A common sight on Britain's roads 20 years ago, hitch-hikers have now become a rare breed. Paul Willis becomes acquainted with the rule of thumb.

THE start of the M1 is a bleak and uninspiring place. You take the tube to north London and get off in Hendon, a nondescript commuter town swallowed up by the urban sprawl of the capital. From the station there is a half-hour walk through suburbia to the beginning of that great artery to the North.

I am trying to get home to the North-East and I've decided to hitch-hike. I trudge through sleepy Hendon, my heavy rucksack slowing my progress, and make my way down a long trunk road leading to a roundabout where I turn left towards the motorway.

When I reach the slip road, I am the only hitch-hiker there. I don't know whether to be happy, because I have no one to compete with for the attention of the many drivers which go whizzing by, or anxious, that I am alone in my half-baked scheme to get home.

I find what I think is a good spot on the slip road - far enough along so that motorists will see you a few seconds before they reach you, giving them time to make the decision to stop or not, but not so far they have no space to pull over before they reach the motorway. I put down my bag and take out my piece of card with LEEDS (M1) scrawled in black marker across it, and I wait.

Three-quarters of an hour later I am still waiting. Car after car passes me; I see the drivers scrutinising me as they pull away. Some cars with groups of lads in wave and put their thumbs up half jokingly, half jeeringly; a lorry driver shrugs his shoulders in apology. But no one stops.

It is a fact that people don't hitch-hike much today. Although I am too young to bear witness to it myself, I have it on good authority that hitch-hikers were a common sight on the highways and byways of Britain 20 years ago. But they have become an increasingly rare breed. At the same time, motorists' reluctance to share their car with a hitcher has grown so that, while the number of cars on the roads goes up all the time, the percentage of the people driving who are prepared to take a chance on a stranger, goes down.

Both my parents hitch-hiked when they were younger; most weekends, so they tell me. It was neither unusual nor considered overly dangerous - my mum thumbed her way down to London with a friend when she was 19. Yet both of them admit that they would be unlikely to pick anyone up today.

All this, of course, is part of a broader sentiment, that our society has become a more dangerous place. Reports in the press remind us every day about the risks of venturing outdoors. And, while the pleasant-looking young man holding up the sign for Leeds is probably perfectly safe, there's always the slight possibility he's a deranged psychopath on the run from a secure unit... so why take the chance?

The pleasant-looking young man, in this case, is perfectly safe and, after nearly an hour of standing idly at the roadside, I get my first lift from a couple of workmen in a van going home from a job in London.

We chat for a while and then the conversation dries up as we hit tailbacks from an overturned lorry somewhere not far north of Luton. We spend a few hours being lulled into apathy by the docile tones of local radio and, by mid-afternoon, my workmen buddies are wishing me luck as they let me down at a service station just short of Nottingham.

The fear surrounding picking up hitchhikers is a fairly recent phenomenon and has little basis in hard fact. Despite the occasional high-profile case - for example, the murder last year of the English backpacker in Australia and the subsequent investigation to find the man he gave a lift to - it is rare to hear of crime perpetrated by or against hitch-hikers. None of the people I have spoken to about this and who tell me hitch-hiking is dangerous, could give me any examples.

Speaking to local haulage firms, I found that, almost unanimously, there is a policy against giving lifts to people. This is partly for insurance purposes but also, as one local haulier confided, it is because "you don't know who you might be letting into your cab".

Mass media representations are probably to blame for society's suspicion of the lift-thumbing hobo. Hollywood films like The Hitcher, a thriller from the mid-1980s with Rutger Hauer as a psychopathic hitch-hiker, mythologised the stranger at the roadside as a demonic figure bent on murder and mayhem.

It is sad that these kind of fictionalised stereotypes still exist because the benefits of hitch-hiking go far beyond simple economic advantage - although the cost of public transport in this country seems reason enough for any would-be traveller to take to the roads with thumb uplifted.

There is something exciting and liberating about standing at a roadside waiting to go to wherever. And what hitching lacks in comfort and convenience, it more than makes up for in adventure, something most of us could do with a lot more of. It is a strange irony that, while on our cinema and television screens we seek bigger and bigger thrills, in our own lives the potential sources of adventure have been reduced to the routine.

In our world of deadlines and meetings, journeys, which used to be such rich sources of adventure and romance, are purely a question of getting from A to B. Seeing the images of angry Brit holiday-makers stuck in delays at airports every summer, gives the impression that travel has become simply an inconvenience between two destinations. And looking at the tailbacks which blight the M25 almost every day, it's hard to imagine that 700 years ago Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the classics of English literature based on a journey from London to Canterbury.

My own journey back to Teesside continues as I cadge a lift from a lorry driver called Baz who treats me to the 'Trucker's Tale'. I have barely hoisted myself up into his cab and he launches into a speech about what's wrong with our country and what needs to be done about it. He hardly draws breath for the next two hours, but it doesn't matter because he's going nearly to Scotch Corner and, by this time, I'm having a ball.

The relationship between the lift-giver and the lift-taker is fleeting and, perhaps because of this, you can afford to let your guard down. You're not going to be judged by this person, well not for long anyway. It is ironic that hitchhiking, which so many are mistrustful of, actually breaks down barriers.

So I find myself listening carefully as Baz talks candidly about a family bereavement which has caused him much personal grief. I leave Baz reluctantly at the turn-off for the A19 and I am lucky enough to be picked up after only a few minutes by a friendly bloke who is heading all the way home. We chat about mutual acquaintances and when we reach my town he's good enough to drop at my front door.

It's about seven in the evening. The journey from London to Teesside has taken the best part of ten hours, door-to-door. If I'd taken the train, it would have been three hours, a coach takes five to six, depending on traffic. I could have been home in half the time, but it wouldn't have been half so enjoyable.