I was in Dagenham and I saw this wind turbine and I wondered How many wind turbines are there in London?
I couldn't find a list anywhere nor could I find a map.
So I made a map using OpenStreetMap and OverpassTurbo.
I've finally worked out how to do that now.
It produced a map showing 44 wind turbines in the Greater London area.
So, 44 then.
Except I looked a bit closer and some of these wind turbines are a bit small.
The map includes the three twiddlers in the roof of the Strata skyscraper at Elephant & Castle.
The map includes a "micro turbine" on the roof of Hayes Fire Station.
The map includes a turbine on a school playing field in Colindale.
The map includes the seven small wind turbines in the Olympic Park.
I'm not sure any of those really count.
What I really want is a list of turbines above a certain level of capacity.
The Olympic Park turbines are merely 8kW.
The wind turbine in my photo, by comparison, is 1.8MW.
Here's my attempt at a list of decent-sized wind turbines in London.
It gets a bit questionmarky in places.
TfL are proposing a small change to bus route 350 in Hayes, diverting it to terminate alongside new flats on Nestles Avenue rather than outside Asda. It's not a particularly controversial consultation, nor indeed terribly interesting unless you live very locally.
However as part of the consultation they've produced this map titled 'Proposed change to route 350 in Hayes' and I rather like it. I think it's a surprisingly clear summary of local bus services.
It's not perfect, obviously.
» Three bus routes are missing - the 195, SL9 and U5. (Maybe it wouldn't look so good if three more routes were shoehorned in)
» The arrows are unnecessary. (You could just put a blob at Uxbridge and a blob at Harrow Weald and it would be fine)
» Somebody can't spell Northolt. (Does nobody check these things?)
But as a summary of bus services in Hayes - something quick to consult to see what goes where - it's surprisingly effective. Need a bus to Greenford? Easy. Heathrow? Simple. Hounslow or Hillingdon? Sorted.
Imagine having something like this posted at Hayes & Harlington station to help passengers work out where to go next, or stuck up in a timetable frame by the shops to boost sustainable travel.
I'm not saying these kinds of maps should replace spider maps, more augment them. But Hayes & Harlington doesn't even have a spider map any more, it was extinguished in the Great Haemorrhage of 2019. The only local map is for a bit further north where the Superloop doesn't actually stop.
Also TfL have fiddled with spider maps in Hayes before, back in 2017 when they introduced ghastly diagrammatic simplifications (here and in Barkingside) which continue to despoil bus shelters to this day. Change is not always for the better.
Alas these days TfL's cartographic team only seem interested in producing maps for consultations, often of changes that won't actually happen, and hardly ever of the wider networks that result.
So I'm not expecting to see this new style of map anywhere in the real world, more the usual exhortation to plan every journey in an app, but it might be nice if these summary diagrams were used more widely as appropriate.
As the summer solstice rolls round (tonight, 9.50pm) I've been to London's sole summery suburb.
Summerstown is a semi-indeterminate neighbourhood straddling the boundaries of Wandsworth and Merton on the eastern banks of the Wandle. If you know Garratt Lane it's quite a long way down, about halfway between Earlsfield and Tooting. Nobody's quite sure how Summerstown got its name, but a reasonable assumption would be that the river tended to flood in the winter so early residents were seasonal. In Tudor times the only house in the area was called The Garratt, this giving its name to the lane and also to the hamlet of 50 houses that followed in the 18th century. Today the area is mixed-use residential-industrial and the Summerstown identity is somewhat muted, but the name must exist because Wandsworth put it on their boundary signs.
The area's infamy peaked in the 18th century when landowners tried to encroach on Tooting Common and locals rallied to stop them by forming a protest group. The annual election of a leader became somewhat of a beanfeast, attracting increasingly flamboyant candidates and an equally boisterous electorate for whom the event was more important than the outcome. Local pubs jumped on the bandwagon and soon London's lower classes were trooping out to Garratt Lane every May for a bawdy day out.
"On several occasions a hundred thousand persons, half of them in carts, in hackney-coaches, and on horse and ass-back, covered the various roads from London, and choked up all the approaches to the place of election. At the two last elections I was told that the road within a mile of Wandsworth was so blocked up by vehicles that none could move backward or forward during many hours, and that the candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers on a May-day, or in the mock fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages of peers drawn by six horses!"
The Garratt Elections ceased in 1797 when the incumbent suffocated after excessive drinking and the beer money stopped flowing. A few of the pubs from those days survive, the closest being the Leather Bottle, although it's maybe a tad too far north to be in Summerstown proper. Professional buffoons, of course, continue to stand for election and sometimes find themselves swept to power.
The most-indisputable part of Summerstown is a short road called Summerstown which bears off Garratt Lane near the Esso garage and curls down to Plough Lane. Only two of the cottages that once lined it remain, the other throwback being a 200 year-old pub called The Corner Pin which thinks it offers The Best Steak Roll This Side of London. The eastern side was replaced by Scandi-style prefabs after the war - the Sun Cottages - and is now covered by a stripe of metal units shielding minor businesses like car repairs, flooring merchants and a taproom. The western side meanwhile is a wall of flats, recent brick-faced boxes erected as part of the deal that enabled the construction of Wimbledon FC's new stadium. Very little about Summerstown is especially attractive.
But the street had one world famous resident, the teenage Mark Feld whose family moved here from Stoke Newington in 1961. They lived in one of the Sun Cottage prefabs where Mark shared a small bedroom with his brother, read a lot and stashed his growing wardrobe of Mod clothes. He also had a guitar which he used when busking outside the Prince of Wales pub, before forming a school band, performing at wedding receptions and eventually signing to Decca Records. In 1965 he changed his name to Marc Bolan and the rest was musical history, peaking at the start of the 70s with T. Rex's slew of groundbreaking glam rock hits. They couldn't put Marc's blue plaque on a defunct prefab so instead they stuck it on the side of the Prince of Wales, now a Tesco Express, along with dates that remind passers-by of his shockingly premature death.
