Engineering consultants Buro Happold, in association with social enterprise Footways, have just launched a new circular walking route linking 10 central London rail termini. It's not meant for speedy connections, more for recreational wandering, and ticks off "a range of features linked to London’s engineering history" along the way. Further 'Great British Engineering Adventures' are promised later but the Rail & Heritage Loop is blazing a trail. It isn't waymarked but it does have a very precise online map with pop-up pins so I thought I'd follow the loop to see if it was any good. If nothing else, I might now prevent you from trying similar.
Euston → King’s Cross → Farringdon → Liverpool Street → Fenchurch Street/Cannon Street → London Bridge → Waterloo → Victoria → Paddington → Euston
The first problem is it's 18 miles long, far too far to walk comfortably in one go. London's rail termini are impractically spread out, which is essentially why the Circle line exists and that's much too long to walk too. Euston/St Pancras/King's Cross might be really close, ditto Charing Cross/Waterloo, but Paddington and Liverpool Street are over four miles apart and that's only if you go in a straight line which this walk very much doesn't. I therefore decided to skip Paddington, a boss move which knocked eight miles off the walk all in one go, and just did the eastern half from Euston round to Victoria.
The second problem is navigating via the Footways map, which looks easy on a laptop screen but became less practical on a smartphone in the field. To follow the red line I had to keep zooming in and zooming in to discover what the street name was, just to be sure I was on the right route, which soon grew tiring. Also some of the backstreet routes are dead wiggly so you have to keep checking the map a lot, and I didn't and soon went off track. Also if you don't check frequently the map zooms out and you have to pinch and scroll back in again, and on a really long walk this soon gets frustratingly tedious. It turns out I went wrong twice in the first 20 minutes, and I supposedly know London like the back of my hand, so I swiftly decided to ditch the designated meanders and follow my own route instead.
But I did get round eight of the stations, and what's more some highly unusual things happened at some of them, so rather than blabbing about the walk I'm just going to blog about the stations. Sorry Buro Happold.
Euston
They've moved the taxi rank again. It originally shifted out front onto former grass to make way for HS2, and now they're clearing that away because a new taxi rank has opened out front on former grass on the other side. The new taxi rank is less convenient to get to and more likely to involve steps if you go the wrong way, but also considerably prettier with a multi-coloured timber walkway down the centre. I liked it so much I took this photo...
...and was very surprised when a security guard walked over and asked me to delete it. It turned out not to be a security thing, he just didn't like people taking photos of him which apparently "they're always doing". I told him this was strange behaviour in a public place and also that he might want to get a less conspicuous job, but being an obliging soul I duly deleted it and took another without him in it. Only after I'd left did I realise I'd actually taken two photos of him so still had one left, and what's more he was 100% perfectly obscured behind a post so not even his mother with a magnifying glass would have recognised him. How quickly we assume the worst, even when luck is on our side.
St Pancras
People are taking escalator safety really really seriously these days.
This sign leading down to the tube station is titled An Escalator - Seriously Not A Shoeshine, and goes on to warn No Feet Under The Bristles unless you want to lose your toes. I do wonder how many people using that escalator know what a shoeshine actually is, or want to be reminded about digital severance as they step on. Also at the foot of the poster it says Tell Others Too Please so I'm doing as instructed and telling all of you, although what I'd really like to do is sack the copywriter because I am absolutely bloody tired of being endlessly patronised about escalator safety everywhere I go.
King's Cross
On the concourse I had to manoeuvre past a big red box with a model train running round the top, which it turned out was the LNER Carbon Saving Departures Board.
It has a flappy display which is supposed to compare the carbon emissions of trains to planes and other activities, although it appeared to be malfunctioning because five of the letters were missing so it wasn't getting its point across. Anyway because I took an interest a lady from LNER handed me a couple of freebies, one of which was a packet of flower seeds and the other was a rectangle of card telling me that LNER believe in making the environment better. In that case, LNER, why have you printed a load of pointless self-congratulatory flyers which are simply going to get thrown away, and why are you handing out seeds in July which the packet says need to be planted between March and May? No Carbon is being saved by the Carbon Saving Departures Board, indeed quite the opposite.
Farringdon
I've always wondered why the departure boards in the ticket hall at Farringdon don't show actual departures, only an A-Z list of destinations and next trains, so yesterday I walked over to the barrier staff and asked.
They insisted the A-Z list showed departures and was easy to use, and I said there ought to be a simpler list as well. They said the A-Z list was quick to use, and I said it wasn't as quick as a simple list of departures. They said they couldn't see why that was necessary, and I said the Crossrail platforms have a list so why not the mainline trains. They said it might be because this is a new station, and I said those two boards at the end are always empty so could easily display a chronological list. They said maybe it's because this is a special station, and I said sure but no other station relies on just an A-Z list. Eventually (after much polite interaction) they said the boards were like that because "this is what they gave us", and I said that was likely the best answer and thanked them for their time.
Moorgate
This isn't on Buro Happold's list of stations but it is en route so I dropped by. Out front I was approached by a charity worker in a blue tabard, and normally I'd walk on by but this time I thought I'd pause for blogging purposes and see what he had to say.
"Could you take a group photo?" he asked. I was somewhat taken aback, but once we'd established the group didn't include me I agreed to take it. He handed me his phone, then he and his three Orbis colleagues stood beside their Orbis rostrum and held up their Orbis leaflets and smiled. Apparently they had to send the photo to their supervisor to prove they'd turned up, and wow the lack of trust in the zero hours economy is depressing.
Liverpool Street: The interesting anecdotes dried up at this point, but Ian Visits has the story of how they're replacing the food outlets by the gateline into 24 more ticket gates. Cannon St/Fenchurch St: The Rail & Heritage Loop splits across the City, forcing you to choose one station or the other, but I looked at both routes and thought "sheesh that's annoyingly indirect" and gave up and caught the bus instead. London Bridge: I failed to spot the just-unveiled 57m-long mosaic outside the station, despite ending up in the bus station where it actually is, but here's Londonist's gorgeously-colourful report which confirms "You won't miss it". Waterloo: I couldn't face this walk either because I've done the entire South Bank many times before, so hopped on a train to Waterloo East instead. Charing Cross: This isn't on the official list of stations either but the walk grazes it, so I went anyway but nothing interesting cropped up. Victoria: This was quite dull too, unless you wanted to stand around gormlessly watching a Despicable Me trailer on the concourse. It's also where I gave up because I was skipping the final eight remaining miles via Paddington, remember, and you might want to skip a lot more than that.
