In the world when I was his age (18)...YES, and I often did, as I worked in London and my friends were mainly in York.
I had also been working for two years at that age, and also had of course left home.
I certainly wouldn't expect the most important person in the world to me (and basically still a schoolboy) to start finding his way out of a strange city on a freezing cold night and stick his thumb out 200 miles from home. Even the A1 is 14 miles from our house.
If he hadn't found the accommodation that he did, with advice from the Transport Police, I would have driven up there and brought him home.
There are some evilout there.
(No offence taken, or intended.)