These, I hope, are all the waymarked walks in London. (i.e. they have signs showing you the way to go)
All walks are clickable. (n.b. fabulous Londonwide map here)
The Premier League (i.e. important enough to be listed on the TfL website)
Capital Ring: 75 miles, 15 sections [blogged✔]
A circular route approximately 4–8 miles from Charing Cross, starting and finishing at Woolwich. The quintessential London hike, first waymarked in 2005. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
London Loop: 150 miles, 24 sections [blogged✔]
A larger more rural circuit, often hugging the Greater London boundary, starting at Erith and finishing in Purfleet. Opened sequentially between 1996 and 2001. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
Thames Path: 29 miles [blogged✘]
Officially starts at the Thames Barrier and goes all the way to the source in Gloucestershire. The London section is special because it (generally) exists along both sides of the river. Regularly walked by people who don't realise they're walking it.
Lea Valley Path: 17 miles, 6 sections [blogged✔]
Officially starts near Luton, entering London at the M25. Simple riverside walking. Quite a lot of reservoirs and pylons. Ends at Trinity Buoy Wharf.
Jubilee Walkway: 15 miles, 5 loops [blogged✘]
The original waymarked walk, conjured up for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 and opened by the Queen. Its five bespoke loops link multiple central London sights and attractions. No walking boots required.
Jubilee Greenway: 37 miles, 10 sections [blogged✔]
A 2012 invention, hence links lots of Olympic venues. A Diamond Jubilee commemoration, hence 60km long. Starts at Buckingham Palace. Spends a lot of time on the Regent's Canal, Greenway and Thames Path. Not especially original and mostly overlooked.
Green Chain: 50 miles, 12 sections [blogged✔]
A locally-concocted web of trails across southeast London, impossible to walk sequentially but perfect for prolonged exploration. 11 sections are signed (the 12th never quite was). Ever-surprising. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
Green Link Walk: 15 miles, 4 sections [blogged✔]
New this year. A fully-accessible urban trail on an unlikely trajectory from Epping Forest to Peckham via St Paul's. I've already been back and walked some of it twice. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
River walks (starting in north London and going clockwise)
Dollis Valley Greenwalk: 10 miles [blogged✔]
Starts near the A1 and ends near the North Circular, but the intervening riverside stroll is much better than it sounds. Essentially a grand tour of the borough of Barnet. Mostly all-weather.
Pymmes Brook Trail: 13 miles [blogged✔]
Crosses Enfield from Hadley Green to Tottenham Hale, although the river mostly disappears from view in the second half.
New RiverPath: 28 miles [blogged✔]
From Hertford to the Angel Islington alongside a 400 year-old manmade river which still supplies the capital with water. The London bit starts at the M25. Follows contours so often a bit quirky.
Shuttle Riverway: 5 miles [blogged✔]
From Avery Park in Greenwich to Hall Place Gardens in Bexley following a tributary of the Cray. Gets pleasantly minor in places.
Waterlink Way: 8 miles [blogged✔]
Follows the Pool River and the River Ravensbourne to the Thames, specifically from Sydenham to the Cutty Sark. Also cyclable. A borough of Lewisham production.
Wandle Trail: 11 miles [blogged✔]
A well-established walk from Croydon/Waddon/Carshalton/wherever to Wandsworth. Follows one of London's first industrialised rivers. Intermittently sylvan.
Beverley Brook Walk: 7 miles [blogged✔]
Starts in New Malden, fringes Wimbledon Common, skirts Richmond Park, ends at Putney Embankment. You might see deer. You might get muddy.
Colne Valley Trail: 20 miles [blogged✘]
A greeny-blue trek from Rickmansworth to Staines via Uxbridge, much of it along the towpath of the Grand Union Canal. London Loop sections 11 and 12 cover a fair chunk.
Celandine Route: 12 miles [blogged✔]
Follows the River Pinn from Harrow Weald to Cowley. Unsurprisingly passes through Pinner. The London borough of Hillingdon delivers very good long walks...
Willow Tree Wander: 5 miles [blogged✘]
Follows the Yeading Brook from North Harrow to Ickenham. A properly offbeat route which I can't believe I haven't blogged yet. Follow the catkins.
The start of something bigger
England Coast Path: 2700 miles [blogged✔]
It's not yet complete all the way round the coast but Woolwich to Erith is signed with acorns throughout. The Isle of Grain is 49 miles away if you're up for it.
Vanguard Way: 66 miles [blogged✘]
An impressively non-urban downland/wealdland trail, roughly due south from Croydon to Newhaven. Marvellously well described. The first section to Chelsham Common is 7 miles. I must do this one day.
Other waymarked walks
» Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk(7 miles): Figure-of-eight loop round four Royal Parks. Hugely accessible.
» Hillingdon Trail(20 miles): Top to bottom across the borough, often impressively remote. On my 'I really should walk this' list.
» Parkland Walk(3 miles): Former railway trackbed from Alexandra Palace to Finsbury Park, Mostly covered by Capital Ring section 12.
» Tamsin Trail(7 miles): A circuit around the edge of Richmond Park. Bike-friendly. Deer-adjacent.
» Bromley circular walks: 14 rural loops that are as get-away-from-it-all as London gets. Properly waymarked and perfectly described, thanks to a borough that still cares about rambling.
» That waymarked walk I've missed:
(I think I've walked 19 of these, well done me)
If it's not waymarked it's not in the list
If it's short and local it's not in the list
If it's not in London it's not in the list.
