Wed 1: I spent New Year at home for a change watching the cheesy fireworks on TV. I can confirm that Big Ben bonged 15 seconds late on my television, such is digital delay, so millions of people celebrated the arrival of 2025 belatedly. Thu 2: When in Croxley I like to walk past our old house to see what's changed, and the bathroom window's new and I hate their gold door number and we never kept the bins out the front and blimey the silver birch in the back garden is massive now.
Fri 3: Creme Eggs are 85p this year and a box of five costs £3.50. Ten years ago, when they downsized a box from six eggs to five, the prices were 60p and £2.85. Sat 4: Three things I failed to tell you about Lancing: a) The Wash & Go launderette is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, b) Joe Pannell won the byelection in Widewater ward for the Conservatives c) The upper streets in North Lancing are only served by a bus on Tuesdays and Fridays, once in each direction. Sun 5: My flat never suffers from condensation, except it did this morning when all the windows unexpectedly steamed up. I realised it wasn't something I'd done when I saw condensation on multiple other windows along Bow Road and also on glass panels at Stratford station - a highly unusual reaction to an exceptionally rapid rise in temperature as a warm front passed over. Mon 6: Here's a stupid sign in North Greenwich beside the new footbridge near the entrance to the Silvertown Tunnel. I think I know what they're trying to say, but what is a bicycle if not a mobility aid?
Tue 7: Matt Somerville's animated tube and bus maps have been taken offline after TfL's branding team suddenly got unduly heavyhanded after 15 years and forced his hosting provider to take them down. Widespread outrage will eventually lead to TfL apologising for the way that their “online brand protection agency” handled the affair and all the maps will go back up again, hurrah. Wed 8: Today I am 60 days away from being 60, and sometimes I wish I wasn't the kind of person who noticed this kind of thing. Thu 9: Thank you for your 76 suggestions for London squares I could visit this year. I've already blogged about a few of them but have made a list of the others for future perusal. We have Helena to thanks for my recent trip to Mortgramit Square, for example, thanks! Fri 10: Daffodils are back at the supermarket again. In good news a bunch still costs £1. In bad news a bunch only contains 8 stalks this year, whereas it used to be at least a dozen. In good news this bunch'll stay in bloom for over two weeks whereas they normally start fading after one. Sat 11: Had lemon curd on my toast today for the first time in years, and I think I should probably have it a lot more often. Sun 12: While on walkabout in Stamford Hill I noticed that pretty much all the girls were wearing identical shiny black jackets with a fluffy-edged hood, and I wondered if that was a Hasidic Jewish community thing, ditto the identical pink scooters a heck of a lot of them were riding.
Mon 13: An email arrived, can we use your photograph of Crich Tram Museum in our upcoming publication of the Heritage Shell Guide for Derbyshire? Obviously I said yes, how excellent to continue in the footsteps of Betjeman and Piper, so I'm going to be page 134. The new Yorkshire volumes look gorgeous. Tue 14: My Rail Sale purchases totalled £50.30 and for that I will be making three exciting journeys, one to the Sussex coast (already blogged), one to two farflung towns I've never been to (in February) and one to a farflung town I've only ever seen from a train (in March). It'd better not rain. Wed 15: I used to have four uncles and today the last of them passed away, not unexpectedly. I'm glad we saw him before the decline and I'm glad he got his celebratory card from the queen and I'm glad to still have two aunties, but it feels like a generational shift. Thu 16: I should not have worn that shirt in public, I thought I'd thrown it away. Fri 17: An online whipround facility called Collection Pot is advertising on tube escalators. I guess these days it is quite difficult for work colleagues to chip in actual banknotes when someone leaves, but I wouldn't describe a 1.9% commission fee + 20p per contribution as "as close to free as possible". Sat 18: Why go to a theme park when you can ride up the escalator at St John's Wood station into an increasingly ferocious downdraught, then battle the gale across the ticket hall. If you've never experienced it on a cold day the buffeting windchill is astonishing.
Sun 19: This attractive ramped staircase is the main entrance to Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College, and I nearly included it in my post 'Five things I noticed this weekend' but I didn't think it merited 100 words. Still gorgeous though. Mon 20: Trump's inauguration ran late so he wasn't quite sworn in by noon which means his Presidency is going to be two minutes short of four years long. It was the only upside I could find, sorry (and that's assuming we all survive until 2029). Tue 21: You can see Wandsworth Road station from the end of the platform at Clapham High Street, and one day I will write a post called Stations You Can See From The Previous Station. Wed 22: Ooh, the standing charge on my electricity bill was reduced on 1st January. Oh, it's only gone down from 44.000p per day to 43.997p per day, a saving of 1p per year. I feel like they're basically taking the piss. Thu 23: All four escalators at Cutty Sark DLR continue to be out of action following a long-term maintenance fiasco, so entry is now round the corner from M&S and down the emergency stairs, which aren't the stairs I always thought were the emergency stairs. Avoid avoid avoid. Fri 24: The Traitors final peaked fizzingly early with the loss of non-Welsh Charlotte, after which all the tension was lost because we already knew which side was going to win, and I suspect the producers were very disappointed that their Seer fiddling ended in a damp squib.
