Hitchhiker who planned three-week UK holiday ends up on odyssey through Africa where she spent just £16 on travel

A 26-year-old whose three-week UK holiday turned into a year-long hitchhiking trip said she spent less than £16 on transport crossing the length of Africa.

Courtney Allan, 26, hitchhiked from the tip of Morocco to Cape Town in South Africa, spending less than 20 US dollars on transport, in what she called an “intimate” and “beautiful” experience.

She told PA Real Life: “It was eye-opening. It completely changed how I see the continent, and when I think of who I am now, it’s an exponential growth from who I was then. It was a beautiful trip.”

While some might worry about safety when hitchhiking, Courtney said “nothing bad happened” and the trip would have been impossible without the much-maligned mode of travel.

“There’s zero chance I would have been able to afford this trip otherwise,” she said.

“My budget would have gone up by thousands if I had been paying for transport.”

Finding UK transport expensive, she decided to hitchhike from Bath to Wales and never looked back.

“My first lift was with a Welsh woman,” Courtney said.

“She was so bubbly and she tried to give me money. That happened a lot in the UK!”

Courtney then hitched into Wales, through Cardiff and up to Snowdonia, then took the ferry to Ireland and hitchhiked extensively there, before heading to mainland Europe. In Spain she met Timo de Jong who was hitchhiking from Southampton to South Africa.

“I was scared and looking back I was very North American about the whole thing to begin with, but I realised that people are just people wherever you are,” she said.

“Anyone can travel through Africa with lots of money but you’re in a bubble.

“When you’re hitchhiking, you’re with the people that live in that country. You get a much more intimate experience.”

Courtney first found herself hitchhiking in her home country of Canada.

“It’s such a good way to meet local people and get the best things to do in a place. This isn’t the stuff you see on TripAdvisor,” she said.

In Africa, she began in Morocco and travelled south through 16 countries until she reached Cape Town almost a year later.

In that time she amassed nearly 25,000 Instagram followers and spent less than 20 dollars on transport, more than half of which was for a single ferry across a river.

“People always say, ‘Oh, what’s the worst thing that happened?’ or ‘Did you get hurt?’, but there was nothing bad at all,” she said, adding that occasionally people made inappropriate comments, but these never made her feel in danger.

Courtney admitted it helped travelling with a man, but she was eager to encourage other women to enjoy the benefits of travel.

“Women are often scared of going out into the world because of the risks,” she said.

Courtney’s highlight of the trip was a train ride in Mauritania. She said: “I don’t know if you’d call it hitchhiking, it was more train hopping, but we rode 200km into the Sahara Desert under the stars. The skyline was incredible.”

Her favourite ride was with a woman in Guinea.

“She was so confident and drove us half an hour out of her way. I was like, ‘hell yeah, finally we got picked up by a woman and she’s a boss!'” she said.

“I barely waited for more than 10 minutes,” she said. “It was super quick and I was picked up by mostly older women.”

Courtney’s hitchhiking adventures are not over yet – in March she plans to hitch from South Korea to South Africa, travelling through Asia, Russia and the Middle East before hitchhiking down the east coast of Africa, a trip which will take about a year.

“We’re currently looking for brand sponsorship and raising money for a cancer research charity called the Terry Fox Foundation,” she said. “So we’ll have a bit more purpose this time.”

You can follow Courtney’s journey on her Instagram page @hitchhikercourtney.