This brief Victorian sideroad was once well known across much of south London, indeed you may even have been born here. It's to be found in Thornton Heath (the pond bit rather than the station bit) and bears off London Road about a mile north of Croydon town centre. Look for Coughlans bakery at the end of the street, or else the faded peeling Saints and Sinners pub (which you can tell closed three years ago because it's still advertising a pint for £2.99). Perhaps dodge the ambulances. And here you'll find Mayday Road, the 300m-long street which juggles A&E with an implausibly broad collection of housing types. [map 1897][map 1954][map 2024]
The story of the hospital starts with an overflowing workhouse, specifically when the Guardians of the Croydon Union purchased land off May-Day Road in 1876 to expand their small infirmary. The new hospital consisted of four pavilions spaced out along a corridor a quarter of a mile long and could accommodate over 400 patients. In 1923 it was renamed the Mayday Road Hospital and continued to expand, adding surgical wings, maternity services, outpatients, clinics, specialist blocks, the whole shebang, until today it's one of the largest hospitals in south London. It was however renamed Croydon University Hospital in 2002, perhaps because someone decided 'Mayday' was an appalling brand choice, although the old name still lingers in the mindset of the populace.
The most recent addition is an enlarged A&E department, the only significant part of the sprawling mishmash complex still accessed from Mayday Road. It's evidently from the 'build a whopping grey cuboid' school of architecture, indeed could easily be mistaken for a multi-storey car park, although the rows of ambulances and police cars parked out front ought to be a big clue. Further up the street a clinical block is fronted with a frankly creepy photo of a headless sister under the caption 'could you be a Croydon nurse?', while the chest clinic can be found on the corner in a redbrick building which originated as the Offices of the Croydon Union so is likely suboptimal for modern NHS purposes. You don't have to look far to spot a masked orderly nipping out for a smoke or an elderly patient manoeuvring out of a minicab, even on a Sunday.
The last surviving business on the street is a car repair shop, formerly Thornton Heath Motors but now the considerably more appropriate Mayday Service Centre, based in a former coach house with a convenient central arch. Apparently they still have an 081 phone number. I thought there was a cafe opposite the hospital elusively called nys, which seemed proud to offer cocoa, ristretto, pizza and a Full English, but closer inspection of the front door revealed piles of litter outside and piles of undelivered mail within. It turns out much-loved Mannys is long gone, as is the Afro-Caribbean grocery nextdoor (whose demise is confirmed by a rotting mattress), as is Boydens Tiles (who've scarpered to Purley Road). In tough economic times, Mayday Road proved a sadly inauspicious location.
The remainder of the street boasts a ridiculously wide assortment of houses spanning 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. You'll find a brief prim Victorian terrace, a quartet of interwar semis and a tall timber-fronted villa. You'll find a single postwar eight-storey block of flats, a solid wall of 79 millennial apartments and a small brick-panelled lump of infill. You'll find a private close of bungalows whose front gardens are dotted with twee ornamental affectations and emblazoned with unfriendly signs. And if you walk up one particular alleyway you'll find 33 pastel-painted flats squeezed onto a former brownfield site hemmed in by umpteen cars their tenants cannot live without. Boydens Tiles is due to go the same way soon, reborn as 57 mostly unaffordable dwellings, as the diversity of tenure extends even further.
All human life is here on Mayday Road, either permanently in residence or visiting temporarily aboard a neenawing ambulance. Indeed if you're a TV documentary maker seeking to focus on a complete cross section of national issues you could do worse than base yourself here... and maybe call the series Mayday Mayday for good measure.
London's second Mayday Something lies in one of the more unsung corners of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, namely the unredeveloped end of Kidbrooke close to the foot of Shooters Hill, coincidentally behind another Victorian restorative institution. Most passers-by only see the front of the former Royal Herbert Hospital, now an imposing enclave of luxury flats, but if you head round the back you'll find a long residential street called Broad Walk. This was once a stripe of open fields roughly following the line of the Lower Kid Brook, bounded by the aforementioned hospital and Greenwich Cemetery, then inevitably succumbed to residential development. Mayday Gardens was added off Broad Walk on the cemetery side, sometime during the interwar period when pebbledash was inexplicably popular, and is lined by 100-or-so spacious semis along its sweeping crescent. [map 1897][map 1954][map 2024]
So wide are these semis that the bedrooms must actually be a decent size, and even then a few residents have had the builders in to add an asymmetrical loft extension. The chief design affectation is that the shared gable is half-timbered, although on some plots the architects went for horizontal boards instead. Porches allow more scope to display one's personality, be that minimalist bootrack shelter or full-on ebony makeover, while a few bay windows up the ante with small stained glass motifs. At the halfway point a brief green traffic island splits the roadway in two, and one lucky corner is blessed with a larger wedge of grass where fruit trees are currently in blossom. But the front gardens in Mayday Gardens have almost all been paved over for parking, alas, which along with an absence of street trees means the 'Gardens' label is now mostly fictional.
Most of the crescent is pretty quiet, the kind of place where an inquisitive pedestrian will raise suspicions. The only noise is residents jetwashing the crazy paving, mowing unseen lawns or driving off somewhere, and the majority of any action is car-related, be that loading, unloading or giving the Qashqai a jolly good Sunday polish. But the western end is rather livelier, in part thanks to a cut-through footpath and the passage of London Cycle Network route 25a, but mostly because it's the only entrance to Shootershill Sports & Social Club. They recently rebranded as The Venue on the Green because they'd really love you to hold your wedding reception here, even a wake, and the gin of the week is always £4 for locals who'd rather not be seen dead in an actual pub.
I'm obliged to journalistPeter Watts for providing the only interesting story I've found about Mayday Gardens, which is that it took a direct hit from an errant parachute mine during the Blitz damaging 27 houses, most of which remained derelict for years. 10 year-old Alan Lee Williams, who later became MP for Hornchurch, remembers his roof being blown off and the fire service plonking a large water tank in the blast zone which he and his brother used to swim in. What's unusual is that all the damaged houses in Mayday Gardens were later rebuilt exactly as they had been before, indeed I never guessed these weren't anything other than the originals, in sharp contrast to more working class parts of London where bombsites generally re-emerged as something new and different. This Mayday disaster, it turns out, had a happy ending.