Sat 25: I finally got round to visiting the A2021 in Eastbourne, confirming it really wasn't worth blogging about, unlike the A2022, A2023, B2024 and A2025. Sun 26: It's unnerving seeing a walkthrough video of the house of a departed relative on an estate agent's website. I'm remembering all the happy times spent there, and they're thinking detached extended no onward chain. Mon 27: Some ad-infested digital channel is repeating 90s TV soap Eldorado, so I watched the first two episodes again and remembered how miserably plotless the series had been. No wonder it didn't last a year, there were no characters to care about. Tue 28: The Orbit in the Olympic Park is reopening under new management on Valentine's Day and a trip to the observation deck is only £7 according to their website. That's cheaper than I've gone up before, I thought. Then I read the smallprint and there's a £5 booking fee (five pounds! for what exactly?) so I won't be doing that again. To slide down will cost you £19 (i.e. £14+£5). Wed 29: My last three were East Dulwich, South Bermondsey and Queens Road Peckham.
Thu 30: This morning I walked across what may one day be Heathrow's third runway but is currently part of the village of Harmondsworth. The thundering alignment potentially crosses Hatch Lane between Candover Close and the end of the farm track, 1035m north of the existing runway, with a row of semis to one side and a deliberately empty field on the other. Everything south of The Crown pub gets wiped away while the village green and historic buildings survive. Enjoy the birdsong while you can, which may be five years or may of course be forever. Fri 31: Today I'm finishing off my last mince pie, bought from the reduced shelf after Christmas. Admittedly the best before date was 11 January and it is indeed past its best, but it's only eight months before I can stock up again.
Finally, let's see how my annual counts are going...
• Number of London boroughs visited: all 33 (at least twice each)
• Number of London bus routes ridden: 110 (20%)
• Number of Z1-3 stations used: all 350-odd (100%)
• Number of Z4-6 stations used: 0
London's next dead bus 118: Morden to Brixton Location: south London Length of journey: 9 miles, 55 minutes
This weekend another London bus route bites the dust - yes, another one - as TfL cuts slack from the network to save more cash. But the bus they're cutting isn't the bus they claim they're cutting because this is another exercise in numerical sleight of hand, and as usual it's all been fairly badly explained. Farewell to the 118.
The 118 runs from Morden to Brixton via Mitcham and Streatham and has been following a similar-ish route for decades. The 45 by contrast has been repeatedly beheaded over the years, most recently a significant chop in 2019 lopping off the northern end from King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. Its route is now just five miles long and follows several overbussed roads, hence it's become a prime candidate for extinguishment. The plan is thus to tack the 45's only useful section (Brixton to Camberwell) onto the northern end of route 118, starting on Saturday. And because the public tend to complain more when lower-numbered routes are withdrawn they've decided to call the extended route 45 instead of 118. Here's a useful graphic I've knocked up from diagrams in the consultation.
TfL have form in pretending they haven't killed off lower-numbered routes. In 2015 they threatened to withdraw route 13 and residents of North London threw up their arms in horror. Then in 2017 they came back and withdrew it anyway but having renumbered route 82 as route 13, and everyone thought that was great. More recently in 2023 they binned the 16, a route with a century-long heritage, but got away with it by renumbering the 332 as the 16. Now the 45 goes the same way, which means TfL have successfully managed to kill the 13, 16 and 45 by pretending they've killed the 82, 332 and 118.
One other route has got caught up in the kerfuffle which is the 59, which has been drafted in to cover the 45's southern dogleg to Clapham Park. The 59 is no stranger to Slight Terminus Tweaking having been diverted at its northern end in 2023 to cover for the withdrawal of route 521. Now its southern end also gets to endure STT, but only for three stops so it's relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and existing 59 passengers won't be generally inconvenienced.
There is of course a map to help explain the changes which has been posted up at all affected bus stops. It's from TfL's Let's Make This Bus Map Unnecessarily Complicated department and I'd like to imagine the conversation which led to its rollout.
Boss: We've made this map to show the upcoming bus changes which I'd like you to post up everywhere. Minion: It's not a very good map though is it? Boss: It's an excellent map, it contains all possible necessary information. Minion: But it's so complicated. Boss: It is LMTBMUC policy to differentiate between withdrawn, extended and unchanged sections of all individual routes. Minion: But it shows both the before and the after and uses three different kinds of line in several different colours. Boss: Yes, we always do this, whether it's helpful or not. Minion: Also you've only shown the central section of the changes between Streatham and Camberwell. Boss: Yes, we only ever make one map and then we stick it up everywhere. Minion: It's going to confuse the hell out of passengers. Boss: It ticks all relevant policy boxes. Minion: In particular it's going to baffle passengers at the 35 bus stops south of Streatham on existing route 118. Boss: It's an excellent map, it contains all possible necessary information. Minion: But we're not truly withdrawing their bus, only renumbering it. Boss: All the information they need is plainly displayed in a tiny box at the bottom of the map. Minion: I've made a better poster for these people, look.