You'll struggle to find the Summerstown name elsewhere except on the front of two churches. The Baptist hall is a repurposed Victorian mission while St Mary's is the Edwardian replacement for a parish church which proved too small as the neighbouring streets expanded. Today these smart terraces sell for comfortably over three quarters of a million, such is the cachet of SW17, whereas the flats erected on Hazelhurst Road after the V2 hit go for rather less. The most prestigious addresses hereabouts are probably 1848's St Clements Danes almshouses which form a quaint half-quadrangle facing Garratt Lane, although you have to be willing to cope with just one bedroom if you take one of those.
And then there's the industrial estate, a substantial clump of metal sheds and reversing lorries located on the floodplain closer to the river. You'll know it if you've walked the Wandle Trail and wondered when the wall of substations, grey windows and council gritting lorries will ever end. Wimbledon FC's new stadium looks very similar, just much much bigger, a chunky corrugated fortress designed to reveal nothing of the pitch within. I walked along its blandest flank to the Womble bench on Plough Lane only to find it was occupied by someone eating their lunch. Also I found out where The Plough pub (which the lane was named after) used to be, and its footprint is now occupied by a very modern Starbucks/Greggs combo.
There is, I'd say, very little reason to come to Summerstown unless it's for the football, and even that's just over the Merton side of the boundary so doesn't technically count. Best celebrate the solstice elsewhere, because it's all downhill from here.
1) Metro-land(1973): In this iconic one-off documentary Sir John Betjeman came to observe the Croxley Revels, "a tradition that stretches back to 1952". Actually if you watch carefully he's never in shot, he merely provided a voiceover afterwards, but my home village has never been more memorably represented on screen.
2) Doctor Who(1976): The Timelord was forever dropping into Springwell Quarry down the canal in Rickmansworth pretending it was an alien planet, but there is apparently one occurrence of Croxley in the long-running series. It comes when an ambulance rounds a roundabout in The Hand of Fear, Sarah Jane Smith's final story, just after she's been buried by a rockblast in a Gloucestershire quarry (episode 1, 7m 20s). It's only a very short scene, barely two and a half neenaws, but the roundabout in question is at Cassio Bridge as the blurry roadsigns confirm. Technically the ambulance stays within the borough of Watford at all times but the background is the A412 exit into Croxley proper, and I would have been so thrilled had I realised my walk to school had appeared in my favourite TV show.
3) The Professionals(1978): In the sixth episode of this blockbuster ITV action drama, Where the Jungle Ends, Bodie and Doyle are hunting mercenaries who've robbed a bank and escaped by parachuting out of a private plane. The bank heist was apparently filmed in Slough, while the denouement at a plutonium processing plant involves a very lowly looking building in Harefield. Croxley appears briefly in the aftermath of the parachute jump, specifically Croxley Hall Woods, though you'd never know because the clearing they landed in isn't in any way identifiable. The guest stars in this episode were a middle-aged-looking Geoffrey Palmer and a young-looking David Suchet, neither of whom graced Croxley with their presence.
4) Training Dogs The Woodhouse Way(1980): Croxley's global TV smash came when the BBC turned up to film Barbara Woodhouse's unique approach to canine behaviour. Her unintentional catchphrases of "walkies" and "sit" caught the imagination of the nation, not just here but across the USA, and even made it into a James Bond film. And it was all filmed at her stables at the top of The Green, all ten endlessly repeated episodes, as unfortunate local residents felt the lash of Barbara's tongue when their attempts to issue commands fell below expectations. When it was repeated on BBC4 recently the announcer had to warn that her dog training methods are "not intended as current", attitudes to the use of choke chains having moved on somewhat. I was looking more at the participants to see if I recognised any of them, and also marvelling at the haircuts which are also very much no longer recommended.
5) Mastermind(1980): This was the year that cabbie Fred Housego lifted the Mastermind trophy, a final watched by 18 million viewers and which elevated him to star status. On the day of transmission my brother was out delivering Christmas cards down Durrants Drive when he spotted Fred sitting in his cab holding the crystal bowl and beaming for the benefit of the press, so we knew he'd won hours before the rest of the country. Obviously Croxley doesn't appear in the final, but Nationwide sent a reporter to interview Fred before his win and this shows him driving his cab down Baldwins Lane and sitting in his frighteningly brown living room surrounded by books.
6) Grange Hill(1994): The filming of this long-running school classic took place in many locations, and in Series 17 I was thrilled to see several outdoor scenes taking place in Croxley Green. First there were Arnie and Sam getting into mild trouble investigating animal sellers at the bottom of Mill Lane down by the canal, very close to where I took my first ever steps. And then, blimey, the romantic involvement between Mr Robson and the new American teacher took place on the pavement within sight of the house where I grew up, and I still have that endlessly rewound scene on VHS somewhere.
7) Saxondale(2006): Steve Coogan's BBC2 comedy about a divorced pest controller was notionally set in Stevenage but one scene needed the characters to attend a 'muscle car meet' and this was filmed outside the Coach and Horses on The Green. On this occasion the lead character's car, a 1973 Mach 1 Mustang, was joined by a 1967 Dodge Charger, a 1969 Plymouth Sport Satellite and a 1973 Road Runner, and Coogan was apparently in his element.
8) Doctor Foster(2015): This was the TV potboiler of the year in which Gemma Foster (played by Suranne Jones) suspected her husband Simon was having an affair and emotionally unravelled. In the show they lived in Parminster, a town which filming revealed to be Hitchin (although the doctor's surgery was in Chesham). As for the Fosters' lovely home, site of the dinner party which became a national watercooler moment, that was in Croxley at 1 Green Lane just round the corner from The Artichoke (where additional scenes were also filmed).
9) Mum (2016): Stefan Golaszewski's slowburn sitcom about a widow and her oblivious family was supposedly set in Chingford, but the exterior shots that bookend every episode were filmed somewhere in Croxley. I've never quite been able to confirm where but they look very Lancing Way, maybe Winchester or Malvern but definitely not Sherborne. I get a quiver of semi-detached nostalgia every time the titles roll.
10) Pennyworth(2019): Some American cable channel you can't get over here made a DC action series called Pennyworth about the origin of Batman's butler, most of which was filmed at Leavesden Studios. Paloma Faith was a recurring sadist in series 1, and in one episode she turns up at a house on Lancing Way alongside actress Polly Walker. I suspect more Britons saw this reported in the local paper than watched it on the telly, and I'm not sure TV drama crews have been back to Croxley since.
