You may be a Londoner, but how much of London have you actually been to?
Here's a chance to find out, and to compare your score with others.
I've compiled a list of 100 places in London, and all you have to do is count up how many of them you've actually visited.
By 'visited' I mean properly been to. Being on a train or in a station doesn't count. Driving through in a car doesn't count. Riding through on a bus doesn't count.
You don't have to have been there for long. You don't have to have explored the local park, bought a coffee, been shopping or met up with friends. But ideally you should have actually walked around for a bit, even if only for a few minutes, in the approximate location I've listed.
As an example, when I say 'Colindale' I don't mean the area immediately outside the station, I mean Colindale in general. If you've ever been to the RAF Museum or the Asda on the Edgware Road, that counts. When I say Croydon I don't mean the entire borough of Croydon, I mean the town. When I say Finchley, yes, that includes North Finchley, West Finchley and East Finchley, but not Finchley Road. When I say London Bridge I don't just mean the station concourse, I mean the bridge and thereabouts. Feel free to be approximate, but not excessively so.
So, tick them off and count them up.
n.b. The places are listed approximately geographically, and I've made a map showing all 100 locations if you're not sure where any of them are.
Harefield
Harrow
Hatch End
Northolt
Ruislip
Stanmore
Uxbridge
Wembley
Colindale
Cricklewood
Finchley
Harlesden
High Barnet
Kingsbury
Muswell Hill
Palmers Green
Edmonton
Enfield
Highgate
Holloway
Stamford Hill
Tottenham
Walthamstow
Whetstone
Chingford
Hainault
Harold Hill
Hornchurch
Leytonstone
Newbury Park
Romford
Woodford
Barnes
Brentford
Chiswick
Ealing
Fulham
Hounslow
Southall
West Drayton
Camden
Chelsea
Hampstead
Maida Vale
Notting Hill
Pimlico
Shepherd's Bush
Waterloo
Bloomsbury
Canonbury
Clerkenwell
Hackney
London Bridge
Mayfair
Shoreditch
Wapping
Catford
Dulwich
Greenwich
New Addington
New Cross
Peckham
Penge
Walworth
West Wickham
Biggin Hill
Bromley
Crayford
Eltham
Orpington
Sidcup
Thamesmead
Welling
Woolwich
A quick word about my list. I started out by picking three places in every London borough. I tried to include at least one big obvious place, one fairly big place and one slightly smaller place. I tried not to pick anywhere too obscure. I was also aiming for a good spread across the whole of London, so next I tweaked my list by dropping and adding a few locations to space things out. If you look on my map, you'll be able to see how spread out they are.
My list is also very subjective. I didn't pick Ilford but I did pick Barking. I could have picked Vauxhall but instead I picked Pimlico. You'd probably have picked different places. Sorry, but my list is the list you've got.
If you have any queries about the rules, you can ask them here: Queries about the rules Please don't ask really specific things like "I think I went to Ruislip once, does the Lido count?" or "Where precisely would you say Cricklewood starts being Kilburn?" You've got 100 decisions to make, so you be the judge of whether you've been to each place or not, because life's too short.
Some of the places are going to be really easy to tick off. I suspect most people who live in London will have been to Camden, Mayfair, Stratford and London Bridge. Other places will be rather less familiar, especially if they're on the opposite side of the capital, and a few places you're unlikely ever to have been to unless you have friends or family there. You'll have to be well travelled to get a score in the 80s or 90s.
There's no rush, so take your time, but count up all your ticks and tell us your score out of 100.
If you live in London, or have ever lived in London, tell us your score in this first comments box: Londoners' scores
If you live outside London, or even outside the UK, tell us your score in this second comments box: non-Londoners's scores
If you have any general comments about how well travelled everyone seems to be, tell us in the comments box at the end of the post.
And yes, I scored 100. But how did you do?
Midnight update: Blimey, thanks for an unexpectedly high response! I thought mentally reviewing 100 separate locations and then totting up a score might be a big ask, but over 200 of you gave it a go. Here's a graph which shows how many of the 100 places Londoners said they'd visited.
The graph peaks in the central 41-60 category, with 50-something being more popular than 40-something. That's still a lot of places to have been to, suggesting that my readership are quite well-travelled. Next up is the 61-80 category, which is where we find 30% of all respondents - a damned impressive total. Meanwhile 18% of respondents are in the top 81-100 category - they're the London experts who know the capital right out to the periphery. I suspect that most typical Londoners would be much lower down the ranking.
A lot of you indicated that you knew the vicinity around where you live much better than the rest of London, with a distinct north/south divide for some, and certain quadrants mostly unvisited for others. Those with the broadest reach and highest scores tended to be those who travelled widely for work, or pleasure, and those who'd walked the London Loop or Capital Ring found their totals similarly magnified.
It's important to note that this has been a self-selecting sample, so those with poor scores or a lack of interest in geography may not have bothered to take part. You're also reading a blog which regularly trawls the outskirts, and has a travelling bent, so I'd expect my readership to be more active in getting out and about than most. To those inspired by this survey to get out and about more, especially to unvisited corners of the capital, I say go for it. There's tons to explore and enjoy across London, not just the usual suspects, and we are very much not a parochial bunch.