Boss: We can't possibly use that poster, it does not contain all possible necessary information. Minion: But it's all the information these people need... use the 45 instead. Boss: We cannot afford to make two maps, we only ever make one and use it everywhere. Minion: It's still not a very good map though is it? Boss: Please go and post it up everywhere, there's a good chap.
I have of course been for a ride on London's next dead bus, even though it isn't actually being withdrawn only renumbered. Starting in Morden.
The 118 starts outside Morden station amid a maelstrom of reversing spaces and folk off the tube. The first stop has no poster saying the route's being withdrawn, instead the timetable panel flaps in the wind as if someone failed to close it properly. We head off down the main street, then turn right past the National Trust tearoom and dive into suburbia. Wandle Road backs onto the river of the same name and is lined throughout by quintessential bay-windowed semis. Our driver has to negotiate several sets of triple speedbumps and occasionally holds back while traffic attempts to drive the other way. The 118 has been the only (daytime) bus route down this backroad since 1936 so it's going to be a shock on Saturday when the 45 rolls through instead.
Now for the grand tour of Mitcham. First we pass the fire station and the tram stop, then the abandoned White Hart and the charred timbers of the Burn Bullock. Beyond the cricket green we thread slowly round the gyratory between Lidl and Iceland, past the extraordinary four-armed clocktower that looks like a character from Beauty and the Beast. It's worth saying that if you really wanted to go to Streatham you'd catch the 201 which runs direct rather than take a deviating dawdle on the 118, so that map posted up at all the bus stops here is properly unnecessary.
For our next solo jaunt we are the only bus to run along the northern edge of Mitcham Common, starting by the pond with all the ducks. I imagine foxes are an issue for the houses facing directly onto the woods. We then head up Manor Road and studiously avoid Pollards Hill, perhaps because the enormous estate hadn't been built when this route originally ran. I won't go on about the next mile through Lonesome and Streatham Vale because that's also on route 60 and I have to write about that for my birthday in a few weeks' time. What I will say is that I spotted a 'Not in Service' bus coming the other way with several people sitting up top and I think they were doing route knowledge for the new company taking over on Saturday, Transport UK.
It's taken over 30 minutes to reach Streatham Common station and we still haven't reached the section of route depicted on TfL's bus changes map. The common itself is two stops away. Here we join Streatham High Road, allegedly Europe's longest high street and still brimming with retail opportunity. Here too we join an entire fleet of buses heading north, this being one of TfL's busiest double decker arteries, and by the time we reach St Leonard's we are but one of six routes heading Brixton-wards. That said only one route passes all three of Streatham stations and that's the 118, thus of course next week the 45.
OK, we're finally on that map. First comes the bus garage where the 59 will no longer terminate, then the turnoff to Clapham Park where it'll go instead. Now at last the existing 45 joins us and sticks with us all the way down Brixton Hill, where there are a mere seven stops overlap between the two routes to be merged. I understand all the tiles have now been switched, a few days prematurely, though they hadn't when I came earlier in the week. On this heavily overbussed descent into Brixton the 118 will not be missed. For now it terminates opposite the tube station amid a veritable jostlefest, assuming the driver can find space to pull up in the crowded queue of vehicles by the kerb.
Next week the ex-118, now the 45, will continue to Camberwell so I then did that too. A slow crawl towards the police station, then back under the railway onto Coldharbour Lane. It says a lot about passenger demand that TfL chose to keep three buses on this busy corridor - conveniently the 35, 45 and 345 - rather than simply binning the 45 outright. Coldharbour Lane has a typical Lambeth mix of dense Victorian buildings, grey flats and multiple barber shops, plus a call at Loughborough Junction for those who prefer a train. I alighted at the new final stop at Camberwell Green, and thus ironically the only section of route 45 I didn't ride is the one section that's being truly withdrawn. Because London's next dead bus is the 45, not the 118, whatever the inadequate publicity might claim.
You know what TfL's We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department is getting rid of now?
First and last trains.
Previously the timetable poster at Mile End station would have included details of the first and last trains from the station, information which can be very important if you're travelling late or early, but now they don't. Instead the new posters urge you to go away and look up the first and last trains online. The top suggestion is to download the TfL Go app and look there, and the second suggestion is to go to tfl/gov.uk/timetables. If you use the QR code it takes you to tfl/gov.uk/timetables, so that's essentially the same as the second option. But if you don't have an enabled device the times of first and last trains have effectively disappeared.
Here's the kind of thing you used to see.
This is a poster from the southbound Northern line platform at Bank station. Trains start around 6am and run until 0038, it says, except on Sundays when nothing turns up before 7.30am or runs after midnight. Potentially very useful stuff, particularly if you're now thinking "what seriously, they start that late on Sundays?" To be fair this is the current timetable poster at Bank station installed in 2021, they haven't yet replaced it with a less detailed version. But that's the direction of travel.
They've also vanished on the Jubilee line.
