The Hitchhikers Guide to Our Truck
(Travels with Stephen Belt Antiques and Shipping) email: belties@btinternet.com
My husband/triathlon coach Stephen, is by profession a fourth
generation antiques dealer. His family ran a shop in Kingston-Upon-Thames,
Surrey. Steve was born and brought up there.
As soon as he could after leaving school he bought himself a truck and started
doing deliveries around the UK
and Europe as well as buying and selling
antiques along the way. The Antiques business was good in those early days and Steve
soon found American clients and started couriering them around and then packing
the furniture they bought into 40’ containers and that business did well.
When Steve and I first became an item I worked with him as
he bought goods for clients and then I wrapped the antiques and Steve and a
work colleague packed the containers. At eighty years old I still do some work
within the business but mainly in the office now, typing up manifests and
making email and phone contact with clients and business associates. I gave up
heavy lifting a number of years ago, though I am sure it accounts for some of
my strength in my sport. I should explain the Stephen is eleven years my junior
and is still doing the container work and travelling to Europe with delivery’s
and working with clients as he presently is; in France working at the three major
antiques fairs in the South.
When he left home on Wednesday afternoon this week he went
to pick up the guy that would be helping him with the work during what is
always about a ten day trip. Michael Harris, who we have known for many years
and is in the delivery business himself. Very pleasant man who is very willing
and helpful read to turn his hand to whatever needs to be done.
So that night they were booked into the Ibis Hotel in
Coquelles, Calais
right by the huge shopping centre there. Steve uses that hotel often as a start
or finish point, since it is also very close to the Channel Tunnel point. The
advantages are that he can park the truck against a wall so that it is
impossible the break into. There is high security fence around the car park at
the Hotel Ibis and we have noticed that it also is used by the police to park
vans and patrol cars, so one would think that it was an all round nice safe and
secure place.
When Michael and Steve started their journey toward Burgundy
the next morning they were not very far along the motorway when they started to
hear shouts and screams coming from somewhere behind them. The first thought
was that immigrants had got into the truck which is a massive problem when
working in the close ports to the UK; except as Steve reminded Michael that he
had parked against a wall so that could not be.
Anyway as soon as there was a safe place to pull in to take
a look they discovered that there was a large man securely roped in UNDERNEATH
the truck, tied in suspended above the prop shaft!
Michael showing how difficult it would have been for the stowaway.
Can you imagine what could have happened if the man and prop
shaft slipped together?
However once they stopped, the man quickly unbound himself.
He crawled out from under the truck apparently unharmed but shaken. Steve and
Michael did not attempt to hold the man and he quickly gathered his wits and
ran off as fast as his legs would carry him.
Now if he had been noticed under the truck as they sped
along the motorway and the situation was seen and reported by anybody, Steve would
have been arrested and held and later, hugely fined. The driver is held
responsible and accused of carrying immigrants for profit.
Although we do all feel for people trying to find a better
life in the UK
from whatever horrible life they had suffered that had forced them along a new
road. It is still a nasty shock for the poor driver who makes the discovery,
because one never knows if they are carrying a weapon of course.
In this case the man’s screams were not totally because he
realised the danger he was in but maybe more that he saw that this truck was not
just about to get on the shuttle train through the tunnel under the English
Channel to a new life, but on the contrary it was heading South, away
from the escape route under the sea. Probably at least ten miles away from the
channel port at Calais.
Not long ago, only weeks, I was with my husband on drive
toward Hanover.
We stopped briefly in a lay-by having just disembarked from the Shuttle. Steve
didn’t even turn off the engine because we only wanted to start our new Audible
book and check the Sat-Nav. On that occasion we felt a shaking where we were inside
the cab and Steve realised it was people trying to get in the truck from the
back. As he went to get out, he was faced by a man reaching for the truck door
handle.
Thankfully with the truck still running, Steve was able to
pull away very quickly before there was any trouble and the people were left
behind in the lay-by. These are no, once in a life time, experiences but are
happening all the time now. We just thank heaven, that on these two occasions,
nobody was hurt but these people are desperate, that’s for sure. They are not
peaceful hitch hikers, they are trying to most aggressively find a way into the
UK.
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