The Loneliest Hobo

Book excerpt: Having made a fruitless search for some friends in the upmost western part of Cornwall I was left with financial difficulty in getting back to Birmingham. I had already been walking about the English countryside since April and it was now October. I was in no real rush to get back home immediately and I fancied a bit of a stroll anyway. This stroll took me over a month to complete, and as the chilly autumn became a very cold winter I realised that living the life of a hobo wasn't as easy as one may think. The only only items on my person that kept me going through the seven weeks or so was a hot water bottle, a single calor gas stove and my radio. But there were times when even those life savers ran out of their respective fuels, and soon depression, hunger and eventual thieving, took priority for my needs. This is the story of my 250 mile walk home to Birmingham from St. Ives, Cornwall, in the autumn of 1990.