What you get is how long it takes to travel to the other stations on the line and the fact trains run every 2-6 minutes. But that's now all you get, not the fact that trains run from 0518 to 0106. My hunch is that TfL no longer want to print a new poster every time they launch a new timetable, which isn't very often but in their view every scrimped penny counts. What's more if you launch the TfL Go app it doesn't tell you when the first and last trains are either, only what time the next trains are due and how to plan a journey.
One stupid thing is that the QR code directs you to tfl/gov.uk/timetables, a top-level index page, rather than one level down to the specific Jubilee line page tfl.gov.uk/tube/timetable/jubilee. It's a QR code guys, it can link anywhere, and you know anyone scanning it is on the Jubilee line platforms at West Ham because this is a West Ham/Jubilee-specific poster.
Even stupider the TfL website has a specific page listing first and last trains. I didn't know it existed until I started writing today's post but there it is at tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube/first-and-last-tube. It's excellent, it has actual pdf timetables for every tube line showing the first few and last few trains, and what's more it was updated as recently as 13th January. A QR code which linked directly to that would be a lot more useful than a QR code linking to an index of umpteen different lines, and beneath that atomised hourly departures.
Worse, I understand TfL have also introduced these threadbare timetable posters at farflung stations with a limited service. They used to provide posters with times of actual departures at the far end of the Metropolitan line, for example.
But as of a fortnight ago, according to a user on Reddit, even Chorleywood has been switched over to the new style QR-code-only design. That is a proper abdication of responsibility, even down to the wording that says "For Chiltern Railways times, visit chilternrailways.co.uk". See photo here.
n.b. I haven't been out to Chorleywood to check, or to any similar stations, so if you're passing through any of the following today please leave a comment and let us know.
Still has actual timetable poster
Switched to timetable-less poster
Not sure
Watford
Amersham, Chalfont & Latimer, Chorleywood
Chesham, Rickmansworth, Croxley Roding Valley, Chigwell, Grange Hill
This is the new poster on the Metropolitan line platforms at Baker Street station. It no longer mentions that the last train to Amersham departs at 0008, Watford at 0012, Chesham at 0023 and Uxbridge at 0043. Instead there are approximate daytime frequencies and two entirely obvious statements - "Peak hour trains generally run more frequently" and "Early morning and late night trains may run less frequently". Well of course they do. Such is precision-free dumbing-down.
It's worth saying that TfL still produce timetable summaries for the Amersham and Watford branches of the Metropolitan line with every departure clearly listed. These days they're only available as pdfs online, the printed versions having ceased in 2016 to save money, but they explicitly show all the details the new posters lack.
Interestingly Overground platforms all still have full timetables showing every departure, now shaded using the colour of the line. I suspect this is because National Rail stations follow different rules so TfL can't ditch them. But it is a tad odd that even part-time Windrush station Battersea Park has a bespoke timetable poster to show its occasional services, whereas posters at Oxford Circus won't even tell you when the last train goes.
TfL's We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department is increasingly in the driving seat these days, claiming all the information passengers need is available on the TfL Go app or online. But it's often not easily found, or only discoverable by trying to plan a journey, or sometimes no longer available even there. There's also an assumption that everyone has a smartphone, which obviously they don't, and that the TfL Go is a brilliant travel companion, which alas it isn't yet.
And even when there is a QR code to supposedly help you out it invariably links to a ridiculously generic top level page rather than what you might actually want to know, leaving you either faffing on the platform or more likely in the dark. So watch out for these new depleted timetable posters at a station near you, maybe already, maybe not yet, but the We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department has no intention of making things easier for you any time soon.
45 Squared 4) MORTGRAMIT SQUARE, SE18
Borough of Greenwich, 130m
To Woolwich to a Square that isn't, and may not be for long.
Though much of central Woolwich has been redeveloped, a lot of the west end of the town centre remains relatively unloved. The far end of Powis Street is particularly desolate, including an outdoor car park, a row of deserted shops and a former Art Deco Co-op with boarded-up retail frontage. It's here we find the unpromising entrance to Mortgramit Square, a street descending beneath some flats, headroom 4.0m, guarded on my visit by a discarded Tesco trolley. The walls look modern but glance underfoot and half the width of the street is a stripe of cobbles, or as a tedious pedant would say "I think you'll find they're setts". Things don't get any more normal down the bottom.
The street bends, not for the last time, to round a four-storey redbrick building with curvaceous corners. Looks workshoppy. On the opposite side is the gated entrance to a service yard, then a garage door with Please Do Not Use This Drive As A Toilet! written in red marker pen. I guess this isn't a great place to come after the pubs shut, or even before. Tucked back a bit is an electricity substation with 1932 inscribed above the door, from an era when municipal utilities took a bit more pride, and up above is a fantastic little enclosed bridge allowing free passage from one building to the next at top floor level. And all the time still cobbled underfoot, and still nothing looking in the least bit square, so what on earth is going on?
Back in the 18th century when Woolwich was all about artillery and armaments this was the site of the Dog Yard Brewery, purveyors of ale to a willing military clientele. The owners in 1782 were the Powis brothers William, Richard and Thomas, three brewers from Greenwich, after whom Woolwich's main shopping street is still named. The western part of the site was repurposed as housing in 1807, a dense cluster of three barrack-like buildings known as Mortgramit Buildings and occupied mainly by low-paid labourers. The peculiar name came from the three co-founders of the site...