What's the most popular journey between tube stations?
We can answer this question courtesy of an FOI request published yesterday. The data is
a) for journeys in the calendar year 2023
b) from one tube station to another
c) made using Oyster or contactless
We have had similar spreadsheets before, but this is the first
a) covering a full calendar year
b) including all journeys
c) post-Crossrail
The most popular journey is from Liverpool Street to Tottenham Court Road.
It was made by 1,319,965 passengers last year.
That's about 3600 people a day.
In second place is Tottenham Court Road to Liverpool Street.
It was made by 1,158,447 passengers last year.
That's 14% fewer than in the opposite direction.
There's a catch here, which is that we can't tell whether people made a tube journey or a Crossrail journey. The latter is quicker, just two stops, whereas on the Central line it's five. But once you're through the barriers at Liverpool Street nobody's counting which way you go, only where you end up. So these may be indeed be the most popular journeys between tube stations, but they're not the most popular tube journeys.
The most popular tube journey is from Victoria to Oxford Circus on the Victoria line.
It was made by 1,106,662 passengers last year.
That's about 3000 people a day.
Here are the top 10 most popular journeys.
The Waterloo and City line takes 4th and 5th place.
It's only open 5 days a week, so that's about 4000 people a day.
Oxford Circus and the Victoria line account for half of the top 10.
Brixton to Oxford Circus is the only other journey to top 1 million passengers.
Direction matters - journeys towards Oxford Circus are more popular than journeys heading away.
This diagram shows the top 20 most popular journeys.
Six of the top journeys are on the Victoria line and six on the Jubilee line. It's probably not a coincidence that these are the two most recent tube lines, deliberately planned for optimal connections.
There's also a Central/Crossrail group, the entire Waterloo & City line and two other journeys to King's Cross. Don't read too much into the one-way arrows, they're essentially a consequence of chopping the list at 20.
Stations which start cropping up in the next 20 most popular journeys include Bond Street, Paddington, Farringdon and Finsbury Park. All of the top 100 journeys can be made without changing trains.
Now here's a better question.
What's the least popular journey between two tube stations?
The FoI spreadsheet has 73006 rows and lists every combination of stations down to journeys made by just one passenger. For example only one person went from Rickmansworth to Hanger Lane last year, and only one person went from Upney to North Ealing. But the spreadsheet doesn't list the zeroes, so I've had to bash the data further to try to spot all the combinations that aren't included.
I've discovered that absolutely nobody travelled from Burnt Oak to Chorleywood last year nor from Croxley to Perivale, nor from Grange Hill to Park Royal. Altogether there are 166 such journeys, all of which are technically the least popular. I don't intend to list them all here.
However one person did travel from Chorleywood to Burnt Oak, one from Perivale to Croxley and three from Park Royal to Grange Hill. Some of the zeroes are better zeroes than others.
So what I've done is check which journeys had no passengers in both directions.
There are only 31 of these.
Allow me to sort them into four groups to show you what's going on.
Journeys involving the tube's least used station
Roding Valley ↔ Hillingdon, Roding Valley ↔ Kenton, Roding Valley ↔ Moor Park, Roding Valley ↔ North Ealing, Roding Valley ↔ Northwood, Roding Valley ↔ Ruislip
Journeys involving South Kenton station
South Kenton ↔ Ealing Common, South Kenton ↔ North Ealing, South Kenton ↔ Sudbury Town, South Kenton ↔ Theydon Bois, South Kenton ↔ Upminster Bridge, South Kenton ↔ West Ruislip
Journeys involving stations on the West Ruislip branch of the Central line
West Ruislip ↔ Croxley, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Chesham, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Chorleywood, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Croxley, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Moor Park, Ruislip Gardens ↔ North Harrow, Ruislip Gardens ↔ North Wembley, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Rickmansworth, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Watford, Ruislip Gardens ↔ Sudbury Hill, South Ruislip ↔ Chesham
Journeys involving stations on the Uxbridge branch of the Piccadilly line
Ickenham ↔ Chigwell, Ickenham ↔ Grange Hill, Ickenham ↔ West Acton, North Ealing ↔ Chigwell, North Ealing ↔ Grange Hill, North Ealing ↔ North Wembley, North Ealing ↔ Stonebridge Park, Hanger Lane ↔ Chorleywood
Six of the 31 zero-passenger pairings involve piddly little Roding Valley, the tube's least used station.
Another six involve South Kenton, a lowly station almost at the end of the Bakerloo line.
The remainder all involve non-intersecting lines in northwest London.
You wouldn't normally choose to travel between the tips of the Central line and Piccadilly line by tube, you'd go an alternative way. Travelling between the two lines without tapping out involves a seriously convoluted journey which people just don't make. Indeed in these cases we know absolutely nobody did.
That said, apparently 41 people travelled from West Ruislip to Ickenham, which any sensible person would do as a 10 minute walk. Elsewhere 83 people made the similarly pointless journey from Kenton to Northwick Park, and 53 the ludicrous journey from Hanger Lane to Park Royal. There's nowt so strange as people.
In summary
» The most popular journey between two tube stations is Liverpool Street to Tottenham Court Road.
» The most popular tube journey is Victoria to Oxford Circus.
» There are 166 tube journeys nobody made last year.
» There are 31 pairs of tube stations nobody travelled between last year.
If you want to make sure some of these journeys do have a passenger in 2024, nothing's stopping you.
(where a train journey currently costs just £1, for reasons explained yesterday)
Bedford
This is the busiest station on the line by far, a key connection to Thameslink and the Midland Mainline. Significant remodelling would be required to allow East West Rail services to pass through, but for now trains to Bletchley start from minor Platform 1a beside the car park, chugging away noisily and hourly. Nearby: The town centre was fairly buzzy on Saturday, helped by umpteen outdoor market stalls. I see the former M&S on Midland Road (closed 2019) has switched initials and is now a B&M, but the two former department stores on Silver Street remain mothballed and echoingly empty (Beales closed 2020, Debenhams closed 2021).
