I got two of them wrong, but never mind that for now.
Two of these eight locations in fact spread more than three miles from a station (namely Havering-atte-Bower and Cudham) and one remote country lane beyond Biggin Hill reaches four miles. But almost all of these are on the edge on London where you might expect accessibility to be poor. The two I find particularly interesting are the two that are a bit more central, namely 2) North Hayes and 3) Richmond Park.
Only the southeast corner of Richmond Park is over two miles from a station. If you know the Robin Hood Gate with the stables by the big junction on the A3, that's where. It's also the point where the boroughs of Kingston, Richmond and Wandsworth meet, so technically there's a scrap of Inner London that's more than two miles from a train. But it's a playing field, and most of the rest is deer park and golf course, indeed not many people live in this rail-distant sector. So what really piqued my interest was the location of the North Hayes nullpoint because that's heavily populated.
The spot I sought lay west of the Yeading Brook and north of the Uxbridge Road amid estates I'm not especially familiar with, not least because they're two miles away from a station. It's a stretch to call this Hayes but then Hayes has always sprawled, ever since the railway came along and dragged the centre of commercial gravity south. Hayes and Harlington station is a long way away, indeed exactly two miles, which ought to be obvious now I've mentioned it.
What I deduced in 2015, by using a ruler on a map, is that the specific rail outpost lay close to the junction of Kingshill Avenue and Lansbury Drive. So that's where I headed, making the last part of the journey by bus because there aren't any trains, obviously. And on arrival I got my phone out and used an app to tell me how far away the nearest stations were. Initially at least one station was still under 2 miles distant. Standing outside St Nicholas church South Ruislip and Hillingdon were 2 miles away but Hayes and Harlington only 1.9. Crossing into Raynton Drive I found Hayes and Harlington and Hillingdon were 2 miles away but South Ruislip now 1.9. Eventually, on a tiny stretch of Lansbury Road barely two houses long, I matched them all.
These two screenshots confirm the 2-mile triple point - one from a rail-only app and one from a tube-only app.
The epicentre of this rail desert may have been tiny but it did have a bus shelter, which was nice because it meant I could look around and take stock. Pebbledash semis in charmless postwar style. Garages up alleyways to the rear. Garden waste awaiting collection. Rough paving. A showy corner property with fortress gates and a 'hedge' dotted with artificial blue flowers. A small tree and a big tree. A rose bush. A traffic island. A bin.
Sorry, it really was a really tiny area where all three stations hit 2.0 miles so there's not much to say.
In good news they have a decent bus service here with three routes calling and about a dozen buses every hour. The 90 will take you to Hayes and Harlington or Northolt stations in about 15 minutes. The 195 will take you to Hayes and Harlington in a similar time. The U7 only serves Uxbridge station but takes over half an hour to get there so is more useful for getting to Sainsbury's. And it's all because nobody's ever built a railway to fill the huge chasm between the Great Western Railway and the Chiltern Main Line which, as you can probably deduce, is four miles wide at this point.
The bus stop is named The Brook House after the local pub, the Brook House. This brick hub is late 1940s vintage, spacious and sports focused, with live music at weekends and some very splendid hanging baskets. It's still very much the local watering hole. It's also the London pub furthest from a station (outer Havering and outer Bromley excepted). And it props up one end of a fairly long shopping parade on Kingshill Avenue where the local community are well catered for. Flowers by Zoe, several takeaways, a launderette, a bookies, a Co-op and a Costcutter, not to mention an electronics shop and a dry cleaners... plus what may be London's cheapest bakery.
I was nervous because the signage at Kingshill Bakery had been revamped since I was here last year, now even with a posh logo stuck to the window. But I needn't have worried because when I stepped inside it was just the same - a pair of counters, some wonky handwritten menus and a clear view into the kitchen/bakery out back. The assistant had her back to me finishing off some cream infusion or lunchtime snack, thereby allowing me extra time to pick from the traditional pastries and iced cakes. The selection could have been from 30 years ago, and I mean that as a compliment. I picked a large Belgian bun and had a handful of coins ready, so was both amazed and delighted when the price charged was JUST ONE POUND.
This was a mighty bun with a light doughy taste, plainly fresh from a proper oven. It had sultanas inside, a decent layer of sweet white icing and a moist glace cherry on top. It was everything my nostalgic palate wanted and an absolute bargain to boot, indeed astonishing value for money. If you regularly buy baked snacks from coffee shops and they come wrapped or mechanically sliced and cost upwards of three pounds, you are being absolutely fleeced when the real thing is available from a proper bakery at near-giveaway prices. I wish I knew somewhere like this near where I live, although my waistline is probably glad I don't. What fools we are to live in inner London when the proper haute cuisine is on the outskirts.
Also, when I checked the fish and chips nextdoor they cost £6.50 + £2.50 = £9.00, much cheaper than anything I reported on last week, so value for money is very much a thing round here.
Alas, when I got home and tried to reproduce my two mile measurements on a map I failed.
I drew 2-mile circles centred on Hillingdon, South Ruislip and Hayes & Harlington stations and they all marginally overlapped, whereas they should have left a small gap in the middle. That means nowhere here is quite 2 miles away from all three stations, even if you tweak the locations slightly because who's to say where a station precisely is.
I think what happened is that when my app changed from 1.9 to 2 what it really meant was that I'd just passed 1.95 miles, i.e. I was closer to 2 than 1.9. So all I'd discovered was a place 1.95 miles from all three stations, not 2, which means North Hayes should never have been on my list in the first place.
I should have realised this back in 2015 because a reader kindly constructed an accurate Google map showing precise 2 mile contours across the whole of London and North Hayes never showed up. Barnet Gate, similarly, is a 2 mile fail.
Always read your own blog carefully before setting out on a quest to uncover a location that doesn't actually exist. But hurrah that I did because as a result I enjoyed a fabulous iced bun from what must be London's best cheapest bakery (unless someone wants to tell me I'm wrong on that as well).