John Mortis, a paintmaker based on the High Street
George Graham, a builder based locally
Thomas Mitchell, a corset-maker based on Powis Street
...and I cannot tell you how long it took me to find that out. Despite the development plainly having three sides it became known as Mortgramit Square, and despite being demolished in 1883 it gave its name to the whole dogleg cut-through that was formerly Dog Yard. The new occupants were carters who needed sheds and stables, themselves replaced in 1938 by John Furlong who built a four-storey garage. The first floor was a car park (accessed via internal ramp) intended to accommodate customers of the two large cinemas recently opened a short walk to the west (both of which survive as hives of fervent evangelicalism on the Lord's Day). The remaining floors were mostly for maintenance and the caretaker lived on the other side of the road above a separate workshop, hence the bridge across the street.
Furlongs expanded onto the High Street with a forecourt selling petrol, and their retrofrontage seemingly still offers MOTs, auto repairs and a car wash service. Meanwhile Mortgramit Square duly doglegs on, still cobbled, acting mainly as a service road for the rear of the surrounding businesses. Chief amongst these is Rose's Free House, a proper corner pub, where I doubt the clientele often order the Fine Old Bottled Sherry etched into the back window. Rather larger is the First Choice Cafe, recently revamped from overfussy yellow to a more palatable black. But for the most evocative ye olde Woolwich experience try the narrow pigeon-splattered alley down the side of Plaisted'sWineHouse, now a Nigerian takeaway, squeezing beneath extractor fans and an old glass lantern for a grimy glimpse into when dockers ruled Dog Yard.
And come soon because Mortgramit Square is heavily pencilled-in for redevelopment. Of course it is, it's a rundown backalley at the western gateway to an expanding town centre replete with highrise towers, indeed it should have succumbed years ago. The first plan in 2004 (named Woolwich Triangle) proposed a hotel, department store and 82 homes but succumbed to the financial crisis a few years later. A 2018 proposal stepped things up somewhat by adding a 23 storey residential tower, but fell foul of affordability criteria and the intended demolition of a locally-listed building. Now there's a fresh scheme which retains the lovely brick garage and also the grain of the old backlane, but would erase the rest of Furlongs, the overbridge and a row of decanted properties on Powis Street. The tower stays.
This latest plan has passed a public consultation stage, whose documentation was rife with meaningless bolx about "a destination people are proud to call home" and "creating a sense of place and unique identities". If you're the minion who wrote "The unique and dynamic setting will greet people from the town centre welcoming all to the new sustainable community" I hope you sleep uneasily at night. But if all goes to plan there'll be 269 rentable properties on site, new retail frontage and a concierge's lobby where mechanics once greased axles. Woolwich would also get a new 23-storey landmark building in layered brick looming above the leisure centre and the ferry terminal, somewhat tantalisingly with an 8-sided cross-section. Although called Mortgramit Square it will thus be Mortgramit Octagon built on the site of Mortgramit Triangle, but then they never did name things obviously round here.
Walking the England Coast Path Eastbourne → Bexhill (10 miles)
The England Coast Path is a massive project to open up and waymark a right of way around the country, as yet incomplete. In most cases you could have walked it anyway but the signposts are a reassuring sight in areas where the route isn't as simple as merely walking along a cliff or beach. The most recent section is the 28 miles from Eastbourne to Rye Harbour which gained official status last month, creating a continuous path from Chichester Harbour to the Medway Towns. I chose to walk from Eastbourne to Bexhill because it's one of the longest stretches of the Sussex coast I've never walked before and because rail tickets to the towns at each end were briefly £3.50 apiece. These ten miles follow the shingle arc of Pevensey Bay where William the Conqueror landed in 1066 and are virtually all beachside walking, there being nothing resembling a cliff until you reach the Bexhill end. [14 photos]
Normally when I arrive in Eastbourne I head west to cross the Seven Sisters, the finest walk in southern England, so it was a bit of a wrench to stand on the pier and look east instead. My destination seemed very distant at the end of a long low curve, substantially undeveloped, with none of the excessive chalk undulations I was more used to. The start of the walk was all typical seaside resort, a promenade faced by elegant vanilla-toned Victorian buildings, not many of which are still operating as hotels or guest houses. One modern intrusion is a rotatable beach hut based on a telescope, the Spy Glass, though it's looking somewhat shabby ten years on with its colourful cladding missing. Being January it's hard to tell whether kiosk-owner Jon has stopped selling fish tacos or whether he's just closed for the winter.
The first significant building is Eastbourne Redoubt, a circular Napoleonic fortress 68m in diameter, which for many years has been used as a military museum but is now closed pending longstanding repairs. Disappointed visitors may end up in the Glasshouse restaurant newly-opened in the bandstand gardens, or more likely in the less pretentious Splashpoint cafe on the far side. We're now far enough from the town centre to find a few sailing boats and fishing boats at the top of the shingle, which'll be Fisherman's Green, plus enterprising sheds selling the catch of the day. Eastbourne's bowls clubs also have to go somewhere, as does the town's last financially-endangered swimming pool, and of course the Wastewater Treatment Works which in this case have been cunningly disguised as a postmodern seafort with unnecessary crenelations. Best keep walking.
