I'm off on a long-distance trip today, one I bought a ticket for several weeks ago. I have thus become very invested in what today's weather might be because a miserable outlook can wreck a good day out. My visit to Durham in 2015 was destroyed by heavy rain all day, my 2024 trip to Rugby left me soaked through and my 2018 spring break in Cornwall annoyingly coincided with The Beast From The East. What weather would Saturday 22nd February 2025 bring?
The BBC's weather website provides a forecast up to 14 days in advance, so on Sunday 9th February I refreshed the page and went "oh". Cold and wet, no sun, not ideal.
But the next day the BBC weather website had changed its mind, the rain had been downgraded to drizzle.
And then it changed its mind again on Tuesday (full-on sunshine) and again on Wednesday (wet).
And again on Thursday, again on Friday and again on Saturday.
Here's a summary of how the BBC forecast for today's weather changed over the space a week.
Regarding temperature there was a clear trend in that the weather on Saturday 22nd February looked to be getting warmer. Hurrah! But in terms of what the weather would be I'd been presented with the full gamut from overcast and wet to cloud-free and sunny, i.e. the forecast looked pretty random. I was no clearer knowing whether today's visit would be dry and fine or a total washout.
That was two weeks ago. I then carried on checking throughout last week.
And this time it's been a very consistent message that Saturday would be dry, sunny and mild. Hurrah!
Obviously it's a lot easier to forecast the weather as the day approaches, but to have got it right six days in advance is pretty good going. It's particularly good given that today is a brief sunny respite between two wet days, with yesterday seeing a heavy band of rain cross the region and tomorrow promising the same but with gales. It would have been all too easy to get the precise timing of these frontal systems wrong, but the BBC weather forecast has correctly identified 'Friday wet, Saturday dry, Sunday wet" since five days ago.
I've also been religiously checking the Met Office weather forecast for today at my chosen destination. They don't provide the BBC's forecast any more, theirs is separate and has been since 2018. They also don't provide a forecast until one week before a particular date, not two.
And they've had a very consistent message too, ever since last Sunday when the first sunny icon appeared.
So consistent has the message been, from both the BBC and the Met Office, that I've known since Sunday that I'm in for a dry mild day trip today. Hurrah! It isn't always this cut and dried, nor are both forecasts always in agreement, but they've both played a blinder over the last week in getting today's weather right.
However only the last week was good, the BBC's forecasts over the previous week were more like a meteorological roulette wheel and best ignored.
Indeed if I were to draw your attention to just one fact, it's that long-range weather forecasts are usually bolx. This is especially true if you work for a clickbait website and spot that some unreliable forecast has promised a slight snow flurry in six weeks time - please put your keyboard away and stop trying to hoodwink us with ill-judged certainties. But even the BBC's weather forecast can't be trusted two weeks out, it's just a low-probability best guess, which'll be why they never ever look that far forward on TV.
One week ahead, though, might just be spot on... which is why I'm currently speeding out of London towards sunny and mild, hurrah!
The major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout continue, which is worrying because the final resurfacing works are due to begin on Monday night. Instead the inside lane on Stratford High Street is still coned off for much drilling and scraping, so they'd better get a move-on.
In better news buses on route 8 have just returned to Bow Church, literally in the last two hours. This is after six months terminating early, which should have been five months given the roadworks started late, and should have been extended by one more week given the roadworks are finishing late too.
Also I found the road closure notice for next week's resurfacing works at the back of the local paper and it's quite complicated. It takes seven paragraphs to explain that the entire roundabout and all its slip roads will be closed, then four more to explain that access to McDonalds will be maintained by marshals waving traffic the wrong way along the bottom of Bow Road.
The Works Notice also details the precise routes of five detours traffic will need to make when the roundabout's closed, the scariest of which is accessing Stratford High Street from the A12 southbound which will involve a 5 mile mystery tour via Poplar, Canning Town and Plaistow.
Reassuringly 'works will be phased such that some restrictions will only apply at certain times', so traffic may get off lightly on certain nights. Less reassuringly 'the Order will be effective between 24th February 2025 and 24th August 2025 every night 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM, or until works are completed, whichever is sooner', which is a six month period rather than the actually-planned four nights. I guess TfL's legal team prefers to over-estimate so they only ever have to place one Works Order in the paper, but that is a serious over-over-over-estimate.
Whatever, don't drive or catch a bus anywhere near the Bow roundabout next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday night, and fingers crossed all the resurfacing and line painting will be finished by 1st March, not 24th August.
When writing about dining out, the media tend to focus on restaurants, independent cafes and bijou little nooks, also pubs, hotels and takeaways. But there's one place you're always guaranteed a hot meal at a bargain price and that's a supermarket cafe, the unsung destination of choice for many a prudent diner. Assuming you can still find one, that is.
Supermarkets didn't used to have cafes, not until the bigger out-of-town superstores decided to put aside space for a hot counter and some plastic tables as a means to attract more punters. Instead cheap canteen-like restaurants were the general preserve of the high street department store, often on an upper floor to tempt you past ladies fashions and home furnishings on the way. I well remember, after a tough morning of being taken shopping round Watford, being led upstairs to a stark white room above British Home Stores to select from a school-dinner-like menu, then watching while it was doled out from a succession of metal tureens before edging my wooden tray along the bars towards a till where some white-hatted matron would tot up each item individually and present my Mum with a bill. It's not like that now.
The supermarket cafe is usually to be found in a quiet corner somewhere near the entrance, just past the trolley park, the rack of magazines and the backs of the checkouts. Here a long counter awaits the weary shopper, perhaps several, with an array of packaged goodies, plated treats and hot cooked staples awaiting your delectation. The range is generally limited and traditional - all the elderly crowd pleasers - often with a proper breakfast option if you arrive early enough. The drinks machine has long been a fixture just before the till, but these days more likely to generate something frothy than a pot of tea. Warm desserts with dolloped custard were alas phased out long ago in favour of something ready-sliced. And when your tray's full just pay the bill, pick a table and enjoy a leisurely natter, safe in the knowledge your meal out hasn't broken the bank. As long as you go to the right supermarket, that is.
I went to Asda on the Isle of Dogs where the supermarket cafe is still a pleasingly retro experience. Step behind the rack of flowers to discover a single white counter, lightly-staffed, and beyond that a puce-walled corner with perches, banquettes and proper tables. The food queue starts by a stack of brown plastic trays, then come the wraps and baguettes (would you like that warmed?), then the slices of sponge under plastic domes with tongs on top. The selection on the hotplate looked very limited but if you wanted the battered cod or lasagne you'd be able to select a portion straight away. By the till are more cakes plus a rack of Walkers crisps and a pleasingly old-school Coca-Cola dispenser, and if you insist on ordering tea there are six options but they're all Tetleys. What's not to enjoy?
