I like a pointless challenge, particularly one that keeps me occupied.
At the start of last month I took a tube map and highlighted all the stations I'd visited since I last used public transport. That's stations I'd walked to, past and from without the aid of trains or buses. It was a lot of stations.
I totted them up and it was in fact 84 stations. I wondered two things. How many more stations could I walk to, and could I get that total over 100?
Spoiler: Yes I could.
I've been doing a lot of walking lately, it being the least risky mode of permitted travel during a month of lockdown. It's amazing how far you can get on foot (from my flat Stratford is 20 minutes, Canary Wharf 35 and the City 45). But there is a limit to how far you can get given the fact you'll need to walk back again (and that there probably won't be any unlocked public conveniences along the way). Three miles is about right, allowing time to pootle around at your destination, plus I always like to walk back a different way. Head out on a big loop to somewhere three miles distant and that's three hours filled.
n.b. I don't care that you would have got on a bike, boarded a bus, taken a train to Uxbridge or walked through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. My life, my risk. My task, my rules.
I checked a map and discovered there were only four more stations within a three mile radius of home, so I walked to those. Hoxton was one, which meant I got to see how the new Museum of the Home was getting on, but not Haggerston because I'd already walked past that. Then I hiked out to Leyton Midland Road and the two stations in Leytonstone and confirmed they weren't as far away as I'd previously imagined. That was my 3-mile-ring exhausted, and still just 88.
n.b. There are also five 'tube map' stations south of the Thames within three miles of home, namely North Greenwich, Rotherhithe, Canada Water, Surrey Quays and Bermondsey, but a broad expanse of water scuppered those.
I needed to up my game to four miles.
I don't know if you've ever contemplated how far a circle four miles from your home extends, but it's quite an eye-opener, especially for Londoners whose view of their locality is biased by the tube map. For me it reaches all of Tower Hamlets, almost all of Newham, most of Hackney and the entirety of the City of London. It also takes in a lot of Waltham Forest, a bit of Redbridge, some of Islington, a smidgeon of Camden and, by crossing Tower Bridge, a swathe of Southwark. More importantly it covers a lot of stations.
Within 1 mile: 10 stations Within 2 miles: another 23 stations (total 33) Within 3 miles: another 33 stations (total 66) Within 4 miles: another 28 stations (total 94)
I'm fortunate that I live so close to the DLR because that accounts for 32 of my local total. There's also a lot of Overground around here which contributes another 26. If I lived in Hendon my 4-mile tube map total would encompass just 40 stations. If I lived in Mitcham it'd be under 20. A flat in central London tops the lot, of course (Oxford Circus would comfortably exceed 120). But I can only get to the eastern half of central London from where I am - Farringdon and Blackfriars are in, King's Cross and Temple are out.
Here's the maths bit.
A circle of radius one mile has an area of 3.14 square miles (which is precisely pi). A circle of radius two miles has an area of 12.57 square miles (which is four pi). That's because doubling the radius quadruples the area. It also means that exactly 75% of the area of the two mile circle is in the outer ring and only a quarter is in the bullseye.
But my limit is four miles, which (ignoring the river) is an area of 50 square miles. That's a heck of a lot of London to explore which is why I still haven't got bored yet. But of that 50 square miles only 6% is within a mile of home and 19% in the two mile ring. Meanwhile 31% is between two and three miles which, counterintuitively, is more than the two inner rings combined. And as much as 44% of the overall total is in the outer ring between three and four miles, which is why I need to walk so far to get to much of what's in reach.
Anyway I spent one morning hiking out to Wanstead and Snaresbrook (90), another doing City Airport and King George V (92), another touring Old Street, Angel and Farringdon (95), another ticking off Canonbury and Highbury & Islington (97), another crossing Tower Bridge to Borough (98) and another nudging Chancery Lane (99). That just left me with a four hour loop through the three stations in Walthamstow and hey presto, on Monday I finally hit 102.
This is good news because I can now stop hiking to tube map stations. I'm sure I could reach Holborn, Lambeth North and Bermondsey without too much trouble, and even Barking and Ilford if I pushed myself. But I'm not going to because I don't want to overreach my current horizons, and I may need new places to explore on foot in the new year. Also I did walk as far as Embankment on Open House Saturday but all I ended up with was blisters on both feet.
One day travel will be unrestricted again and the other 340 stations on the tube map will come back into range. This day may come sooner for some than for others. But if I've learned one thing during 2020 it's that peripheral locations I'd normally only have considered visiting by public transport are actually entirely reachable on foot. Depending on where you live, London's smaller than you think.