On Eastbourne's eastern outskirts is Sovereign Harbour, a luxury marina development begun in 1990 and now (checks notes) northern Europe's largest composite marina complex. The outer harbour is all you see properly on this walk, a gouged-out tidal rectangle fronted by flats on three sides, not the three inner harbours and the inevitable retail park. Pedestrian passage is shortened if the lock gates are closed allowing you to walk across the top. I imagine residents pay a premium to live here but the apartment blocks are relentlessly unimaginative, a full mile of stacked boxes each with their own sea-facing balcony and a strip of communal shingle in front laughingly described as a private beach, so it's a relief to finally leave all that behind.
And then everything changes, an abrupt switch from serviced real estate to a strand lined with fearlessly individual homes. The promenade stops too and those who wish to continue are cast out onto the shingle. The Coast Path appropriates a brief unkempt back lane past a caravan called Scuzzy's but then it too admits defeat and points towards a bank of pebbles because it's that or nothing. It was at this point I realised my onward progress might not be as fast as I'd intended and regretted having had to book a timed train home. I scrunched along the upper ridge, flattened by some vehicle with thickly ridged tyres, while to my right the pebbles sloped down semi-steeply to the sea's edge. There are only seven places on the South East England Coast Path with warnings that the path sometimes vanishes at high tide and six of them are on this next stretch.
Ahead is the linear village of Pevensey Bay, not to be mistaken for the historic settlement of Pevensey with its Norman castle a mile inland (been there, blogged that). Here a long flank of cottages and newbuilds faces the sea while less hardy souls live a street or two back with the A259 as a spine road and a proper parade of shops including Rose's Fish Bar, the Ocean View Bakery and the 16th century Castle Inn. Scattered along this stretch are three Martello Towers repurposed for residential development, ideal if you want to live inside what looks like a fortified sandcastle with a glass rotunda on top and limited illumination below. Only about 50 such defences survive on England's coasts and this walk boasts half a dozen of them, including two derelict towers back by Sovereign Harbour and one more to come at Normans' Bay.
For the next couple of miles I stepped down onto the lower beach and walked along that, it being substantially less pebbly, so started to make up time. I'd been careful to check it was low tide when I booked my train tickets and was now reaping the rewards. This was more like it, the English Channel lapping to one side and ahead a seemingly endless sequence of groynes to stride between. So steep was the shingle that I could only see the upper storeys of the beachfront houses, this because the bank of stones had been piled here as part of a massive multimillion pound flood preventionscheme... hence the caterpillar tracks I'd seen along the upper ridge. I passed very few other people, mostly those exercising dogs, and noted how the incoming waves gradually grew stronger as the bay curved round to face the prevailing wind.
Initially I was thrilled to think that somewhere along here I'd be passing the point where the Norman armies landed, then thought again and realised not. This shingle beach didn't exist in 1066, the coastline instead indented to form a considerable inlet stretching all the way back to Herstmonceux. Only after longshore drift inexorably blocked the entrance with an arc of pebbles did this sheltered haven silt up to create the Pevensey Marshes, so now if you walk along the top of the beach and look inland you can see vast areas of lush grazing (and the inevitable golf course) beyond the railway. The hamlet of Normans' Bay is perhaps at greatest risk from rising sea levels, an isolated cluster of residential defiance whose beach huts and red phonebox may one day be unfooted by the waves.
The longest uninhabited section crosses two sluices, their outfalls passing beneath the shingle and marked with red warning markers. It's so remote that two motorbikers had parked up on the coast road and walked down to the water's edge to unzip their leathers for relief, perhaps unaware it's Southern Water's job to discharge into the Channel. Eventually a finger of beach huts reappeared signalling the approach to Cooden and the tyre tracks in the shingle wall became deeper, this because one plank of the flood prevention scheme is to scoop up lorryloads of pebbles from here and drive them back to the foot of the cliffs in Eastbourne. Beyond the station a gentle cliff edge begins to emerge, an elevation which inevitably encouraged developers to build houses on top, so best stick to the beach if you want to follow Bexhill's promenade which starts abruptly beneath someone's back garden.
I confess to speeding up at this point because I still had two miles to go and a train to catch, edging past well-wrapped retirees, determined families and dozens and dozens of dogwalkers on the promenade. I skipped past the illuminated stage where they were setting up for Bexhill After Dark, the town's annual winter lights festival, and strode on to the finest building in TN40, the artsy modernist De La Warr Pavilion. Alas I only really had time to walk up the spectacular staircase, inhale the grandeur, wait for cafegoers to get out of shot and takesomephotos before heading off to the station for my timed train. My walk might have been flat but I'd underestimated the effects of shingle underfoot, so I'd suggest allowing six hours if you try Eastbourne to Bexhill for yourself.