Bedford St Johns
Barely half a mile from the start of the line trains stop again, this time to serve the south bank of the Ouse. But this is an absolute runt of a station, a brief single platform beneath a road bridge, accessed either down a set of steps or through the back of a desolate and unkempt car park. The Community Rail Partnership has tried brightening up a stretch of fence with some nice river-themed mosaics but to not much avail. It is therefore good news that this is the one station East West Rail have pencilled in for demolition, or rather relocation, shifting it a tad closer to the hospital so that the line here can be dualled. Nearby: Bedford's museum, The Higgins, continues to impress every time I visit. As well as local stuff and impeccable design galleries it also holds the collection of the great 20th century illustrator Edward Bawden. At present they have a big exhibition displaying more of his works than usual alongside other art inspired by it, including colourful graphics and black and white linoprints, and I felt the need to look round twice that's how much I enjoyed it.
Kempston Hardwick
Not Kempston, where a station would be useful and serve thousands of houses, but beyond the bypass on an insignificant lane close to a trio of logistics centres and hardly any houses at all. Kempston Hardwick is usually the least used station in Bedfordshire which is good because that means I've already blogged about it so had no need to visit again. Nearby: If Universal get their way a huge new 480-acretheme park will open here, their first in Europe, delivering 8000 jobs and changing this corner of Bedford forever. It won't arrive before the 2030s, however, and if it does then titchy Kempston Hardwick station won't be the gateway, they'd help fund a new halt at Wixams on the mainline instead.
Stewartby
This was once the site of Europe's largest brickworks, a vast multi-chimneyed facility exploiting the clay which underlies the Marston Vale, but it's now closed scuppered by 21st century limits on air pollution. In good news I blogged about the place 10 years ago so had no need to visit again, and in bad news they didn't keep even one of the landmark chimneys, the last four have all been toppled. Nearby: The new chimney on the horizon belongs to Rookery South, an energy recovery facility which turns residual waste into baseload electricity. Growing alongside is an even newer core which'll soon be a gas-fired power station, again taking advantage of the post-industrial extraction pit locale.
Millbrook
The first things you notice here are the pretty former station house and a whopping adjacent pylon. But the real attraction is a memorial bench near the rear of the northbound platform, from which the face of the most famous local resident beams out. He actually appears twice, once as an army captain from the WW2 Burma campaign and once with head down walking slowly up and down his garden. For this is the Captain Tom Moore memorial bench, unveiled three years ago by his daughter, back when she was well respected and not an evil pantomime villain. There's also a commemorative poem on the railings behind, which swiftly descends into doggerel and which I couldn't take seriously as soon as I'd seen two misplaced apostrophes in the opening line...
He served his country years before, when sky's' were dark with clouds of war
The bench is here because Sir Tom lived a mile away at the Old Rectory in the village of Marston Moretaine. I had an hour between trains so I decided to go and see where he lived, and in the process of doing so walked further than he did during his 100 garden laps. It's quite a hike, either along a busy lane or cutting through Marston Vale Millennium Country Park, a landscaped former claypit. The latter is by far the nicer choice, offering birdwatching opportunities from hides along the wetlands. On the far side I cut across a field, over a tiny stream and through the churchyard of St Mary's, wondering if perhaps the great man's grave was here (no, he's actually buried in Keighley).
His former house is substantial, a seven-bedder, and surrounded by a considerable amount of land despite being bang in the centre of the village. It's also very well screened, either by a high wooden fence or a lot of trees, so you can't actually see the iconic walking-up-down area, nor the corner of the yard where the illegal spa no longer is. I caught a few glimpses of windows and heard the gardener giving the lawn a mow, but all I properly saw was the Planning Appeal notice still taped to a lamppost outside. Returning to the station I passed Captain Tom's local (The Bell, where a Sausage Festival was underway), his nearest Post Office (where he probably queued for stamps) and his nearest Co-Op, before returning to rest my backside against the great man's face while waiting for my next train to arrive.
Lidlington
I didn't get off here.
Ridgmont
I told you about the lovely Heritage Centre and tearoom here yesterday. Nearby: Barely anyone lives here - the village of Ridgmont is over a mile to the southeast - but the area around the station has gained significant transportational significance by being almost immediately adjacent to M1 Junction 13. A significant number of logistics hubs have been squeezed onto the site of a former brickworks, and in all the other directions farmland spreads off towards low hilly ridges as a reminder of how pretty this corner of Bedfordshire once was.
Aspley Guise
I didn't get off here either, this because I'd already visited on a cold December morning in 1997. I had to be on a training course at 9am located in a fiercely remote spot the organisers assumed everyone would drive to. No buses went close, not that early, so my chosen option was a train to Aspley Guise and then a 3 mile walk along entirely inappropriate back lanes. I was almost scuppered by an angry Alsatian appearing by a farm gate, but increased my pace and thankfully arrived bang on time. The course was very dull and I spent my breaktime desperately trying to organise a lift for the journey home. My diary records that the cost of my single ticket was £2.20, and who'd have guessed that almost three decades later the fare would be considerably lower than that.
Woburn Sands
I didn't get off here either. Like Lidlington the station's actually in the village, so that's a bonus passengerwise. Nearby: The much older village of Woburn (and the famous safari park) are an impractically long walk away, but the giraffes and lions are only visitable by car anyway so that hardly matters.
Bow Brickhill
With one mighty leap we've reached the edge of the artificial conurbation that is Milton Keynes. That's not why the station's here, it was opened to serve the small unswallowed village of Bow Brickhill just to the east. But on the other side of the railway line the residential swirls begin in earnest, indeed at the adjacent roundabout Brickhill Street gains its V10 designation and crosses the city past the Open University and the Tree Cathedral to end by Newport Pagnell Services. I showed you two photos of this tiny station (the platform and the level crossing) in yesterday's post. Level crossings are a major feature on this line, the landscape being so flat. Nearby: Immediately to the north of the station is the Red BullTechnology Campus, the Tibrook hub which lubricates so much Formula 1 success. Employees and visitors are unlikely to be the kinds of people who tolerate an hourly train service operated by 40 year-old diesels. Adjacent is the lakeside neighbourhood of Caldecotte where Milton Keynes Sailing Club is based, an enclave of cul-de-sacs ideal for those who like watersports and living near a lot of swans.