See also
• Maypole(a hamlet in Bromley)
• Mayfair(a neighbourhood in Westminster)
Lost their £10,000 deposit: 9 of the 13 candidates
Electorate = 6.1 million Voted for Sadiq = 18% of the electorate Voted for Susan = 13% of the electorate Didn't vote for Sadiq = 82% of the electorate Couldn't be arsed to vote at all = 59% of the electorate
Lowest turnout: 31% in City & East (Tower Hamlets, Newham, B&D) Highest turnout: 48% in Bexley & Bromley
Number of rejected papers 2021: 114,201 (Single transferable vote) Number of rejected papers 2024: 11,127 (First past the post)
Most Laboury constituency: North East (Islington, Hackney & Waltham Forest) Most Conservativey constituency: Bexley & Bromley Most Greeny constituency: North East (Islington, Hackney & Waltham Forest) Most Libdemmy constituency: South West (Hounslow, Kingston & Richmond) Most Binfacey constituency: South West (Hounslow, Kingston & Richmond) Most Cockwombly constituency: Bexley & Bromley
Tightest Sadiq/Susan contest: Ealing & Hillingdon
London AssemblyMembership: Lab 11, Con 8, Green 3, LD 2, Reform 1 Gaining one seat: Reform Losing one seat: Conservative Number of votes required to block the Mayor's Budget: 17
Failed to become Mayor but became Assembly member: Susan Failed to become Mayor or Assembly member: Rob, Zoë, Howard Failed: Laurence
Referendum on ULEZ: Yes
Next Mayoral election: Thursday 4th May 2028 (we're back to four year terms again)
10 Centuries In 1 Day may not have been a very good walk.
But can we do it properly and pick one London building from each of 10 centuries?
In fact, given London's a Roman city, can we do 20 centuries?
Let's give it a try...
16th-21st century
This is the easy bit.
Far too many buildings to choose from.
So I've just chosen one big one.
21st century
Tons of London buildings are from this century. To be representative and iconic I want to pick something tall, so whereas I'd have preferred the Gherkin (2004) I'm going to pick The Shard (2013). It's still the tallest building in western Europe.
20th century
Again ridiculously spoiled for choice. We had the Barbican yesterday so let's go elsewhere. I was tempted by Battersea Power Station (1933), the Post Office Tower (1965) and the Lloyd's Building (1986), but let's go with the South Bank (1951) because you get more concrete bang for your buck there.
19th century
Two world-class icons here - the Houses of Parliament (1860) and Tower Bridge (1894), but I'm plumping for the former because of the additional frisson of Big Ben.
18th century
The Hawksmoor churches are tempting and Chiswick House (1729) is splendid but Buckingham Palace (1705) is the strongest contender, not necessarily for its architecture but for its global pre-eminence.
17th century Kensington Palace is early 17th century as is Ham House in Richmond, with the UNESCO cluster at Greenwich and 10 Downing Street appearing a little later. But I think it has to be St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's masterpiece, where building started in 1675 and the first service was held in 1697 (even if tools-down wasn't until 1710).
13th century
Will you let me pick Westminster Abbey? The current abbey was consecrated in 1269, although it does contain elements of the 11th century Norman church, for example the Pyx Chapel. If not then it might have to be Southwark Cathedral (1220), St Etheldreda's (1290) in Holborn or St Martin's (1245) in Ruislip.
11th century
London has an embarrassment of Norman riches, which is why I kicked Westminster Abbey into the 13th century. Westminster Hall (1097) is unequivocally 11th but it has to be the Tower of London, specifically the White Tower (1078).
6th-10th century
It's much harder pre-1066.
I'm looking for any structure you can still see today.
10th century
A bit ropey this. The Coronation Stone in Kingston is reputed to have seen the consecration of three kings - Æthelstan (925), Eadred (946) and Æthelred the Unready (979). But there's no guarantee the stone block recovered from the ruins of St Mary's church in 1730 is really the one, or was even there.
9th century
There's a plaque to King Alfred at Queenhithe commemorating his resettlement of the Roman city in 886, but it's not a proper leftover and this is my first Dark Ages blank.
8th century
Erm.
7th century
The remains of Barking Abbey belong to a monastery founded in 666. All-Hallows-by-the-Tower dates back to 675 and retains a Saxon arch, date unknown. Meanwhile some archaeologists found some 7th century remnants of the town of Lundenwic earlier this year. Take your pick.
6th century St Brides is on the site of one of England's oldest churches which was supposedly founded by St Bridget (or Irish missionaries) in the 6th century, but the current church is at least the seventh on the site and is over a millennium younger so doesn't count here.
1st-5th century
The Romans were around for this bit.
So we may have more luck.
5th century
Unfortunately at this stage Londinium was in decline and the Romans were skedaddling, so nothing to see here.
4th century
London's Roman wall is s 2nd/3rd century construction, but additional towers were built on the eastern side in the 4th. It's also thought a large church was built on Tower Hill at this time but nothing remains.
3rd century
We could pick the walls again, but the amazing Temple of Mithras (rediscovered in 1954) is probably a better choice.
2nd century
We could pick the walls again, or alternatively there's Crofton Roman Villa in Orpington, but a true survivor is the Roman House and Baths at Billingsgate.
1st century
London's Roman amphitheatre was built in AD70, which is really really early, but that was made of wood and the stone version you can see in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery is from the early 2nd century instead (so yes, we could pick that for the 2nd century, and we don't actually need a 1st century building to tick off 20 centuries so let's do that).