Asda hot menu Mains (all £6.75): cod and chips, scampi and chips, lasagne, stew & dumplings, chicken tikka masala, beef chilli, cheeseburger, double chicken burger Veg options (£6.50): mac & cheese, sweet potato & spinach curry Fry-up (£6.10): cooked breakfast/all-day brunch Soups (£3): tomato, creamy chicken, hearty veg (all served with roll and butter) Sides: garlic bread, chips, fries, peas, baked beans, side salad, onion rings, chicken nuggets
It could still be 2005 with that list, maybe 1995 but probably not 1985. Also I note that a lot of the mains don't require a lot of chewing.
And the cafe was still popular, this Asda superstore perhaps doubling up as a community meeting place. Two grey-haired ladies took the closest table, their tartan shopping trollies parked up close by. Beyond them an Asian family were enjoying a good value half term lunch (Kids Eat For £1 - All Day, Every Day!), a young couple in furry anoraks hugged a hot drink and a blonde in a blouse grazing on a sweet treat tapped away on her phone. I suspect it's busier on a Wednesday when the over-60s get 10% off, but I'm not sure I'll be availing myself of the opportunity on a regular basis.
Your supermarket needs to be a certain size before its worth having a cafe, so large sites with big car parks are the most likely locations. In rural Norfolk there are plenty, for example, although you have to drive a fair way to get to them. The edge of any provincial town will have an in-store cafe offering, or indeed that retail park by the bypass, such is the culinary allure of the out-of-town supermarket. But Tower Hamlets is not well blessed with the things, so I wondered where my nearest cafes were at other supermarket chains.
Tesco cafe Typical lunch items: Chilli Con Carne Jacket Potato, Brunch Burger with Hash Brown Bites, Scampi and Chips, Harissa Chicken and Chorizo Toastie My nearest: Beckton (5 miles), then Woolwich, then Meridian Water.
Sainsbury cafe Typical lunch items: Chicken Tikka Masala, Steak & Ale Pie, Sausages & Mash, Avocado & Eggs on Sourdough My nearest: There are none in London, the nearest being at Northfleet in Kent (ah, I see Sainsburys have plans to close all 61 of their remaining cafes, sad face emoji)
Morrisons cafe Typical lunch items: Gammon, Egg, Chips & Peas, Ultimate Mixed Grill, Crispy Breaded Falafel Burger, Battered Sausages, Chips and Mushy Peas My nearest: Stratford (1 mile), then Chingford (because proper cafes are rare)
Waitrose cafe Typical lunch items: Beef Bourguignon, Mozzarella & Pesto Salad, Chicken Tikka Flatbread, Goat’s Cheese, Fig & Caramelised Shallot Quiche My nearest: Canary Wharf (1 mile) (but it's a bit posh and they also have an olive bar and I don't think this properly counts)
It seems my best options for cheap comfort food and chatter are Asda at Crossharbour and Morrisons in Stratford, and that's about it within easy travelling distance. Other low price sit-down locations are of course available, but a bite at Wetherspoons or a perch at Kebabish will never match the retro canteen experience. The supermarket cafe lingers on and is much appreciated by many, but the days of piling up your hot meal on a tray may already be numbered.
Attend inauguration, take Presidential oath, act as "a peacemaker and unifier", label Mexican cartels as terrorists, rename the Gulf of Mexico, rename Mt McKinley, pledge to an expanding nation, take back the Panama Canal, send astronauts to Mars, suspiciously-Nazi salute, sign order to withdraw from Paris climate agreement, sign migrant detention bill, unconditional pardons for Jan 6 attackers, roll-back on trans rights, roll-back on gender identity, redefine birthright to US citizenship, withdraw from World Health Organisation, make federal workers easier to fire, federal regulatory freeze, impose tariffs on Mexico, impose tariffs on Canada, delay ban on TikTok, drill baby drill, introduce External Revenue Service, establish Department of Government Efficiency, end government support for electric vehicles, end Green New Deal, axe education department, launch cryptocurrency, video call with Chinese President, appoint vaccine sceptic as Health Secretary, recommit to death penalty, put diversity staff on leave, deploy troops to Mexican border, suspend refugee programme, pause foreign development assistance, end 'corrupt' DEI policies, human rights start at conception, scrap FEMA, back biblical claim to Palestinian land, fire independent watchdogs, make claim on Greenland, reinstate troops who refused vaccination, eliminate DEI in military, curtail gender transition, offer federal employees payouts if they resign, reopen Guantánamo Bay, blame plane crash on diversity, impose tariffs on China, sack USAid workers, take control of federal payment system, revoke deportation protections, delay tariffs on Mexico and Canada, stake claim on rare earths in Ukraine, shrink US government, propose wholesale removal of regulations, plan for US to own and redevelop Gaza Strip, plan to relocate all Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan and Egypt, attend Super Bowl, ban trans athletes from women's sports, eliminate anti-Christian bias, sanction international court, remove Federal Election Commission chair, reverse ban on plastic straws, cut medical research funding, speak to Putin about Ukraine, 25% tariffs on aluminium and steel imports, propose Canada as 51st state, end production of one cent coin, call for end to Gaza ceasefire, cosy up to Russia, speak to Putin about Ukraine ceasefire, make premature concessions on Ukraine, fire air traffic control staff, attempt to rehire traffic control staff, rebuke Europe and its leaders at security summit, fire National Park workers, question the legitimacy of judges, liken oneself to Napoleon, threaten tariffs on foreign cars and semiconductors, fast-track fossil fuel projects, plan cuts at the Pentagon, layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service, face-to-face peace talks with Russia, blame Ukraine for war with Russia, claim Putin can be trusted, call Zelensky a dictator, launch new world order.
As an East London resident I've received a 20-page booklet through my letterbox about the opening of the SilvertownTunnel in April. If you didn't get a booklet you can download one here.
I like the graphics. I hate the maps.
Eight pages are given over to information for drivers, which makes sense given most of the tunnel's users will be drivers. The eight pages are mostly about what you have to pay and whether you have to pay it. You might therefore expect that one of the maps in the booklet would be aimed at drivers. Not so. There is such a map, it's on the TfL website and you can see it here. But it never made it into the booklet because someone thought two maps aimed at bus passengers and cyclists would be sufficient.
This is the bus map which spans pages 4 and 5, and I fear TfL's Let's Make This Bus Map Unnecessarily Complicated department has been at it again.