Fenny Stratford
The railway finally feels urban again at this, the penultimate stop. Fenny Stratford is an ancient market town built where Watling Street crosses the River Ouzel (and more recently the Grand Union Canal). Administratively it was first swallowed up by very-neighbouring Bletchley and then in 1974 by the new town of Milton Keynes. If you're waiting at Fenny Stratford's single platform the hourly timetable means you can probably walk to Bletchley quicker, it really isn't far. Nearby: I walked from Bow Brickhill because that really isn't far either, although two waterways and the A5 create a considerable disconnect. Along the way I passed a garden centre with a Waitrose, the site of a Roman settlement and the huge rainbow shed that houses Pink Punters, MK's A1 LGBTQI+ nightclub. Full marks to the owner of the electric BMW outside whose registration plate read B1 GAY.
Bletchley
The end of the line, for now, is the paltry platform 6 alongside the seething West Coast Mainline. A sweeping flyover has already been built to connect future trains onwards towards Oxford, which'll serve a new platform as yet unconstructed. Expect the fare to be considerably higher than £1 when that opens, but for now the dozen stops on the Marston Vale line are accessible for a fantastically tiny fare. Nearby: Bletchley Park obviously, but I blogged that in 2010, ditto the National Museum of Computing nextdoor. On this occasion I sampled the town centre instead, which has the most characterlessly average high street I have ever seen, entirely adequate but utterly undazzling throughout. And then it absolutely chucked it down so I sped back to the station and paid another 65p to go back to Bedford, and here's the ticket...
It's for a ride from Bletchley to Bedford, a distance of 16 miles, and the fare is £1.
Even better I have a railcard so it cost me 65p.
Why? What is going on here? Explain!
This is the Marston Vale line, a minor branch line which has been suffering from an embarrassing lack of rolling stock recently. It was supposed to be operated by three converted District line trains - the VivarailClass 230s - and these did indeed enter service in April 2019. However Vivarail had all sorts of technical and financial issues and entered administration in December 2022 at which point the Marston Vale trio were withdrawn.
No parent company meant no maintenance contract meant no service, end of. It's not easy to source new rolling stock at a moment's notice, especially when your platforms are really short, and it took until November 2023 to grab a couple of replacement Class 150s. These two were only enough to run a peak hours service, however, and it wasn't until a third became available that a full hourly service resumed on 19th February.
After two years of pandemic and a year of rail replacement buses, it's no surprise that passenger numbers had taken a total battering. So London Northwestern Railway decided to make a dramatic gesture and attract people back with a rock bottom fare, hoping they'd become repeat passengers. Initially the offer was for three months but they've since extended it for another three, and so it is that every single journey on this line costs £1 until the middle of August. Utter bargain.
What use is a railway line from Bletchley to Bedford?
Obviously it's useful if you live here, but the line is actually spectacularly good at dodging centres of population except at each end. A lot of the stations aren't particularly close to the villages they're named after, nor would you want to walk along a dark lane to get there, so the line's ability to generate traffic is low. But it is a very rare connector between the West Coast Mainline and Midland Mainline so ought to be able to attract west-east passengers, indeed this is how it started.
The line dates back to the 1840s and was one of the constituent parts of the 'Varsity line', a railway connecting Oxford to Cambridge. Many attempts were subsequently made to close it, but Beeching only managed to lop off the Oxford to Bletchley and Bedford to Cambridge sections leaving this quiet rump in the middle. It made a bit more sense freightwise when the Marston Vale was full of brickworks but they've all gone now, every last chimney, and the view from the train is now mostly woods, fields and filled-in quarries.
An Oxford-Cambridge railway still makes good sense, especially because it'd allow crosscountry travellers to avoid coming into London, so plans are underway to incrementally restore the link. Oxford to Bicester reopened in 2016 and Bicester to Bletchley is due to come back on stream next year with a new station at Winslow. Bedford to Cambridge is proving more problematic because the old alignment has been built over in several places, with plans currently at the "we think we know where the line's going" stage and absolutely nothing built. For more about East West Rail seehere.
What's the £1 experience like?
Prepare to ride a juddery diesel not necessarily very fast across a pleasantly undistinguished landscape. Nowhere else in southeast England still runs two-car Class 150s, though they're a mainstay of some lines in Cornwall, Wales and the North. Stations are small and well looked after, bedecked with flowerboxes and decorative benches courtesy of the Marston Vale Community Rail Partnership. The only ticket offices are at either end of the line - elsewhere you pay your £1 to the conductor on the train, assuming they can be bothered to walk up and down which evidence suggests isn't common. Maybe they're more tenacious when the fare is worth collecting.
Trains take just over 40 minutes to rattle down the line so there's a hourly timetable for most of the day (Sundays excepted). Someone might like to think of producing a simple version, though, because all I found to take away at Bedford station was a 10 page photocopied pdf, top-left stapled, and this is not the way to attract people back onto the railway. Trains are timetabled to pass at Lidlington, roughly in the middle, although the line's almost all double track so this isn't an operational necessity.
The £1 ticket also allows you to break your journey - I asked and checked - so if you really want to go for it you could visit all 12 stations on your day out. I don't particularly recommend it however because these aren't necessarily exciting places to spend an hour, plus the paths and roads between them aren't always convenient, but I did manage to tick off seven. More of that tomorrow.
Where's the cake?
Pride of the line is the Heritage Centre at Ridgmont station. This is housed in the old station building which, at the 7th Duke of Bedford's insistence, is pretty and half-timbered. It has a very small museum crammed into the former ticket office, on both sides of the window, which is packed with all sorts of line-related ephemera from black and white photos to galvanometers and signalling gear to old BR rulebooks. You get an even better sense of background detail if one of the volunteers shows you round, properly bringing the place to life. "That Amazon depot over there," said mine pointing out of the window, "used be to the brickworks."
The cake is in the tearoom which occupies the former Ladies Waiting Room and another room nextdoor. The smell of bacon suggested the menu was considerably broader than just sweet carbs. It was also encouragingly busy yesterday despite effectively being in the middle of nowhere, this because a lot of people drive, such is the place's wider attraction. Throw in a small giftshop with offerings to suit both the train obsessive and their partner and this is the obvious place to pause on your £1 journey. Until 19th August. If not now, when?
London's highest High Street High Street (Downe) [155m]
How ironic that London's highest High Street should be in Downe.