21st century The Shard
20th century South Bank
19th century Houses of Parliament
18th century Buckingham Palace
17th century St Paul's Cathedral
16th century Hampton Court
15th century Guildhall
14th century Jewel Tower
13th century Westminster Abbey
12th century Temple Church
11th century Tower of London
10th century Coronation Stone?
9th century
8th century
7th century Barking Abbey
6th century
5th century
4th century City Wall towers?
3rd century Temple of Mithras
2nd century Roman amphitheatre
One of the capital's best places to go walking is the City of London, and what's more they have the wherewithal to have created all sorts of self-guided walks for you to follow. 21 downloadable walks are listed on their old website (although they're increasingly hard to find because most links keep trying to divert you to their new website which is a swooshy atomised disappointment, and all it says there is 'go to the City Information Centre and pick up a printed map', and admittedly they do have six walk leaflets there which is pretty good going, but I thought I'd try one of the 15 other walks before the City's software philistines pull the plug on them altogether). I picked 10 Centuries in 1 Day because that sounded clever. [pdf]
The walk runs from Tower Hill to the Museum of London and no specified route is given so you have to navigate like it's an orienteering challenge. The walk has ten stops, which I assumed meant one stop per century although the rationale is never explained (indeed I became increasingly convinced there was no rationale at all, indeed at no point does the blurb explicitly state which century is being ticked off, indeed the Barbican and the Museum of London are both from the same century so I think they ballsed up there, indeed I had pretty low regard for the team that put this together by the time I'd finished, although I did end up going to some pretty good places along the way). Let's see how it all pans out.
A) Roman Wall at Tower Hill
Most tourists pouring out of Tower Hill station walk straight past this chunk of Roman Wall, even though it's enormous, because they're too intent on reaching stop number 2. The best place to see the remnant stonework is from halfway down the steps, turning off onto a grassy wedge by the statue of the emperor Trajan. From the information board I learned, somewhat awkwardly, that Trajan died 80 years before the wall was built so he probably wasn't the best sculptural choice. Also the Roman wall was started around 200AD so could potentially refer to the 2nd or 3rd centuries, but let's say 3rd century for '10 Centuries in 1 Day' purposes.
B) Tower of London
Well obviously this, yes. No suggestion that you actually go in, just stare from the outside and dodge all the globetrotters doing the same. 11th century for the White Tower, tick.
C) All Hallows by the Tower
I often forget what a brilliant tourist attraction this is. For no admission price you get the main church with all its decor and foibles, even the crow's nest from Shackleton's doomed Antarctic expedition, but the real joy is in the crypt. Slip down the tiny stairs to find Roman pavements, Saxon crosses, quirky chapels and the signed register from an American president's wedding, to mention but a few oddities. It's also the first church I've ever visited that's apologised for having no vicar at the moment so suggested you scan a QR code and say the Morning Prayer service by yourself. The whole '10 centuries' thing could be ticked off in this church alone, but the walk's designers plumped for the 15th century because that's when this excellent building originated.
D) Eastcheap
And now desperation. "Eastcheap was one of London's chief meat markets", it says, but Eastcheap very much no longer is and the best they can invite you to look at is a boar's head on a Victorian facade which supposedly represents the 16th century Boar's Head Tavern. Move on.
E) St Magnus The Martyr Church
But this is great. Another City church but this time a lot more catholic in taste with scattered iconography and the afterwhiff of incense. It used to be the church at the northern end of Old London Bridge and you'll find a fabulous 3D model of that bridge in a case at the back of the nave with all the crowded houses and hundreds of tiny milling figures. The church originated in the 12th century but if you check the smallprint you'll see it's actually a 17th century rebuild thanks to the next site on the list...
F) The Great Fire of London
The walk delivers you to the Monument, obviously, and if you're looking carefully you should also find a plaque marking the approximate location of the infamous bakery on Pudding Lane which accidently destroyed 80% of the City. And there's your problem with trying to devise a '10 Centuries in 1 Day' walk, because pretty much every building we see today is 17th century or later. That's a span of only five centuries, indeed on this trail only A), B) and C) weren't in the burnt bit.
G) St Stephen Walbrook
And this is utterly marvellous too. You're not expecting much as you walk up the steps behind the Mansion House and then wham, Sir Christopher Wren hits you with a pristine pillared cuboid and an intricate classical dome. They say St Stephen's was his try-out for St Paul's and it shows. In complete contrast the incumbent vicar in the 1970s got Henry Moore to design a new altar, plonked his slab of stone in the centre of the church and encircled it with a vibrant ring of kneelers so it also looks very modern. The volunteers are lovely and the church is open for five hours every weekday so if you've never been in you should definitely have a nose. As for the date it's definitely 17th century, same as the previous stop, but the walk leaflet mischievously tries to claim 18th century by including a quote from an Italian architect.
H) Wood Street
Come to Wood Street says the leaflet, it's where the Cross Keys coaching inn once stood and this is where Charles Dickens arrived in 1822 the very first time he came to London. The trouble is that the Cross Keys vanished in the 1860s, and if you try to find 25 Wood Street as the text suggests the address no longer exists. It turns out that the Cross Keys was at the southern end of Wood Street on what's now the site of stonkingly modern Dirty Martini, so even if you had known where it was there was still no point whatsoever in visiting. In a City blessed with Victorian treasures, why waste the 19th century designation on this?
I) Barbican Centre
Well obviously this, yes. Always a pleasure. 20th century, tick.
J) Museum of London
Two problems. Firstly this is another 20th century building so the walk has abjectly failed to visit buildings from ten different centuries. Secondly it's closed, although it was open when the walk was devised so that's not their problem. When it reopens it'll be called something new, the London Museum, and will be a proper 21st century building but there's nothing to see there yet.