It shows the three routes which make up TfL's commitment to running 21 buses an hour through the two tunnels. One is the existing 108 through the Blackwall Tunnel, one is the extended 129 and one is the new Superloop SL4, both of which will use the Silvertown Tunnel.
As a bus passenger what I really what to know is where these buses will stop. Instead the map chooses to shows all the roads these buses will serve, because TfL's LMTBMUC department is obsessed with routes rather than stops.
• I don't care which bore of the Blackwall Tunnel the 108 will use, nor all the ridiculous twiddles the 108 and 129 have to make to enter the bus station at North Greenwich. I might care that the 108 makes several extra stops northbound on its detour to the tunnel but the map doesn't show where they are, nor does it have arrows to show which way the loop goes.
• I don't care about the twiddles on the 129 either, whereas I would really like to know where the first stop beyond the tunnel is going to be and how far it'll be from anywhere useful. I'd also quite like to know where the 129 goes next but the next four miles through Newham are not shown, only a box saying that the route terminates at Great Eastern Quay. I bet most people have no idea where that is and the booklet doesn't enlighten them.
• I can see where the SL4 runs but because it's a limited stop route I really need to know where I can catch it, and on that there's nothing. That's key because on the north side of the tunnel it won't stop anywhere in Newham, only in Tower Hamlets, and heading south it won't drop anyone off in North Greenwich, only two miles away up the A2. The next page of the booklet does at least say "Express service stopping in key town centres between Westferry Circus in Canary Wharf to Grove Park via Silvertown Tunnel". But it doesn't say what those key town centres will be, nor does it mention the three-mile non-stop section, and you're not going to attract any passengers like that.
As for the cycle shuttle map on page 16, it too is obsessed with routes instead of stops.
Cyclists don't care what ridiculous one-way circuits the shuttle bus has to make, they only need to know where to board and where it'll drop them off. The red blobs alas get somewhat lost amid the red lines.
The map also shows the paucity of well-connected cycleways hereabouts. It also shows that the northern shuttle stop won't be alongside a segregated cycleway, you'll have to follow "shared pedestrian/cycle routes" to reach one. A special slow handclap to whoever added a box showing a link "to Future Morden Wharf Development", a route no cyclist will be taking in the next five years.
What is it with TfL and overcomplicated underinformative maps? Drivers, bus passengers and cyclists who might use the Silvertown Tunnel would really like to know.
On EastEnders' 40th birthday, let's go in search of the soap's iconic pub. London has only one remaining Queen Victoria pub, as far as I can tell, but remnants of several pubs of that name survive.
The Queen Victoria, 148 Southwark Park Road, Bermondsey SE16 3RP
London's last Queen Vic isn't in the East End, it's in Southwark. But it is in a properly working class part of Southwark amid the council estates of Bermondsey, quite near the shops on Southwark Park Road. Best of all it's a proper throwback from the reign of the monarch it's named after, a cornerpub from when this entire area was packed with Victorian terraces. You can still find a few of these if you walk down the right streets, then you turn a corner and it's all postwar flats and modern apartment blocks as is so often the case in inner London. Had the pub been one street corner to the east the Luftwaffe would have got it but instead it shines on with its yellow brick, sash windows and brown faience tiles. One less storey and it could almost pass for the actual fictional Queen Vic.
Indeed a bit of digging suggests the soap's producers visited when the show first went into production and used the bar "for a dummy run". So says Julie O'Sullivan, the pub's millennial landlady, although she also claims that "Barbara Windsor, Dot Cotton, Ross Kemp, Shane Richie" have drunk here which suggests she sometimes mixes the real and the fictional. Alas Julie had the lease taken away from her in 2019, such is the way of pubcos, and the latest owners haven'tquite retained the ambience. The central wooden bar is still there but now with downlit optics and the upper display shelf removed, plus Julie would never have allowed those chairs in here or illuminated a ring around the dartboard. But it still looks good because Craft Union like to put on a decent show, and it still has a bottle blonde behind the bar (called Carole) with a cheery voice well capable of passing an E20 audition.
The clientele however aren't the happy mixed crew seen on TV, they're Frank Butcher types sitting around in shirtsleeves with pints, or at least they were on my visit to the Queen Vic. We're in Millwall territory so the discussion often turns to football, and by the looks of it watching Sky Sports and collecting for the air ambulance. Dogs are welcome. Jenkins' Pale Ale and Chambers Best Bitter are not sold. They had a big Valentine's event on Saturday, which I could tell because the window was still emblazoned with lovehearts, so it's by no means a one-dimensional space. And yes it may lack the drama but it's a pub with cheery soul and I suspect you'd be pleased if London's last Queen Victoria was your local.
formerly The Queen Victoria, 118 Wellington Street, Woolwich SE18 6XY
This one still stands, still displays a Queen Victoria sign out front and you can still go inside. But it hasn't been a pub since July 2009, this despite the fact it's directly opposite Woolwich Barracks and you'd think there'd be a steady stream of punters. It then became a hostel, and still might be upstairs, but the former bar has since been taken over by a lowly convenience store called the Q. Victoria Supermarket. I'd have abbreviated it 'Queen Vic Supermarket' instead and taken down all the Oyster top-up signs, but I was not consulted.
It still looks striking from a distance, a three storey gabled building with two tall chimneys rising higher than seemingly necessary and a fading inn sign depicting a book-reading monarch above what used to be the door. These days you enter up the side, they hope enticed by a wall of generic grocery vinyls and adverts for Lyca mobile, and it's so out of date the alcohol options still include a bottle of Becks. But the interior is low-key, low-lit and low-appeal, and all I spotted was Robinson's fruit squash, so unless you live locally and have run out of something urgent I probably wouldn't.
formerly TheQueen Victoria, 1 Gillender Street E3 3JW
This one's well placed, within sight of the actual tube station which stands in for Walford East on the EastEnders tube map, which is Bromley-by-Bow. It's also properly Victorian (of 1860s vintage) and lingered as a proper Cockney knees-up pub until it found itself isolated on the wrong side of a seething dual carriageway. When I blogged about it for the 20th anniversary it still had a brightly painted frontage and chalkboard adverts for live music but it had already closed down, indeed it called last orders in 2003. The building subsequently got turned into flats and not in a good way, more subdivided into 11 rooms, and judging by the state of the letterboxes out front no landlord's ever shown it any love whatsoever. I grimace every time I walk by, thankful only that nobody's ever whitewashed over the old Charrington & Toby Ale tiles out front.
The ex-pub looks seriously out of place these days, sandwiched between a new secondary school and its rainbow-panelled theatre, indeed it's probably lucky it closed so early otherwise it'd be a chemistry lab or changing room by now. Given this is notionally where the soap is set it's just as well the BBC built a set at Elstree rather on waste ground beside the river Lea because this corner of E3 has evolved far faster than E20.