Achievement unlocked: I've now walked all the way from Littlehampton to Hastings, approximately 60 miles
Littlehampton →2024→ Shoreham →2011→ Brighton →2011→ Newhaven →2018→ Seaford →2009→ Eastbourne →2025→ Bexhill →2018→ Hastings
I made this graph to show how busy I was yesterday.
It shows freneticism on a scale of 0 to 10 for every hour during the day.
12-1am: In bed preparing to sleep [1] 1-4am: zzzzz [0] 4-5am: No, no need to wake up yet [1] 5-7am: zzzzz [0] 7-8am: Ah there's the alarm, wash, dress, breakfast, pack rucksack [3] 8-9am: Ooh Thames Water are coning off Bus Stop M, I could probably write about that later, buy newspaper, travel to central London terminus, flash my Rail Sale ticket, sit on train. [4] 9-10am: Watch the world go by, looks like I picked a lovely sunny day to go travelling [2]
10-11am: Approaching my destination an argument breaks out at the end of the carriage. A young couple, a beardy boy and a made-up girl, both maybe 17, he insisting he takes her phone, she crying that she didn't delete any messages and he should phone Terry to check, he increasingly suspicious, she increasingly anxious, louder and louder, an underlying vibe of menace/panic. Damn I'm going to have to walk past them to get off the train. The lady who gets to the door first turns to the girl and says "you should leave him", and this triggers the boy to further fury, "what business is that of yours?" Then he turns to me, eyes glinting, "are you her husband cos I'll punch you!" Oh bugger, I think, not again. I agree with the lady that she should leave him but I don't say this, I say "we're not even related", and he turns back to her and the doors open and the argument continues just as angrily as I head down the platform, shaken. [8]
11am-12: I've done the shopping centre, the viewpoint and the A road, now onwards on my chosen walk past the rescue centre, the sewage works and the over-regimented housing estate [6] 12-1pm: It's a lot quieter out here, take the high route, take the low route, properly remote now, lovely, this is why I came [5] 1-2pm: I only allowed myself five hours for this walk, I should get to the station on time, I need to get to the station in time, it's tough underfoot, keep walking [6] 2-3pm: Might have to speed up, will have to speed up, no time to dawdle, just time for a quick dash up the best staircase in town, my feet are complaining now, 12½ miles, phew [8]
3-4pm: Slump onto my appointed train, nice and empty, pour a cuppa from my thermos, look out at all I just walked, do the crossword. [2] 4-5pm: It always gets busier later, sigh, the guy in the seat in front is making phone calls then watching naff videos with the sound up, I daren't say something, the bloke opposite eventually says something. [3]
5-6pm: London's much busier now, hordes and streams flooding home, big crowds on the tube platform. A woman with a smart coat and a bag of gifts dashes for the train and her phone tumbles out onto the track below, a passer-by has to point it out, she's very grateful then absolutely aghast. Don't worry they have grabber things these days says her companion, he goes off to find a member of staff, she stands there utterly lost, even more so when he returns with bad news. She retrieves a card from her bag which says 'Happy 30th birthday' on the front, poor lass, her big day ruined. My second train is absolutely rammed, rush-hour crowding, Saturdays are the new peak time, long gaps in service aren't helping, I expect the sniffling student I'm scrunched up against will have gifted me some winter bug. Canary Wharf is ridiculously busy, huge crowds come to see the Winter Lights, the queue to see the big one in the dock oppressively long, seething walkways, thousands walking round like sheep, where's the fun in this, a sparse selection of artworks this year too, an increasingly blatant attempt to lure suburban families into local restaurants, stuff this I'm off home. [10]
6-7pm: DLR is busy, Bus Stop M is still coned off. Cup of tea, oven on, chicken and a lot of pasta in a mushroom sauce. [4] 7-11pm: Feet up, it's OK I know what I'm writing about tonight, tap away. [2] 11pm-12: Mug of hot milk, head to bed, I shall sleep well tonight. [1]
The major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout continue, now more obviously because the hi-vis workforce have shifted their focus from 'under the flyover' to 'the perimeter of the roundabout'. Their task has been to slightly reshape the roundabout to better accommodate the influx of traffic expected after the Silvertown Tunnel opens, in most cases a light trim followed by the addition of a lovely new kerb. The orange barriers are now out with a vengeance on the Bow side of the roundabout whereas during the first three months we got off quite lightly. Contractors are also fitting and cabling the new traffic lights, which I suspect are the old traffic lights they uncabled and removed from their original positions in October.
One thing which hasn't yet happened is the repainting of the lines. Back in September local residents were sent a letter saying that carriageway resurfacing works would be taking place overnight in January 2025 and they'd send us another letter to tell us when. No such follow-up letter has been received, mainly because the carriageways are nowhere near ready to be resurfaced, so I suspect some date later in February is being lined up. Another thing which hasn't happened yet is the return of buses on route 8 to Bow Church. These were whipped away to Old Ford in September with a promise they'd be back at 5am on 15th January but obviously they weren't, neither have TfL made any noises whatsoever about an amended return date, and I fear it could be March before we see one again.