To sum up, the 10 Centuries in 1 Day walk visits buildings from at best seven centuries, not ten. It really ought to be possible to find City buildings covering everything from the 11th to the 21st centuries, even if the Great Fire makes that difficult, but the devisers of this walk have grasped at a few over-contrived references and come up with a sadly disappointing stroll. The three churches were fabulous though, suggesting I really should have picked up the The Art of Faith leaflet instead. Even on a disappointing walk, the City is always excellent.
What does the National Rail symbol on the tube map mean?
Obviously it means 'National Rail interchange', it says so in the key.
But what does 'National Rail interchange' actually mean?
I ask because several stations with a National Rail service don't have the symbol, for example here in the northwest corner of the map.
Crossrail's fine. Reading, Twyford and Maidenhead are also served by GWR and Taplow isn't.
The Central line's fine. West Ruislip and South Ruislip are also served by Chiltern and the other stations aren't.
But the Metropolitan line's not fine. Five of its stations are served by Chiltern but only three have symbols.
What's going on?
The two symbol-less Metropolitan line stations are Rickmansworth and Chorleywood. Both have a half-hourly Chiltern service from trains operating between Marylebone and Aylesbury but there's no symbol. All the trains that stop at Chalfont & Latimer also stop at Chorleywood, and yet one has a symbol and the other doesn't. Outside the peaks Rickmansworth gets exactly the same number of trains as Amersham and Harrow on the Hill, and yet it's symbol-free and they're not. Why might this be?
This Metropolitan omission is nothing new, it's been the case on tube maps since the British Rail symbol was first introduced in 1970. This is a longstanding designation, nothing the map's latest designers have introduced. But it's still the case that three places where you can change trains have a symbol and two don't. n.b. Back in 1970 Moor Park also had the symbol because BR trains stopped there too, but when the stop was withdrawn in 1993 the symbol was removed.
Rather than assume that someone has made a mistake, I prefer to think there's a rule in play which I haven't fully figured out. Maybe Rickmansworth and Chorleywood don't have a symbol because they're deemed less important. Maybe Rickmansworth and Chorleywood don't have a symbol because they're neither an interchange nor a terminus. Maybe Chalfont & Latimer does have a symbol because it's where trains to Chesham diverge. Maybe xxxxxxxxxxxx (I don't know, I'm not sure what the rule is, hence my mystification).
So I've scoured the map for other places where red-symbol-less-ness also happens.
If we can somehow spot a pattern, maybe it'll tell us what the rule is.
And I think I've found 26 more discrepancies.
Only three of these are on the tube and they're the three stations at Heathrow. All three are additionally served by the Heathrow Express, indeed they share the same Crossrail platforms, but they don't have NR symbols. Maybe TfL are just trying to keep quiet about their greatest competitors.
Only four are on the Overground.
• Imperial Wharf is served by Southern but doesn't have a symbol, whereas just up the line Kensington (Olympia) and Shepherd's Bush do.
• Brockley, Honor Oak Park and Forest Hill don't have symbols, despite being served by Southern trains to Victoria, but Sydenham does. n.b. Technically the Overground and Crossrail are National Rail services but the map doesn't have red symbols for those interchanges because that would be silly.
All the other discrepancies are on Thameslink.
Here are ten of them.
The tube map has shown Thameslink services to Rainham, Sevenoaks and Orpington since 2020. Every station where Thameslink stops Southeastern do too, but for some reason only some have red symbols. Maze Hill and Westcombe Park don't, Woolwich Arsenal does. Plumstead doesn't, Abbey Wood does. Bellingham, Beckenham Hill and Ravensbourne don't but Shortlands does. Busy important Bromley South somehow doesn't but little Bickley does. Petts Wood doesn't, St Mary Cray doesn't and Swanley doesn't, even though it's the last station shown.
If the intention was to show National Rail connections all 17 of these Thameslink stations would have symbols, but instead only seven do. The map's designers must have applied a rule but I'm not sure what it is. My best guess is that it's something to do with where lines join or diverge, but even that doesn't match what's on the map.
The other symbol-less Thameslink stations on the tube map are as follows...
• At Oakleigh Park it's possible to change between Thameslink and Great Northern in the peaks, just as it is at New Barnet and New Southgate either side, but they have NR symbols and Oakleigh Park doesn't.
• City Thameslink is served by the same National Rail trains as Farringdon, but it doesn't have a symbol whereas Farringdon does.
• Loughborough Junction gets peak time Southeastern services but it doesn't have a symbol.
• Mitcham Junction, Hackbridge and Carshalton don't have symbols, despite being served by Southern trains, but Mitcham Eastfields and Sutton to either side do.
• Coulsdon South is symbol-free even though you can change to Southern services there.
• Deptford doesn't get a symbol but the next stop Greenwich does.
• Crofton Park hasn't got a symbol but Nunhead and Catford either side do.
Altogether I've identified 28 stations on the tube map which have a National Rail service but no symbol. And it seems these discrepancies got a lot more plentiful when Thameslink was added to the map, or at least more inconsistent, or more precisely seemingly inconsistent because somebody's applying a rule I don't fully understand.
Which begs the question are there any National Rail symbols on the tube map that shouldn't be there, and I think the answer is yes.
Seven Sisters is a real peculiarity. It has a symbol because it's served by Greater Anglia trains but they're exceptionally rare and only stop at the station before 6am or after midnight. Anyone using the tube map to plan their journey would find the symbol at Seven Sisters wildly unhelpful because it's untrue almost all of the time, but technically correct. n.b. Edmonton Green was also served by rare Greater Anglia trains but they ceased last year, so on the latest version of the tube map Edmonton Green is now symbol-free.