Still in the East End, not only does this look every inch a Victorian boozer but it's attached to a proper Victorian terrace, part of a patch of conservation area between Columbia Road Market and Roman Road. Just look at the gorgeous 'The Queen Victoria' moulding on the roof beneath a royal crest. In this case closure came in 1993 before this corner of Bethnal Green became the gentrification magnet it is today, and the odd grey doors at pavement level now lead to separate flats. The planters out front somehow haven't been removed by Tower Hamlets' car-friendly Mayor, not yet, and yes I did have to wait for marketgoers clutching wrapped flowers to get out of the way before I took that photo.
Now we're into the no-shows. This is the site of the Queen Victoria in Haggerston, about half a mile north of the last site, where the pub and all the houses it served have long been swept from the map. Instead the area's now solid former council housing, almost entirely flats, with the location of the Queen Vic now a row of parking spaces along the front of Fellows Court. Pubs are no longer a feature of the surrounding neighbourhood, the nearby shopping parade is as downbeat as it gets and the local primary school closed last year due to lack of pupils. If EastEnders were set here, sorry Haggerston, it'd be an utter gloomfest.
I got here too late because this Queen Victoria was demolished in March 2021. That said it was in a horrible-looking flat-roofed 60s building, locally known as Victoria House, and had been empty since 2006 so no great loss. Three quadrants round the big crossroads in North Cheam have a charming 30s suburban vibe but this corner looks a lot better as rubble behind blank hoardings. The current plan is to build a 7-storey block of flats as a 'gateway development', which anywhere in inner London might look quite normal but would be a jarring highrise imposition here. No replacement pub is planned but a Wetherspoons exists just round the corner on London Road and that's quite enough.
formerly TheQueen Victoria, 13 Tooting Grove, Tooting SW17 0RA
Art deco 1930s pub with copper roof, renamed 'The Little House' before it closed in 2010. An English Heritage spot-listing failed so now subdivided into five quite nice-looking flats.
formerly The Queen Victoria, 98 Mitcham Road, Croydon CRO 3RJ
A chalet-fronted boozer on the road out of West Croydon, closed in 2004, demolished in 2012 and now serving the community as a car park. Nothing to see here.
formerly The Queen Victoria, 136 Falcon Road, Battersea SW11 2LP
Renamed 'The Spikey Hedgehog' before it closed in 1999, then demolished, now a block of flats called St Luke's Court. No point visiting specially.
formerly The Queen Victoria, 121 Bath Road, Hounslow TW3 3BT
Closed 1996, also demolished for flats, and I think we've gone far enough back now.
And finally a classic postwar pub that's now lumpen flats. It was situated at the end of an L-shaped street called Albert Square, a real one in Maryland, even though its original square-ish attributes are hard to distinguish today. The pub was known as The Albert House for most of its existence, due to its location, but the final owners decided to capitalise on soap notoriety and renamed it The Queen Vic. This didn't ultimately help to bring a rush of punters, even with a flapping inn sign out front, and when I turned up for the 20th anniversary it was already being redeveloped. The resulting block is called Basle House and the bit that used to be the pub has hardly any windows and looks terribly bland. Judging by the outbreak of angry posters all over the bin store an angry row appears to have broken out regarding the improper dumping of black bags, but as storylines go that's pretty poor so I'd stick with the real Queen Vic on the actual Albert Square tonight instead.
One stop short of Barking: Upney, East Ham, West Ham, Upminster, Woodgrange Park, Barking Riverside, Dagenham Dock, Stratford Current Walkers crisp flavours: ready salted, cheese & onion, salt & vinegar, prawn cocktail, roast chicken, smoky bacon, tomato ketchup, pickled onion, cheese toastie (and beanz), roast chicken (and mayonnaise), sausage sarnie (and ketchup) Days on which I had my hair cut in 1985: 17th January, 6th March, 24th April, 18th June, 8th August, 7th October, 13th December Towns where the National Eisteddfod has been held at least three times: Aberdare, Aberystwyth, Bala, Bangor, Caernarfon, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Denbigh, Liverpool, Llandudno, Llanelli, Llanrwst, Mold, Mountain Ash, Neath, Newport, Pwllheli, Rhyl, Swansea, Wrexham Ferry departures from Wemyss Bay on Sundays in the summer of 1993: 0930, 1130, 1330, 1530, 1730, 1920, 2040
Winners of the prestigious Only Connect Third Place Play-off: Chessmen, Wrights, Trade Unionists, Wordsmiths, Poptimists, Forrests, Whodunnits, Ramblers, Scrummagers, Mercians, Cat Cows or Crunchers European countries that drive on the left: Channel Islands, Cyprus, Ireland, Isle of Man, Malta, UK Zodiac signs in Polish: Baran, Bliźnięta, Byk, Rak, Lew, Panna, Waga, Skorpion, Strzelec, Koziorożec, Wodnik, Ryby Numbers which haven't been drawn in the National Lottery so far this year: 3, 4, 9, 15, 21, 37, 40, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53, 58 US states ending in a consonant: Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming
Satellites of Saturn discovered in 2000: Albiorix, Erriapus, Ijiraq, Kiviuq, Mundilfari, Paaliaq, Siarnaq, Skathi, Suttungr, Tarvos, Thrymr, Ymir Lettered buses than ran in London 25 years ago but have since been withdrawn: C2, C4, H23, H24, H29, H30, H40, K9, K10, P3, P15, PR1, PR2, R62, R69, S5, T4, T123, TL1, W10, W17, X30, X53 Chemical elements with a double letter: Beryllium, Potassium, Copper, Gallium, Yttrium, Palladium, Tellurium, Ytterbium, Thallium, Hassium, Tennessine, Oganesson European countries that'll see a total solar eclipse in the next 50 years: Greenland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Gibraltar, Ukraine 6Music's daytime schedule from next week: 5am Chris Hawkins, 7am Nick Grimshaw, 10am Lauren Laverne, 1pm Craig Charles, 4pm Steve Lamacq/Huw Stephens
House numbers I've lived at: 7 (twice), 8, 20, 26, 46, 59, 125, 200, 215A Programmes on BBC1 40 years ago today: Breakfast Time, Play School, A Change In The Weather, Pebble Mill At One, Postman Pat, Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery, See Hear, Songs of Praise, Super Ted, Jackanory, Bananaman, Newsround, Blue Peter, Grange Hill, Wogan, Fame, Are You Being Served? Panorama, Dirty Harry Postcode areas adjoining PE: LN, NG, LE, NN, MK, SG, CB, IP, NR Female hurricane names for the 2025 Atlantic season: Andrea, Chantal, Erin, Gabrielle, Imelda, Karen, Melissa, Olga, Rebekah, Tanya, Wendy Hills in the City of London: Addle, Bennet's, Cock, College, Dowgate, Fish Street, Garlick, Huggin, Lambeth, Laurence Pountney, Ludgate, Old Fish Street, Peter's, Primrose, Snow, St Andrew's, St Dunstans, Tower, White Lion
Blue Peter cats: Jason, Jack, Jill, Willow, Kari, Oke, Smudge, Socks, Cookie Prime numbers whose digits total 5: 5, 23, 41, 113, 131, 311, 401, 1031, 1301, 2003, 4001, 10103, 10301, 20201, 21011, 30011, 101021, 101111, 103001, 120011, 121001, 200003, 201011, 202001, 210011, 1001003, 1003001, 1010003, 10011101, 10101101, 10110011, 10111001, 11000111, 11100101, 100100111, 100111001, 101001011, 40000000000001, 10000000000000000000000000000000000000121 Accented letter e's: è, é, ê, ë, ē, ė, ȩ, ę, ě, ȅ, ẹ, ẽ, ę̋, ḕ, ḗ, ḙ, ḛ, ḝ, ė̄, ê̄, ê̌ "A dull, boring list" (generated by AI): Lampposts are... installed by the local council, typically made of metal, painted grey or black, numbered for maintenance purposes, use LED or halogen bulbs, turn on at dusk and off at dawn, occasionally have stickers on them. Places mentioned in tomorrow's post: Bermondsey, Woolwich, Haggerston, Bethnal Green, Bromley-by-Bow, North Cheam, Hounslow, Battersea, Maryland
The major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout continue, likely for three more weeks. But before they finish the disruption's going to get much worse and all the buses are going back to normal, perhaps not in the order you'd expect.