Downe is a proper village surrounded by fields, not far from Biggin Hill airport. It used to be in Kent but is now in the outer orbit of the London borough of Bromley. It has two village pubs, a small village school, a few farms, several stables, maybe 300 houses, a very poor bus service and a fundamental place in the canon of evolutionary biology thanks to former resident Charles Darwin.
A note on high things:Downe nestles on the shallow northern slope of the chalk escarpment of the North Downs. A note on high things: The word Downe originates from the Anglo Saxon word dūn, or down, as in the North Downs. A note on high things:Downe's elevation (max 175m) is higher than everywhere in north London (max 153m). A note on high things:Caterham on the Hill has a higher High Street (185m), but that's a mile outside London.
And for some reason Downe has a High Street, which is definitely officially called High Street despite what the street signs say.
Downe has a rising high street, barely 300m long, climbing gently to a triangular focus outside the parish church. St Mary's tower dates back to the 13th century and is topped by a shingled (tiled) spire. A sundial on the south face is dedicated to Charles Darwin "who lived and worked in Downe for 40 years", but the plaque has to add that he's not actually buried here, Westminster Abbey claimed him instead.
Across the street is the old Victorian village school, funded by the wealthy Lubbock family at High Elms, which for the last 100 years has instead been used as the Village Hall. You're too late for the barn dance at the start of the month but not too late for the Quiz Night/Bingo combo next weekend (all profits towards the renovation fund). If you do ever pop in and use the toilets in the extension out the back, you might like to know they're where the air raid shelter used to be.
Nextdoor is the George & Dragonpub with its half-timbered frontage and hanging baskets. It's perhaps most famous as Nigel Farage'slocal when he lived a mile away down Single Street, although history does not record whether after a few pints he walked home down the terrifyingly narrow lane or drove. Traditionalists will be pleased to see it has a Union Jack outside and a St George's flag in the window. Also the food's cheap, just £7.95 for a Basket Meal in the garden.
The Queen's Headpub across the road is partially Tudor with characterful leaded windows. It's contradictorily decorated at present, with both bunting for the football and a gold stag left over from Christmas. It totally wins in the heritage stakes, in part because it's named after a visit Queen Elizabeth I made to the village in 1559, but mainly because it has a plaque outside saying "Charles Darwin enjoyed a drink or two here". It's prettycosy inside.
The owners also have an eye to daytime clientele because alongside is a tearoom where dainty scones and hot drinks are served. It also doubles up as The Queen's Larder which is the closest Downe gets to having a shop. Fresh fruit and veg, sliced bread and confectionery take centre stage, also an incredibly limited supply of cleaning products and bottled sauces, but if you want to read your latest column in the Daily Express it's a long drive.
The only other retail unit on the High Street is the Dakshin Indian restaurant (or 'Dakshin of Orpington' as they insist on calling themselves online). This opened about five years ago after previous curry-vendors Rajdoot went bust. Obviously they do all the chicken tikka and seafood bhuna stuff, the menu's very comprehensive, but I was particularly drawn to their dessert menu which appears stuck in the 1980s (elegant glass filled with dairy ice cream layered with thick Cadbury chocolate sauce and Cadbury's Flake - £4.50).
At the very centre of Downe, in the middle of that triangular road junction, is a mature lime tree which Darwin might have seen a sapling. In 1953 it was surrounded by a wooden seat where villagers can sit and gaze upon comings and goings down the High Street, indeed in the absence of a bus shelter it's probably the best place to wait for a 146. The three grilles in the tarmac are irrigation pipes added by the Residents' Association in 2018 to help prevent lack of moisture starving the tree's growth.
The cottages down the high street are a motley bunch, some evidently very old, others blatantly 1930s and some later infill. Front gardens are sometimes glorious, sometimes tiny, sometimes both. You're very lucky if you have a parking space, hence the high street also doubles up as a car park, hence driving a bus through can be a real challenge. Walnut Tree Cottages are timber-framed and thought to date to the end of the 15th century, but their addresses are officially 1-3 Luxted Road so they don't count here.
Yes there's a red phone box, although BT removed the payphone a while back citing lack of use. Yes there's a pillarbox, but best get your mail in the slot before 9am. Yes there are two bus stops, one of which is actually called Downe High Street - that's at the quieter non-conservation-area end of the street. And yes there's also a very comprehensive information board and heritage map on the patch of grass opposite the pubs, so a lot of what you've just read I've copied rather than being innately knowledgeable.
Downe's charming, patently rural and seriously remote by London standards. It's what a real village looks like, not the ghastly urban developments or twee metropolitan oases so often rebranded by marketeers. Its High Street is also impressively atypical, a curl of cottages rather than a wall of shops and not a graffiti scrawl in sight. Very much as high as it gets.
London's lowest High Street High Street (Stratford) [5m]
Bus Route Of The Day 146: Bromley North to Downe Location: Outer London south Length of journey: 6 miles, 25 minutes
Because it's 14th June I've been out riding the 146, because that's the Bus Route Of The Day.
The 146 is one of TfL's handful of hourly buses, and by far the lowest route number to run this infrequently. It starts in bustling Bromley and rapidly heads out into the countryside, indeed has done since the 1930s when it was a weekend only service. It exists to serve the village of Downe at the southern end, whose residents would otherwise have to rely on the even less frequent R8, and along the way zips through off-piste slices of Hayes and Keston.
It's also one of a dozen TfL bus routes to be operated by a single vehicle (in techspeak it has a PVR of 1). This is because each run is timetabled to take less than 30 minutes so a full hourly service only needs one bus. At peak times Bromley's roads are more choked with traffic so the schedule stretches somewhat, the interval occasionally extending to 70 minutes, but generally speaking a 146 leaves the village on the hour and heads back around half past. However this tight timetable also means the 146 is exceptionally susceptible to disruption, as I was about to discover when I tried to go for a ride...
Given it runs so infrequently I thought I'd best be early so turned up outside Bromley North station with five minutes to spare. This ridiculously busy interchange is served by as many as 15 different bus routes spread across two adjacent stops. These include 6th January, 26th January, 12th June, 22nd July, 13th August, 11th September and 26th September, plus several others that don't translate including the frustratingly marginal 31st April. All these were showing on the Countdown displays apart from 14th June, which didn't initially worry me because some older vehicles don't always register. I stayed put and waited, and the bus didn't turn up.