One National Rail symbol that shouldn't be there, I'd argue, is Kentish Town. Yes you can change from the tube to a train, or at least you can normally, but it's a Thameslink train and that's shown as an interchange on the map already. The red symbol made sense until 2020 but now it's no longer needed. One less bit of clutter on the map would be nice.
And another superfluous symbol is at Farringdon. It's only served by Crossrail and Thameslink, railwise, but both of these are shown on the map and you can't change onto any other National Rail service here.
No NR symbol: Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, Heathrow T2&3, Heathrow T4, Heathrow T5, Imperial Wharf, Brockley, Honor Oak Park, Forest Hill, Oakleigh Park, City Thameslink, Loughborough Junction, Mitcham Junction, Hackbridge, Carshalton, Coulsdon South, Deptford, Maze Hill, Westcombe Park, Plumstead, Crofton Park, Bellingham, Beckenham Hill, Ravensbourne, Bromley South, Petts Wood, St Mary Cray, Swanley Superfluous NR symbol: Kentish Town, Farringdon
I'm not suggesting that all these unmarked stations get additional symbols, heaven forbid, because the last thing the tube map needs is a virulent outbreak of double-arrow measles in the bottom right-hand corner. It's over-overcrowded enough as it is. But I would love to know what the rule is which explains why some National Rail interchanges get a symbol and some don't, because at the moment it all looks utterly mysteriously inconsistent.
Northumberland Avenue is a young street by central London standards, and a grand one at that. Like the rest of the pinks it starts at Trafalgar Square and in this case cuts down to the Victoria Embankment, pretty much direct. It's also the shortest street I've had to write about so far, being fully walkable in under five minutes, and more somewhere tourists stay than Londoners go. Pleasingly for Monopoly-based reportage it starts with a house and ends with a hotel, although the house is no longer there and I had to go to my doctor's surgery to see a bit of it.
Prior to the 1870s Northumberland Avenue did not exist. Yards on the banks of the Thames weren't generally somewhere West Enders needed to go, not until the Victoria Embankment was built and a connection was suddenly necessary. The Metropolitan Board of Works bought up all the properties on the site and completely redeveloped the area, their intention being that the new avenue would mostly be used to accommodate hotels. A planning rule at the time was that hotels couldn't be taller than the width of the road they were on, hence Northumberland Avenue is a pleasingly broad thoroughfare (with plenty of room for two rows of plane trees). And the biggest building they had to knock down to build it was this...
House:Northumberland House
The south side of the Strand was once home to several very posh mansions, as befits the waterfront district connecting Westminster to the City of London. The closestmansion to Charing Cross was built by the Earl of Northampton in 1605, being approximately 50m square plus a garden which stretched back almost to the river. In the 1640s it was sold to the Earl of Northumberland as part of a marriage deal, hence its name, and the exceptionally rich Percy family continued to make this mini-palace their central London home. By the late 19th century it had a bolderfrontage, 150 rooms and a dazzling central staircase but it was also in the way of development plans so the 7th Duke reluctantly sold up, ultimately persuaded by fire damage and a £500,000 sweetener. In 1874 the whole lot was demolished.
The building that replaced Northumberland House, on a very different footprint, was the swooshy Italianate Grand Hotel. It didn't weather well so was replaced in the 1980s by the very similar-looking Grand Buildings which you may know as the home of the Waterstones bookshop with the big basement. Meanwhile the Percy family retreated to their other London home at Syon Park, another whopping riverside mansion, and took with them the leonine statue which had once stood atop Northumberland House. This lion has a hilariously straight tail, although if you head down to Brentford it's extremely hard to see it on the roof behind the crenellations so you're better off laughing at the replica on the gate facing London Road.
The only other NH survivor was an intricate stone arch which was originally part of the house's inner north courtyard. It was bought as a decorative feature by the owner of the Tudor House in Bromley-by-Bow, George Rutty, who later sold off his grounds to the LCC for conversion to a public garden. In 1998 the arch was moved againto formthe entrance to the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, a pioneering multi-service community hub which just happens to be my doctor's surgery. It looks magnificent at the moment dripping with wisteria, and was recently scrubbed up by the Heritage of London Trust so the intricate stonework merits proper scrutiny too. I don't know where you go to get your prescriptions and your blood pressure checked, but I pass through a 250 year-old arch with a Monopoly board connection.
We should get back to Northumberland Avenue.
It no longer starts as grandly as it once did, now with a Tesco Express and a boarded up door on one side and a Prezzo on the other. But the avenue's high facades are still genuinely imposing, the plane trees soften the vista considerably and all this might just take your eye off the queue of traffic streaming up the street. This is a favourite cut-through for taxis, a regular haunt of private coaches and the location of the bus stands for routes 15 and 91. The breadth of the street allows plenty of room to stable hire bikes, particularly at the lower end, and inbetween are occasional stone benches cunningly designed so that anyone who tries sleeping on them will roll off. It's not really somewhere to linger, more to stay.
Hotel:Corinthia Hotel
The biggest surviving hotel is the Corinthia, a wedge-shaped behemoth at the Embankment end which started out as the Metropole in 1885 with an eye to accommodating wealthy socialites and colonial visitors. The government requisitioned it during both World Wars, hanging on after the Second so it could continue to be used by the Ministry of Defence. In its time was a royal playground, a cabaret venue, a shady office block and the first home of the Special Operations Executive. Foreign investors took back the building in 2007, adding blingy chandeliers and hotel rooms that start at 'Superior' and rise to a penthouse with a private roof terrace and a personal butler. The cheapest way in is the via one of their restaurants, although the meat courses at The Northall start at £42 so you might be better off in Kerridge's Bar and Grill with a plate of £32 fish and chips.