All the earlier reshaping and resurfacing appears to be complete, so the roundabout now has a proper kerbed rim and fresh tarmac has been laid right up to the new edges. In particular full tactile paving now surrounds the various pedestrian crossings, although these aren't being used at present because we're still using the temporary lights that have been in situ since October.
What's new is that the pavement and carriageway at the very end of Stratford High Street, immediately above the river, has been coned off for remodelling. The cycle lane is out of action, which isn't great, and pedestrians are being diverted around a large hole where a dozen orange pipes are threaded just below the tarmac. A single lane of traffic still flows through but, excitingly, it follows the new lane workmen added last year which has finally been christened by a stream of tyres. The roundabout's plainly not ready to reopen yet.
But it must be ready soon because the full whack of overnight carriageway resurfacing has finally been pencilled in for next week. It was originally due to happen on some unnamed date in January but delays have shunted it into the last week of February instead. They've just announced it on a big yellow sign.
From this it looks like a lot of closures, a total of six consecutive nights from Monday 24th February to Saturday 1st March. But it's actually fewer than that - just 24th, 25th, 26th and 28th - so not actually as bad as a passing driver might expect. And I only know this because they've sent everybody local a letter.
I love how the last line of the letter encourages us to "follow @TfLBusAlerts on X for live updates". TfL deleted their @TfLBusAlerts Twitter account in September 2020 so this is gobsmackingly out of date advice. Muppets.
Resurfacing will take place in two halves, the Bow side next Monday and Tuesday and the Stratford side next Wednesday and Friday. Thursday gets a reprieve because West Ham are playing at home. Closure will be between 9pm and 5am because that's when traffic's at its lightest but it's still going to be massively disruptive because the Bow Roundabout is the only traffic connection across the Lea for a mile in either direction. According to the letter "diversions will be in place", and they won't be short, also "several bus routes will be on diversion and bus stops in the area suspended". I expect the flyover and underpass will continue to flow freely.
It's strange, then, that all the buses in the area are going back to their normal schedules on Saturday.
Frequencies were cut and the 8 curtailed at Old Ford at the end of August, five weeks before any roadworks started, and those changes are now being reversed early too. Back comes route 8 to Bow Church just in time to still get stuck in the queues, whereas the whole point of stopping elsewhere for six months was to avoid them. It's as if bus changes are steered like an ocean liner, based on what was due to be happening ages ago rather than what's actually planned now.
This is how stupid it is.
Sat 22 Feb: buses go back to normal, roadworks continue Sun 23 Feb: roadworks continue Mon 24 Feb: overnight closure for resurfacing Tue 25 Feb: overnight closure for resurfacing Wed 26 Feb: overnight closure for resurfacing Thu 27 Feb: roadworks continue Fri 28 Feb: overnight closure for resurfacing Sat 01 Mar: roadworks almost certainly lingering
... Mon 03 Mar: last day of roadworks according to online portal Sat 08 Mar: last day of roadworks according to yellow sign by road Sun 09 Mar: last day of roadworks according to sign on barriers
It'll be lovely to see local buses back to normal again, but expect to sit in them for longer or get sent on a massive overnight diversion until whenever all this eventually ends.
London's next dead bus 414: Putney Bridge to Marble Arch Location: southwest London, inner Length of journey: 5 miles, 35 minutes
It's only the third week of February but it's already time to kill off another London bus route. Route 347 and 118 have already been extinguished this year and at the end of this week it's time for the 414 to join them at the big terminus in the sky. It does nothing special, the only surprise is that TfL let it linger so long.
The 414 was introduced in 2002 at the height of Ken Livingstone's expansion of the bus network. The intention was to provide additional capacity on a busy section of route 14 and also to create new connections between Fulham Road and Edgware Road, connections which with hindsight probably weren't needed. Amongst Men Who Like Buses, especially those who mutter online, the 414 has for many years held the title of London's Most Despisedly Unnecessary Bus Route. The first inevitable cut came in 2021 when TfL decided to curtail the northern terminus from Maida Hill to Marble Arch, a significant two mile chop. Since then the 414 has been an even pointlesser route which essentially mirrors route 14 for 90% of its length, so it's no bad thing it's being binned for good on Saturday.
That was my map, which is considerably simpler than the poster TfL's Let's Make This Bus Map Unnecessarily Complicated department have stuck up at bus stops.
They've muddied the waters here by including route 74 which also links Putney Bridge to Marble Arch but runs via Earl's Court rather than the Fulham Road. Most ex-414 passengers don't need to know it exists, they only need the extremely simple advice "Catch the 14 instead'. The exceptions are those who use the 414 to reach Marble Arch, and they'll be able use either the 74 or the 137 when bearing off from Knightsbridge to Park Lane. According to consultation data only 8% of the 414's passengers actually do this, but the poster focuses entirely on them and not on the 92% of passengers who don't need to know, and who will likely be baffled by the superfluous advice.