I checked one of my apps which wasn't helpful one way or the other, until I finally thought to switch direction and see where the incoming bus was. It was just outside Downe, i.e. at totally the wrong end of the route, so there was no chance of it being here any time soon. Such are the perils of a one vehicle route - when it screws up it totally screws up - so I went off and looked round the shops for a bit. I came back when the bus did and was excited to see 14th June was top of the Countdown display because it was now 'due'. I stayed put and waited, and the bus didn't turn up.
The 146 remained top of the Countdown display for a full 30 minutes, 29 of them a lie. I didn't dare go anywhere in case the bus came and went, because it would be a very long time before it came back, but instead I was being entirely misled. None of this was made easier by the large pile of sick inside the shelter, a lumpy sprawl which looked like a bowlful of porridge hadn't stayed down. Part of it was covered by a few flappy pages from a copy of City AM, but the remainder was visibly congealing on the pavement causing large numbers of arriving passengers to give it a wide berth. Sometimes travelling by bus is anything but glamorous.
Shortly before the timetabled departure time a cleaner from the council turned up, noticed the mess and halted his trolley. I expected him to clean it up, but instead he spotted a spare copy of City AM behind the shelter and used it to cover over the exposed half of the sickpool, then stamped the paper down. This camouflaging measure proved successful in that passengers no longer dodged the shelter, even sitting on its bench with their feet dangerously close to concealed beige sludge. I presume someone cleared it up properly later but I don't know for sure because thankfully at that point the 146 turned up, either bang on time or one hour late depending.
The bus wasn't busy, even after an exceptional wait, just me and a schoolboy and later three more passengers picked up by the shops. The weaving wiggle through central Bromley always seems to take an age, this the inevitable consequence of high street pedestrianisation. The driver nudged in by its bus stops, not really expecting much interest and generally being proved correct. Almost everywhere we were heading was alternatively served by more frequent routes so why wait for the intermittent single decker?
By the time we crept past Bromley South station we were already two minutes behind schedule. I soon spotted what the inbound traffic problem might have been - Thames Water digging up a road the 146 didn't follow but which had sent a lot of diverted vehicles into its path and clogged up the traffic lights. Heading south thankfully we skipped through. Hayes Road is lined by smart suburban villas and larger than average semi-detached houses, ditto Hayes Lane, the backroad through the original village of Hayes some distance from the station. I wasn't expecting anyone else to be getting on, not in a non-shopping direction, so was exceptionally surprised when an entire class of Year 6 schoolchildren piled on.
They'd been swimming in the Nuffield pool by the football ground and were now heading back to their village primary before lunch. They were also exceptionally polite and well-behaved, filing in quietly and filling every seat, the remainder standing near their supervisory adults and holding tight. The bus became so full that the driver triggered an announcement which inexplicably was 'Seats are available upstairs', which on a single decker shouldn't even be in the digital repertoire. And off we all went, the children chattering softly about how the lesson had gone and which was the best car in Sweden.
It strikes me as inherently risky to base your weekly swimming lessons around a two mile ride on an hourly bus operated by a single vehicle. I'd been caught out by a missing service and had to wait for ages, something which might have swallowed an hour of learning time and which was entirely outside the school's control. I guess it's hugely cheaper than hiring a coach, and I also suspect they got lucky this time because the class weren't anywhere near as restless as you'd expect if they'd been waiting for the cancellation.
On we sped past the civic bits of Hayes - the church and library and village hall, plus a rather nice village sign. At the secondary school the older boy who'd been aboard since the start of the journey attempted to alight, and the teacher had to nudge her pupils to part the ways and let him through. Swiftly we entered the wilds of Hayes Common, the road continuing past thick woods and ferny clearings without even a footpath to either side. After a brief breath to cross Croydon Road we plunged back into the greenery - nothing that'd generate any passengers - and eventually one small car park where the dogwalkers accumulate.
On the far side was Keston village green with its two pubs, one embracing the Euros with gusto and one remaining resolutely above the fray. This is one of the largest settlements in London to be entirely surrounded by Green Belt, although nearby New Addington and Biggin Hill comfortably trump it. At the bus stop by the Post Office the school party finally alighted, the teacher counting very carefully lest anyone be left hiding behind a back seat. One thing I'll say is that whichever company is making 'Leavers 24' sweatshirts must be making a fortune because I've seen them being worn by Y6 and Y11 children across London recently, and the other is that local parents must be chuffed to have such a good school to send their offspring to.
Now considerably emptier we ploughed on towards the windmill and ah, damn, a set of temporary 3-way traffic lights. This must have been another contributory factor to slowing down the previous journey, especially with people still heading into work. We stopped for what felt like ages beside thick nettles while the gas board took their turn to drill a massive inconvenient trench. No alternative timetable kicks in when this kind of disruption happens, nor can a second vehicle step in to ease the service, making the 146 extremely susceptible to falling over entirely.
At the woody roundabout by the parish church we finally bore off to serve a trio of bus stops no other route serves. None are ever busy, indeed this is where the 146 gets fully rural and rattles down narrow country lanes with awkwardly high hedges. The first stop was by a farm shop and mobile home park, a quiet corner familiar to those approaching the Wilberforce Oak on London Loop section 3. The second was at Downe Riding Centre, which I speculated last week might be one of the very least used bus stops in London. The third was at one end of Farthing Street, a brief row of houses which the Ordnance Survey lists as one of London's eight hamlets. Nobody else had come this far, just me. I can't say I was surprised.
On the final approach to Downe the bus passed proper cottages and an orchard, and our driver hoped not to pass any other vehicles coming the other way. According to the timetable we arrived at the top of Downe High Street five minutes late, and not beside the proper terminus because that was occupied by a huge red coach. Normally the bus turns round here by circling a central tree but the driver had to do an awkward reversing manoeuvre instead, first past one pub then the other, before picking up absolutely nobody and ferrying them back to Bromley. I'd alighted by this point and was busy exploring London's highest High Street, which is Downe. How fortuitous that the Bus of the Day had delivered me here, and you can expect to hear more about that tomorrow.
Many's the time I've traipsed to the middle of Kensington Gardens only to be underwhelmed. Thankfully this time it was well worth the effort.