The two foreign countries with a foothold on Northumberland Avenue are Nigeria and South Korea. Nigeria House is at number 9, a corner site fronted in Portland stone with consular services inside and tourism adverts flashing in the windows. Across the road is the rather more welcoming Korean Cultural Centre with its library, performance space, art gallery and studio for hire. Kimchi aficionados should note that Korean Cuisine Month has just started, although be aware that today is Labor Day so KCC is closed until tomorrow. I don't think the Thai Square Spa at number 25 has any diplomatic connections, although they will give your feet a half-hour massage if you have £60 to burn.
The only top drawer attraction on the street is the Playhouse Theatre, where Alec Guinness made his stage debut and the BBC once recorded The Goon Show, and which is currently all dressed up as the Kit Kat Club for a long running in-the-round performance of Cabaret. Look out for the rush-hour-only entrance to Charing Cross station nextdoor and also the entrance to gloomy Embankment Place passing underneath the platforms. Out-of-towner pub The Sherlock Holmes is officially on Northumberland Street so I'm disregarding that. But Northumberland Avenue's still really all about the hotels, and catering to people who might be staying in those hotels, simultaneously bang in the middle of things and somehow off the beaten track.
Mon 1: Three highlights of a day spent at my Dad's in Norfolk: i) going to the local art exhibition and having tea and cake with a sheep farmer. ii) watching a wren repeatedly bringing nest material into the birdbox beside my bedroom window. iii) eating the roast lamb ready meal my Dad inherited from the freezer of a recently deceased villager. Tue 2: Passed a colourful reader of this blog while exiting a DLR station, but I didn't stop to say hello because I've only met them once and they looked like they'd had a tough day at the office. Wed 3: Supermarket update: My local Tesco has introduced video screens at the self-checkouts to confirm they're filming you for security purposes. It's very uncomfortable watching yourself failing to scan a pack of crumpets. According to the nice ladies who no longer operate the tills, a bigger problem is undesirables running straight out.
Thu 4: At the Grand Union development in Alperton they've attempted 'placemaking' by berthing a narrowboat and turning it into a cafe that sells coffee and crepes, but the dock is entirely sealed off from the canal so more like a small pond, and it looks mighty stupid. Fri 5: I had a dream in which it felt very convincingly like one of my teeth had come loose. I woke up very startled and frantically checked and thankfully nothing was amiss, but sheesh my subconscious is evil sometimes. Sat 6: The young ticket seller at the station was very willing but had obviously never heard of a Gold Card before and I had to show him on my phone browser that he really could issue me a ticket for £8.60. Once on the train I noticed he'd actually sold me a Network Card discount, but thankfully no ticket inspectors intervened. Sun 7: This afternoon the walkway by the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich was being washed by high spring tides, with tourists blithely setting off down the path then having to jump up onto the railings as the Thames soaked their shoes. All the fun of an urban assault course, but best watched from a safe distance.
Mon 8: Arrived at Tottenham Hale station to find a dozen emergency vehicles in the bus station watching a barely-clad woman dancing and gesturing from the top of the adjacent lift shaft. Officers tried climbing through a skylight but she ran away to the other side of the station and dodged them all. An impressively useless deployment of resources. Tue 9: Hammersmith Bridge is finally getting a proper cycle lane restored, for which read a temporary grey stripe across the unrepaired surface of the bridge, which feels like a tiny advance after five years of severance but also a positive step forward. Wed 10: You can tell it's Eid round my way because many people are dressed in their finest clothes, not necessarily appropriate for the weather, and heading off to celebrations at the mosque. Eid will be retreating through March and February over the next few years so thermal underwear may become more appropriate.
Thu 11: Walking through Sewardstone, which is famously the only place outside London to lie within the London postal district, I spotted an E4 street sign on a newbuild close and took a quick photo. Ten seconds later a man walked up his garden path and asked why I'd taken his photo. Some people don't like having their photo taken, he said, it's not polite, what did I think I was doing? I explained I was taking a photo of the streetsign and his house just happened to be in the background, but this didn't appease him and his arguing got more intense. It's not right, it's a privacy thing, it's his house, how dare I? I apologised and said I'd go back and take the photo again, but this just annoyed him more, to the point where his furious rant now included several swear words and references to parts of the female body. I checked my original photo later and his face had filled barely 100 pixels of the image so was entirely unidentifiable, but let me assure you that the photo above is my second attempt which he's definitely not in.
Fri 12: Went for a highly unusual bus ride on the 466 which is being diverted because of sewage repairs in Coulsdon. We headed south all the way to the start of the M23, then turned off up a blossomy country lane with views across the North Downs, eventually reaching the proper terminus at Caterham-on-the-Hill. First time the village of Chaldon has seen a red bus in yonks. Thanks for the tip-off Keith. Sat 13: While I was waiting for a hail and ride bus in Monken Hadley I unpeeled a transphobic sticker from the timetable panel, because nobody deserves to read that bolx. Sun 14: In previous years I've walked through the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park either a couple of weeks before the azaleas peak or a couple of weeks after, but this year I think I got it spot on and my word they were ubiquitously stunning. Mon 15: Even my Dad's succumbed and bought an air fryer. I'm unconvinced, mainly because I don't have the kitchen worktop space but also because Jamie Oliver's new series tonight left me cold. Tue 16: Only in the outer suburbs of Havering would you find a house with a chequerboard garden, fake half-timbering, the statues of two chained dogs either side of the porch and Elvis strumming on a guitar in front of the living room window.