When TfL's Let's Make This Bus Map Unnecessarily Complicated department eventually invites me in to deliver my Powerpoint presentation Why Do You Keep Making Such Unnecessarily Complicated Bus Maps? I shall be pleased to explain why multiple simpler bespoke maps can be better than one abomination with everything shoehorned onto it. In the meantime I have been for a last ride.
The 414 is one of eight routes that terminate outside Putney Bridge station, so if nothing else its demise will free up some stand space in the vicinity. You don't get dropped off outside the station entrance at the end of the route but you do get picked up there at the start so that's convenient. The 414 picks up quite frequently too, departing every 8 minutes during the day, whereas the more important 14 only runs every 11. They intend to increase that to every 8 minutes from next week so the service should cope, but the overall scrappage enables TfL to divert sixteen existing vehicles elsewhere thus saving some cash.
Escaping from the area round the station is a bit of a squeeze, nudging past the second hand bookshop and The Eight Bells pub. But it's really not far to the traffic lights opposite All Saints' where, oh look, there's a 14 sailing by so the unique part of our our journey is already over. This is one reason why the 414 will not be missed. We arrive at the first stop behind it and it hoovers up all our potential passengers, who it turns out are making a terrible mistake. At the second stop we'll be overtaking the 14 and then we'll leave it behind, never seeing it again all the way to Hyde Park Corner, so they should have come with us.
We've just entered one end of the Fulham Road and it'll be over two miles until we reach the other, so buckle up. The road wiggles its way towards Kensington as a country lane might do, indeed once did, now long built over by aspirational suburbia and yuppie retail. This means that if I were to describe what you can see along the 414 it would essentially be a roll call of posh shops, indeed brace yourself for precisely that. An Italian/Croatian wine bar, a boutique hotel, an ironmonger, a ski shop, a cigar emporium, a gourmet grocery, a secret spa, a wine bar, multiple organic bakeries and umpteen opportunities to purchase elite household fittings. Your local shops probably include a chippie but Fulham Road has a seafood restaurant & aperitivo bar called Fish and Bubbles so they win. Admittedly there's a Greggs and also a Shell forecourt, but even that turns out to be an EV charging station with a ribbed timber canopy and a Waitrose so is remarkably on trend.
Our 414 is sailing along which is one of the benefits of riding on a Sunday morning, though I guess things run slower in the week. Even so we are still three minutes behind schedule according to the timetable posted up at the start of the route (Fulham Broadway in 7?) which appears to have been written by a mega-optimist. Someone at Hammersmith & Fulham council should take down the Christmas twiddles, by the way, we're long past Candlemas. A sequence of lamppost banners heralds our approach to Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC, where several blue shirts and a lot of flats shield the fortress where football is occasionally played. And then we're over the boundary into actual Chelsea, which you'd think would look posher but the strip past the hospital is nothing like the Kings Road.
A group of European tourists with bleached ponytails and tans like crème brûlée stop the driver and ask him if we're going to the Museums. He seems unsure, but after the fourth exchange it turns out he's been trying to work out which museum they want rather than simply saying 'yes, obviously, please get on'. We've wasted 3% of our journey time waiting for these ditherers to board. Onwards past a wall of mansion flats, a 50 year-old delicatessen, several securely fenced gardens and the third branch of Gail's to be found along the Fulham Road. We finally escape it just after an ambulance has turned into the Royal Brompton, hugging one edge of Onslow Square to find ourselves as if by magic outside South Kensington station. "That's been damned fast," I think to myself, whereas we are in fact now six minutes behind that ridiculous fictional timetable.
Now for Cromwell Road where the Natural History Museum's new geological plaza looks surprisingly anodyne from the upper deck, and where the long promised 74 bus joins us. That yellow poster advised passengers to change anywhere between here and Hyde Park Corner, whereas in fact you should wait until Hyde Park Corner because that stop has more than twice as many connecting buses, which is yet another reason why the aforementioned map is wilfully inadequate. In bad news we're about to hit bad traffic on the Brompton Road because the lights ahead at Knightsbridge always take an age to change. In good news hardly anybody is being inconvenienced - I'm the only passenger left on the upper deck and downstairs is emptying out fast.
A single badly-parked VW Polo blocks our access to the bus lane that should have sped us past Harrods, and that's another two minutes wasted. All around us the immaculate are tracking down the impeccable, be that in Ugg, Rolex or Harvey Nicks, as the flagship stores of Knightsbridge awaken for Sunday trading. Then after what seems like an age we're finally out of the queue and West End bound, crossing from Kensington into Westminster by the casino. Hyde Park looks sparkling, perhaps because the snowdrops are out, although a heck of a lot of the grass is currently behind green netting as remediation following Winter Wonderland. And at Hyde Park Corner we reach the last of 23 consecutive bus stops shared with route 14, with just three more to go, which as I keep saying is why route 414 is no longer necessary.
We make speedy progress up Park Lane, at least once a confused Audi gets out of the bus lane and merges with the ordinary traffic. One last passenger decides to join us rather than walk the last half mile, and only because we were the first of ten different bus routes to turn up. Next week there'll still be nine and nobody will even notice we've gone. The final stop is by Speaker's Corner, where nobody seems to speak any more, and then the driver heads off round the gyratory to a bus stand on the far side. That'll be going spare next week too as TfL extinguish yet another central London bus route. Checking my watch I see we got here in 36 minutes flat, which feels good but is actually 50% longer than the deranged innumerate timetable posted up at Putney Bridge. At least they'll be chucking that in the bin on Saturday, along with route 414 which will not be mourned.
TfL maintains a sizeable archive of historical documentation within its Corporate Archives, a grouping responsible for safeguarding the corporate memory of Transport for London and its predecessor companies. A small but substantial proportion of this archive has been uploaded to a digital portal where you can search through scans of what was once day-to-day stuff but is now a unique record of the capital's transport history. Staff lists, leaflets from coronations, details of mascots, bus maps, uniform specifications, Country Walks booklets, DLR leaflets, floodgate specifications, original Metro-Land adverts, fares booklets, the activities of the staff flying club, Routemaster construction diagrams, absolutely allsorts... likely not precisely what you're looking for but a fascinating collection all the same.
Documents can be slow to load, especially when they're multi-paginated, and I'm not sure what happens if dozens of people try to access the system at the same time. But it's an excellent time sink if you're bored and potentially invaluable if you're ever trying to do research about London Transport from way back.
One of the best places to look for a flavour of times past is the collection of in-house staff magazines, so I've dug back to hunt out a few snippets from Februaries past. I'm only scratching the surface here, but the full magazines are available (eventually) if you want to read the full publication.
