care about how much that fucking shuttle bus had cost and everything.

Any notion of pride or class entirely gone, now (a slightly bigger drop for Sam than for me), we did what apparently just comes naturally to vagrants and sat, in bed, in our pants, eating sandwiches in bed , while watching absolute garbage on a woefully underspecced laptop. At least it seemed like that bit would be the same as travelling alone.

#travelling #vagrant #south #america #south america #peru #lima #cusco #iquitos #rain #forest #rainforest #heat #london #sweating #gatwick #bus #unhappy #please god let it end

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