Wed 17: If you don't have photo ID you only have a week left to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate (and I don't know why I'm telling you this now a week after the deadline, other than to shake a fist at the bastards in the government for introducing it). Thu 18: The Apprentice final ticked all the right boxes, but they really ought to filter out the candidates with the rubbish business plans at the beginning rather than keeping them in the process until almost the end. Fri 19: Published almost-posthumously, Bryant and May's Peculiar London by Christopher Fowler is a quirky and surprisingly in-depth ramble through the history and folklore of the capital, as narrated by the offbeat characters of his excellent series of detective novels. If you're not familiar it might grate but I learned loads from reading it. Sat 20: The wisteria at Strand-on-the-Green is very lovely at the moment (other prime pink locations are available). Sun 21: I walked the last couple of miles of the London Marathon from the Tower to Westminster, but while they were tying the banners to the railings and setting up the charity hubs and piling up pallets of the sponsor's bottled drink and testing the DJ truck and parking the ice cream vans so all a bit premature, although David Weir did eventually wheel by.
Mon 22: Susan Hall's manifesto has finally appeared, ten days before the election. She lost me straight away by claiming to be "the candidate who listens" because she certainly hasn't been listening to me, but this kind of populism always resonates with the core vote. Tue 23: Failed to spot in advance that today was the 100th anniversary of the opening of the British Empire Exhibition, otherwise you'd probably have read a blogpost looking back nostalgically at how cultured Wembley used to be and comparing that to the depressing stackyflats neighbourhood that's taken its place. Boxpark is a poor replacement for the Palace of Industry. "Play. Shop. Savour. Relax." Sheesh. Wed 24: Spotted the lovely Su Pollard at Angel station. So did the gateline staff and she happily stopped for a chat and a photo. You couldn't really miss her in that coat and head-dress. Thu 25: Over 1400 people have watched my Big London Airports Race video on YouTube, apparently for an average of one minute and two seconds each. I'd like to apologise to the 41 people who were shown my video as part of the recommendations algorithm, as opposed to clicking on it knowingly.
Fri 26: The Barbican has been wrapped up in hibiscus purple sheeting for artistic reasons, and is definitely best viewed when the sun comes out. Sat 27: Anne Ward has a new book out, I❤️EK, which features 60 colour photos taken over the last 20 years in East Kilbride, Scotland's first new town. If understated urban excellence and throwback retail detail are your thing, you should at least be following her on Instagram. Sun 28: If you write to the nice man on the radio often enough, eventually he'll do a dedication for your special day. Mon 29: A neighbour who's moved out keeps getting subscription books delivered, so I thought I'd send the envelopes back with a 'return to sender' sticker, only to find most pillarbox slots are far too narrow to cope with hardback A4. Eventually found a wider EIIR box and off they went. Tue 30: Blimey, I just travelled three stops on the Central line with Doctor Who. She wasn't as obvious as Su Pollard, the only splashes of colour being a pink blouse and a Sainsbury's bag, but the Fugitive Doctor was always about hiding in plain sight.
20 things we learned from TfL FoI requests in April 2024
1) The annual operating cost for the Woolwich Ferry is £8.9 million. 2) In 2021 there were 305km of bus lanes in London, up from 293km in 2011. 3) TfL spent £282,945.43 advertising this year's Fares Freeze on posters, in the press and on paid social. 4) On bus routes 366, 462, 488, 499 and U9, where one terminus is on a loop, passengers are allowed to stay aboard at no extra charge to complete their journey. 5) There are no plans to reopen the Pentonville Road entrance to King's Cross station as "the huge cost of bringing it up to standard and the additional staffing costs would not make this a viable option to consider". 6) London's most crowded bus route is the SL9, specifically around Yeading northbound between 7am and 8am on weekdays. London's most uncrowded bus routes are the 389 and 399 in Barnet. 7) Night Tube pocket Tube maps were discontinued in 2018 as part of a drive to reduce printing production costs. TfL assessed their entire suite of products and those that had the least customer value and least pick up rate were stopped. 8) The green tiles and yellow tiles at Regents and Stratford stations were not made using uranium salts, so REDACTED's autistic daughter need not worry when travelling to her hospital appointments. 9) The numbers of branded vehicles on each Superloop route are as follows: SL1 13, SL2 18, SL3 17, SL5 12, SL6 12, SL7 24, SL8 24, SL9 13, SL10 14. 10) 71,480 'Baby on Board' badges were issued in 2023. Of these 6781 were issued to someone who made a request more than once. 11) Peak demand on the Lewisham branch of the DLR is around 70% higher than on the Woolwich branch, a difference which has increased since Crossrail opened. 12) In the six weeks since the completion of the Superloop's orbital circuit, 230 contactless/Oyster cards have been used on all seven Superloop buses in the same day. Some cardholders have done this more than once. 13) 90,072 TfL staff are entitled to free travel on TfL services (28% of whom have retired). 14) The TfL station with the most accidents on escalators is London Bridge (111 accidents over the last twelve months). Paddington is the Crossrail escalator blackspot with 98. 15) TfL's most-stolen defibrillator is at Bow Road station, which was nicked on 4th April 2016, 5th September 2019 and 6th December 2019. 16) The new iBus2 On-bus system will not be implemented on TfL buses for another two years as it requires thorough testing. The main improvement for passengers will be the availability of information during disruption (e.g. diversions and curtailments). 17) At the end of last month, 1098 people were doing 'The Knowledge' training to become cabbies. 18) 214,350 Bus Saver tickets were issued in 2023 (down from a peak of 33m in 2004). Tickets come in books of six tickets and there is a minimum order of 25 books. 19) Outline plans exist to install gatelines at Cambridge Heath, London Fields, Stoke Newington, Bruce Grove and Silver Street on the Weaver Line (but these schemes are currently unfunded and not yet programmed). 20) As at 2nd March 2024, the total number of permanent staff at TfL was 25,662. All are eligible to join the TfL Pension Fund.