Good progress is being made with the Morden extension, three miles of single tunnel having already been executed. Tenders amounting in all to £231,000 have recently been accepted for the sub-surface portions of the four stations on the Clapham-Tooting section. Two of these—Balham and Trinity Road—will be entirely below ground; the others—Nightingale Lane and Tooting Broadway—will have booking halls at ground level. The work of preparing the foundations for the car sheds at Morden has been much hindered by the recent heavy rains.
The remodelling of the booking hall at Bank station (C.L.R.) is now completed. In place of the cramped lift-equipped hall that had done duty since 1900 we have an especially noteworthy example of the new type of sub-surface booking hall with spacious circulation area, Passimeter booking booths and escalator connection with the platforms. The Bank Station has become quite an attraction for City folk during the mid-day interlude, throngs of people lingering in the subways and watching with curious interest the animated scene presented in the booking hall as streams of passengers pass to and fro the escalators.
Arrangements are in hand for laying out, on the lines of the Wembley 'bus station, the section of the forecourt of Victoria station that is used as a terminal for "General" services. A feature will be a traffic control tower, wherein will be stationed the regulating official who, by means of signals, will control the departure of the motor-buses. Concrete platforms will replace the present ones of timber.
The person who knifes the cushions of motorbuses has resumed his activities after a few months' rest. In one 'bus alone nine cushions have suffered. Can it be he wants to know what is inside the cushions? If so we would be glad to show him around the Upholstery Department at Chiswick and satisfy him once and for all.
It may be said that even amongst the most sceptical, the fact has dawned that radio is here to stay. The millionth licence in Great Britain has been sold and the army of listeners is increasing by leaps and bounds. The T.O.T Radio Association is meant to bring together all radio amateurs of the great undertakings that form the Underground group of companies. The annual subscription is only 2s 6d and this sum is almost immediately refunded by the large discounts granted by the leading wireless firms.
The majority of arrangements for the L.G.O's Third Annual Boxing Tournament at the People's Palace, on Friday March 6th, are completed. Lord Ashfield of Southwell has very kindly promised to attend and Lord Lonsdale has intimated his intention of being present.
Doggy Ailments: I lead, others follow. Bring your dog to me for any skin disorders, stomach trouble, worms or distemper. My speciality: Teeth extracted. Puppies correctly docked. Remedies: safe and reliable. Advice freely given. Driver C.W.F. Gill, 5 Wellington Road, East Ham.
When he has finished his day's work checking the tickets of Green Line travellers, inspector Albert McCall takes a busman's holiday. As a hobby he collects bus tickets and has 22,000 of them filed away in albums and boxes at his Kingsbury home. Oldest ticket is one issued by West Metropolitan Tramways in 1884 for the trip from Kew Bridge to Hammersmith Broadway. Fare then was twopence: in the 66 years to the present time it has just doubled.
A special letter of thanks to bus and railwaymen for their service last year has been written by Aldersbrook Area Park Residents Society. The residents have sent their "sincere appreciation of the unfailing courtesy and helpfulness shown by all members of Wanstead Central line station staff and by the inspectors and bus crews of route 101 which runs through the area."
The canteen at 55 Broadway was an interesting sight on the occasion of the first ever London Transport chess match, when teams representing Central Buses and the Rest of London Transport opposed each other with grim determination in a 23-board match. Central Buses, who have the strongest chess section within the organisation, won by 14½ to 8½.
The twin set on the left is ideal for the out-size woman. If you are one of our juniors, why not knit it for Mother? The slippers above should tempt those who like sewing. Write to the Editor of London Transport Magazine for a free pattern.
At the Elephant and Castle the task of modernising the Northern line station is well on the way to completion. It is expected to reopen early next month. The old station with its familiar domed roof has been demolished. In its place a modern square building has been erected. The new station was designed by our architects to blend in with the adjoining enclosed shopping centre, which is one of the features of the development in the area.
Two new escalators come into use next month at Euston Underground station, which is being reconstructed and will serve the Victoria line. They are the first of eight escalators which will replace the three 56-year-old lifts at the station. The escalator tunnel is the first to be fitted with a waterproof ceiling lining which does not need decorating and only requires washing to keep it clean.
A new bus route serving both Waterloo station and the full length of the Albert Embankment came into service last month, mainly to serve office workers. It is included in a scheme for re-shaping a number of services along the Thames embankments to match them more closely with customer needs. The new Monday-to-Friday link is provided by service 168A from Clapham Junction to Turnpike Lane.
During the 50 years of service of stationmaster Jack Roberts he has worked at every Metropolitan station north of Harrow. He started in 1915 as a porter at Brill, the terminus of the single track branch from Quainton Road. "There was no rush hour in those days, but we worked just as hard - turning our hands from everything to issuing tickets to loading hay, cattle and milk." On one occasion while helping to coerce two bulls into entering a wagon from the cattle loading dock, one of the animals had a different idea and suddenly charged. Jack dived through the dock rails only an inch or two ahead of the thrusting horns!
A system of flexible working hours will be introduced shortly for a limited number of London Transport clerical and administrative staff at 55 Broadway. Mr George Graves, TSSA line secretary, told LT News that experiments with flexible hours had recently been carried out in LT offices using a manual system in which staff entered the hours they had worked on forms provided for that purpose. "Further trials, but this time using mechanical aids, will begin soon among staff in the two typing pools and in the appointments section of the welfare office".
Wartime telephone equipment which controls calls to LT's famous 222 1234 travel enquiry service is to be replaced with a new £40,000 system. The old switchboard, which is being strained to the limit to cope with up to 16,000 calls a week, is due to be pensioned off before the end of the year.
During 1974 more than 66,000 people visited the London Transport Collection of historical vehicles at Syon Park. This brings the total number of visitors to the Collection, since its opening in May 1973, to more than 130,000.
Earl's Court Underground station is the first to get the restyled slim-line automatic ticket gates. Over the next six years all 250 LT stations will receive the new automatic equipment. As we went to press it was being installed at Tottenham Court Road and Manor House. [pictured: Attractive Australian secretary Wendy Denchemko was one of the first passengers to use the new slim-line barriers last week]
Tickets for Sidcup Garage's annual dinner dance at Langley Park on February 22 are selling fast so members are asked to book their seats as quickly as possible.
In my opinion the shortage of police officers is the main reason why hooliganism, vandalism, 'mugging' and attacks on transport staff are on the increase. The police have a serious staff shortage, but surely they could step up recruitment by lowering their standards slightly. There must be hundreds of applicants who are just too short or who do not quite possess the educational qualifications yet would make excellent police officers. The public and public servants have a right to be protected.