★★★★☆ Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States (until 1 September) Yinka did the Ship in a Bottle on the Fourth Plinth, if you remember. This varied exhibition finds him reimagining and interrogating Western iconography, which means colonialism is never far from the surface. In one room public statues including Churchill and generals on horseback are re-covered by a colourful African print, in another model buildings representing places of refuge glow brightly in the darkness. My favourite was the War Library where 2700 battles, treaties and conflicts are embossed on the spines of brightly-bound books, almost numbing in their number.
★★★☆☆ Judy Chicago: Revelations (until 1 September)
Meanwhile, across the Serpentine, this retrospective of feminist art is by 84 year-old Chicago-born Judy Chicago. Her works are varied and sharply-targeted, the most beautiful a lengthy mural depicting the creation of the Earth as a natural birth. Once you start looking at some of her more abstract images you see vaginas everywhere, entirely deliberately, which is either empowering or unsettling depending. Talent shines through throughout.
★★★☆☆ Minsuk Cho: Archipelagic Void (until 27 October)
The latest summer Pavilion, in a line stretching back to 2000, is a cleverly-sectioned five-pointed star. The longest arm is pink-windowed with lateral benches, so somewhere shady to sit in the shade, perhaps reading a book sourced from the second-hand library in arm two. The arm that's technically the main entrance plays a soothing Korean soundscape, while opposite is the inevitable cafe dispensing tea and scant cake. The shortest arm looks the most fun, a bright orange scramblenet on two levels, seemingly for children but I didn't see an upper age limit. The architect's brief here is always to provide a multi-function outdoor space, and perhaps stripping out each function separately is the route to success.
Art South: Studio Voltaire
★★★★☆ Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland (until 25 August)
Never previously coupled, here's a pair of artists to either stir the soul or deeply offend. Beryl is the Plymouth-based artist whose playfully plump ladies delighted millions, seen here propping up the bar, swanning around in furs or eyeing up a Royal Marine. The exhibition also includes a few of her preliminary sketches and a sheaf of typewritten letters, some in strong support and one from the Devon County Ladies Bowling Association expressing disgust at her cheeky characters wearing white shoes on a bowling green. Interspersed around the walls are black and white works by the homoerotic artist Tom ofFinland. His muscled bikers and leather clones pushed the boundaries of 60s censorship, appearing in specialist magazines and later comic books, and were sometimes a front for a fully-endowed version available privately. Expect to see erectile genitalia in a minority of the works.
The coupling is genius, two artists grounded in oversized physiques best known for their portrayal of bulges. It also makes the shop quite fun, with its select collection of gifts from a stack of postcards to a £750 leathermen blanket. If you've never been to Studio Voltaire before it's in a former Methodist chapel round the corner from Clapham Common station, just past Sainsburys, attached to a cafe which evolves into a restaurant called Crispin at mealtimes. I'll be back.
Art East: Bow Arts
★★☆☆☆ 2024 Bow Open - A Personal Treasure (until 25 August)
The Nunnery Gallery is tucked away up an alley close to Bus Stop M, and every year curates an exhibition of works by artists in the adjacent studios. This year's assemblage isn't as outré as some, although Peppa Pig and a tin of Spam do make an appearance. The 33 exhibits range from textiles to ceramics via a piggybacking dinosaur, two trouserless gentlemen and wearable cake. The obvious centrepiece is Poems for Keeping Warm, a fireplace made from takeaway cartons inside which inscribed timbers have been burned, and apparently more will be if you turn up at the right time. Next weekend is Bow Arts' annual Open Studios when the full creative warren is thrown open for exploration, so that's probably the best reason to visit to be honest.
Art North: Central Saint Martins
★★★★★ Degree Shows (until 16 June)
They don't just study sculpture at Saint Martins College, they do fashion, fine art, jewellery, graphics, textiles, architecture, animation, biodesign and narrative environments too. And at the end of their third year the students put on a five-day event to showcase their designs and it's thrilling, not least because anyone can walk in off Granary Square and explore the four storey building beyond the unlocked turnstiles. Most of the work is spread out along the ground floor atrium but more is to be found (and enjoyed) upstairs in the workshops and creative spaces behind chunky swing doors.
The creativity on show is astonishing, both individually and collectively. In the jewellery enclave I marvelled at Tina Jiao's jade bangles, Dermot Fowler's faceted lenses and Johnnie Day's collection of invasive wristwear. In the product design workshop I admired the professionalism that 3D printing can bring to what in my day would have been a tacky hunk of plastic adorned with Letraset and/or Dymo labels. But mostly I loved the graphic communication aisle, an astonishing range of ideas gorgeously presented, from Anna Zanelli's Navigate Your Vote campaign to Tracy Zeng's immersive audio encouraging heritage awareness on the 390 bus. Every student's work is QR coded, thankfully, so rather than donning headphones I was able to delve into Tim Huckle's Trespassers Trail on YouTube after I got home.
The student concerned sometimes hangs around beside their work, not always confidently, although I'm pretty sure Haowen Zheng would have explained his collection of bread cameras if I'd dared to ask. The only other fifty-somethings present appeared to be proud parents or tutors, perhaps even industry scouts on the lookout for the next tranche of apprentices and employees. As I strode round past youngsters thinking "blimey, so that's what art students wear these days" the overwhelming impression I got is that creativity is safe and thriving in the next generation. If you get the chance, see if it cheers you up too.
Art Central: Newport Street Gallery
★★★☆☆ Dominion (until 1 September)
It's been a while since Damien Hirst's Vauxhall gallery has been open, almost like they skipped an exhibition, but finally it's back with an eclectic collection curated by, aha, Damien's son Connor. He's only included one of Dad's spot paintings whereas there are five Banksys, and also wallfuls of actually not bad modern art. A giant splotchy Myra Hindley greets you in the first gallery, plus a mundanely frosted door entitled Jess on the Toilet. Beyond are several tryptychs, the odd skull and even the EXIT sign is a neon work of art. Even though most of the works are 21st century the occasional Francis Bacon slips in perfectly, plus a Sutherland, a Warhol and the most underwhelming small black and white daub which it turned out was by Franz Kline. It's good to have the Hirst dynasty back.
