ToFeelAlive, hear hear! :)
tony_b, returning to your earlier post:
A lot of cars crossing the Channel contained holiday-makers and all their luggage. Were they going to try to fit you in? Like hell they were.
Perhaps this is a problem with certain holiday-makers? I got a lift from Jabbeke to Antwerpen in a small car with two adults, a baby and a pram in the back - I had to squeeze myself in, but they were happy to take me.
Lorry drivers found carrying an illegal immigrant can be fined heavily and have their lorry confiscated.
False. The driver on the way back told me he had somebody once climb into a container of his lorry. The "parasite" was detected at the customs and arrested. The driver went straight to England with almost no questions asked (since he didn't know the person and didn't even touch him).
Also, nothing stops you from showing your passport to reassure the driver you will be all right crossing the border.
Hitchhiking is now far less common than before and hitchhikers are now often viewed with suspicion whereas before it was commonplace.
This is exactly why I do it and recommend that others do it - people are getting more and more suspicious irrationally, and we need to try to change the attitude of the society to it.
On the off-side note, think how much the society changed in the last 15-20 years...
(Start of off-topic)
I did not grow up in England (I came here when I was 16), so I don't know what your childhood and childhoods of people of my age were like here. I grew up on post-USSR land in the 1990s - poverty, crime and chaos in a lot of places.
:: My parents worked full-time, and I often (from the age of 7 or so) was at home alone in the afternoons/evenings/nights. And my neighbours did not call the social services because "I wasn't in due care".
:: Mobile phones did not exist, and nobody knew where we were on the street - we could go wandering around the city in the morning and return late evening, having seen the sunset from roofs of 16-storey blocks-of-flats. And somehow we all knew we would be fine, and we were! And our parents were fine with it too.
:: We were enjoying life outside, meeting new good and bad people, and learning from experience. Sometimes we played a Russian clone of an 8-bit Nintendo but quickly got bored. We did not get stuck in front of TV screens watching Teletubbies 24/7 unlike the children of today, whose parents are sure that their offspring would get killed within the first few minutes out on the street.
(End of off-topic)
As for hitching at Belgian service areas such as Jabekke, the same issues arise as I set out in my second paragraph. It also assumes that people can get to Jabekke village in the first place in order to walk to the service area. Just because you can locate a place on a map doesn't make it easy to get to. Jabekke isn't the easiest place to get to - one look at the map will tell you that. It might be easy for a Flemish-speaking Belgian who knows the area well or can maybe take a short bus ride there. For a non-Belgian? Fill in that gap.
I am surprised you say that, since you have a lot of experience hitching over Europe.
Point one - I would be surprised if you can find somebody in that area who does not speak English. I travelled around Belgium and Holland for 6 days without a problem, only knowing that "Rijdt u naar/richting België?" means "Are you going to Belgium?"
Point two - why would you want to get to Jabbeke services via Jabbeke village? The service station is located along the motorway, which is the main road between Northern Europe (Poland, Germany, Belgium, Holland) and French ports. It is therefore extremely easy to get a ride and ask to be dropped off at Jabbeke.
I hope all gaps have been filled by now. If not, feel free to get back to me.
Also, if you see a hitch-hiker one day on a motorway service station, try giving him a lift and asking him about his best experiences - I hope you will be pleasantly surprised :)