R. J. Tucker, Conductor, Merton
You can still take advantage of the bargain stewpan offer featured in the last issue of LT News. The set of three enamelled saucepans, suitable for either gas or electric cookers, is available for only £7.50 inclusive of VAT, postage and packing. The final design is available in a choice of colours: brown and orange with contrasting brown lids, and blue with contrasting blue lids. Cheques should be made payable to Penguin Promotions.
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, a bit of a stroll, easily accessible, dry underfoot, intermittently up and down, World Heritage Site, spans both hemispheres, occasional telescopes, geology-focused, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
You've likely walked round Greenwich Park before, perhaps up to the Observatory and back, but you probably haven't walked round paying special attention to the rocks under your feet. I certainly hadn't. So I was pleased to discover that the London Geodiversity Partnership have produced a self-guided walk around the area accompanied by 19 pages of maps, diagrams, photos and associated subterranean analysis. If you prefer a walk where you learn something and get great scenery into the bargain, maybe give it a try. [pdf]
The walk starts at the Greenwich Foot Tunnel where it delights in pointing out that the information board by the entrance is geologically incorrect. The tunnel was not dug through chalk as one paragraph claims, but through the sands and clays of the Lambeth Group, a muddled layer laid down 55 million years ago. The underlying chalk is apparently 14m below the base of the tunnel, deeper even than the DLR. The strata at the surface are instead river-related, either alluvium or Kempton Park Gravel laid down between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago as the last Ice Age came to an end. The waterfront by the Cutty Sark is also part of a river terrace, the remains of a former floodplain left behind after sea level slightly lowered. Meanwhile the council estate a few steps away is built on the current floodplain, a couple of metres lower... which yes is suddenly obvious if you look at the slope down to the flats by the river.
The Old Royal Naval College, through which the walk kicks off, also lies atop the gravels. But things change as you approach the park's edge, specifically along a boundary line through the National Maritime Museum and Queen's House. This is where the sands and clays begin, in this case a layer of Head formed by mixed materials eroded from the nearby slopes. It's also the alignment of the Greenwich Fault, one of the larger ruptures in the bedrock of the Thames Basin, but I think that's a geological coincidence. You won't see anything change because the bedrock's covered by soil, buildings and grass, but if you're ever wandering around the museum or settled with a coffee in the cafe, a lot is going on beneath your feet.
The next stop is at the foot of the slope on the western edge of the park where a lone symmetrical brick building sits amid the trees. This is Conduit House, part of a 300 year-old water supply system which fed the Royal Hospital and a separate conduit outside the park in Hyde Vale. It was fed by springs emerging from underground, specifically at the boundary between the upper sands and lower clays a few metres up the slope, as water flowed down from the plateau at the top of Greenwich Park and percolated through the pebble bed. It still does but I failed to see any groundwater emerging as I yomped up the muddy incline behind the Conduit House, only the sudden appearance of rounded flinty stones in the soil.
The third stop is supposed to showcase these Blackheath pebbles which are plentifully found at these upper levels all the way from here to Erith. It's time to enter a small depression in the southernmost corner of the park called The Dell which was originally a gravel pit, likely built primarily to source materials for road-mending. According to the notes accompanying the walk the earth here is bare so black rounded pebbles are still readily found, and photographic evidence from 2017 concurs. However The Dell now doubles up as an ericaceous garden and the earthen path has recently been liberally scattered with bark chippings so I saw none. It's a gorgeous spot though, planted with shrubs and spring flowering bulbs, with the first of the camellias already in bloom and the rhododendrons still to come.
The Blackheath pebbles are the uppermost stratum in the park but the trail documentation mentions "a natural exposure of Chalk slightly further west" so I went half a mile off piste to try to track that down. Almost all the exposed chalk in London is south of Croydon but a small patch was exposed by the River Ravensbourne carving through the plateau, roughly either side of Elverson Road DLR. The larger lump at the foot of Morden Hill used to be the site of the Heathside and Lethbridge estates, a sprawl of 400 unloved concrete flats which Lewisham council have almost finished replacing. Here now are 1200 very modern apartments, appropriately including one block called Chalkhill House, and an intriguing-looking set of steps to a viewing platform at the very back. Might be worth visiting later, but currently padlocked so don't come now.
Back in the park, specifically in the Flower Garden, another gravel pit has been transformed into a lake. It's a lovely spot, especially at present with a roped-off carpet of rather a lot of snowdrops blessing the waterside. Other unlandscaped gravel pits can be found out on Blackheath, the largest an overgrown depression at the top of Lewisham Hill, but the finest geologically speaking is over in Charlton where a unique cliff of exposed strata has made Gilbert's Pit a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The London Geodiversity Partnership have a separate Geotrail covering that, if you're interested.
Most of Greenwich Observatory is behind a paid-for cordon but another geological oddity can be found in the back garden just before the ticket office. It's a 100-foot well dug at the request of the first Astronomer Royal in the 1670s, since called Flamsteed's Well, into which a just-under-100 foot telescope was lowered. The hope was that making observations vertically from the bottom of a dark hole would be an excellent way of observing stars passing directly overhead, and they hoped digging down as far as the underlying chalk would be far enough. Alas conditions at the bottom proved oppressively damp so only a few observations were made before John Flamsteed gave up, and doubly alas nobody quite knows where it was dug so the ring of bricks in the flowerbed is a reconstruction.
Next the trail visits the other great viewpoint in the park which is One Tree Hill. The summit boasts a fabulouspanorama across the City and Docklands, which looked very different in 1809 when Turner painted it, and is a lot less well known than the tourist perch by General Wolfe's statue. Two years ago the viewpoint was enhanced by a lovely loop of wooden seating and a long swooshing guardrail, while a gentler accessible path was added, which helps explain why my ascent was held up behind a slow-moving pushchair and a well-dressed whippet. On a clear day you can see right across the Thames Basin towards the Bagshot Sands atop Hampstead Heath.
And finally it's steeply down to lower park level, where another Conduit Head mops up the groundwater. In just a couple of minutes you pass from the upper Blackheath pebble beds to the Lambeth Group clays to a layer of eroded Head atop a tongue of Thanet Sands, and in another couple of minutes you could be out of the park striding across estuarine Kempton Park Gravels. What's more the dry valley behind One Tree Hill is called East Coombe and was formed by glacial meltwater released by the Anglian ice sheet at its greatest extent. Greenwich Park is nothing if not a geology field trip par excellence.
Whether you end up in the museum cafe or scuttling to the library to learn more about sedimentary rocks and the Greenwich Anticline, you'll hopefully give thanks to the London Geodiversity Partnership for revealing the secrets of a familiar landscape hidden in plain sight.