The most ludicrous addition to the roadworks saga took place yesterday and involves the bus stop bypass at Bus Stop M. For months now the cycle lane has been filling with water when it rains and not draining away. I showed you a photo in November, and above is another photo of the same phenomenon during a deluge in January. This flooding offers cyclists three choices - splash through the middle of it, divert via the pavement or divert via the bus stop - none of which are ideal. Now finally Thames Water have turned up, indeed they were setting up their cones yesterday morning and I thought "ooh good, they're finally going to unblock the drain and solve the issue". Alas not so.
Instead what they've done is put up a sign saying Cycle Lane Closed. This is bad for cyclists so what they've also done is cone off one lane of Bow Road as a replacement cycle path. Fair enough, but in doing so they've also made it impossible for buses to stop at Bus Stop M which is now closed "until further notice for emergency Water Works". This is miserable news for bus passengers because it's wiped out a well-used interchange and added a 1km gap between remaining bus stops. It's also miserable news for vehicles because it's reduced Bow Road to a single lane immediately before a roundabout already gnarled up by a width restriction so is simply making the queue even worse.
I'd have hoped it wasn't rocket science to pump an inch or two of water out of a brief bus stop bypass, making the coned-off mitigation debacle no longer necessary. Alternatively it wouldn't be impossible to divert cyclists via the bus stop now it's closed and nobody's waiting there, indeed it's what a lot of them have been doing anyway for months, but seemingly that's not an option. Whatever, a blocked drain is buggering up the lives of cyclists, pedestrians, queueing vehicles and anyone who wants to catch a bus at Bow Church for god knows how long, and all because the curse of Bus Stop M has struck again.
Londoners are still coming to terms with having different names for the six Overground lines, a change introduced just two months ago. But they could have been renamed ten years ago, indeed plans reached an advanced stage only to hit the buffers when Mayor Boris Johnson decreed everything had to stay orange. This was confirmed this week in an FoI response which revealed three official documents from 2015 detailing why the new names were needed, what they'd be called and how they'd look on maps and signage. You can find that FoI response here, or you can read on.
This document, which is exactly 10 years old, starts with a bold statement that we now know to be wildly premature.
"From the 31st May 2015, when London Overground takes over the West Anglia service we will be introducing a new approach to wayfinding on the network with each line on the network adopting a line name and colour. The overarching name London Overground will be retained. This is the same approach that we take for London Underground."
TfL's intention was to rename all the Overground lines to coincide with their takeover of the suburban lines out of Liverpool Street towards Enfield, Cheshunt and Chingford. They recognised that adding a lot more orange to the network might be confusing so were preparing to press ahead and rename things, indeed they'd already confirmed names and colours.
"After some consideration, it has been agreed that we will adopt a more traditional route and in the majority of cases use the historic names. Where this is not possible new names have developed or enhanced to ensure customer understand the route that is served."
And here are those names.
There's no long discussion here about why these names were selected, not like there was with the current lot, because most of them already existed. Instead the point of the document was to report on what passengers thought of them.
A total of 895 face-to-face interviews were conducted at 11 stations, the chief outcome being that "Overall there was broad support for line names with many expressing ‘strong support’". The report also notes "A minority already spontaneously call the line names by the names we will be using", because that's what happens when you randomly interview nerdier members of the public.
Not everyone liked North London line and East London line, the most traditional of the names, particularly if their part of the line wasn't in North or East London. Passengers on lines out of Liverpool Street were also "less sure that the name sets the line apart", perhaps because they weren't yet part of the Overground or perhaps because they understood Lea Valley line to mean an entirely different route. Note that 'Goblin' was never under consideration.
The document also included draft signage.
This looks incredibly similar to the designs we've got now except that the name and colour are different. Indeed none of the six names they picked are those we're using today and nor are any of the colours, other than the grey selected for the irrelevant shuttle between Romford and Upminster.
We jump ahead to 11th June 2015, which is interesting because the new names had been due to be introduced in May and plainly weren't. Instead the document is titled "Overground Line Renaming Proposal" and reads like it's trying to persuade somebody important that renaming is a good idea.
• The London Overground is rapidly expanding.
• This will continue with rail devolution.
• Customer feedback is that the network has reached a critical mass of individual lines.
• A clear way of route identification is needed for the purposes of wayfinding and journey planning.
• London Underground has a world-class and proven method for wayfinding and journey planning – Underground mode with line differentiation – we recommend this is extended to Overground
On page 3 TfL included feedback on the recently released May 2015 tube map, freshly splurged with orange, and I was fascinated to see whose reactions they'd included.
He makes a very salient point, that fourth gentleman.
A 2030 tube map was included to show what the network might have looked like with full rail devolution if everything remained orange, i.e. extremely complicated across south London. It also showed Crossrail 1, Crossrail 2 and the Metropolitan line extension, so do give it a look if diagrammatic hypotheticals are your thing.
More relevantly, the report included a tube map using the new colours to show what the effect of separating out the lines might be.
It's pretty much exactly what we've ended up with except that none of the colours are the same. I have to say I prefer these, particularly the use of orange and brown for the Overground's inner orbit around London, but instead this became red and blue because the final choice of colours followed active consideration of visual impairments. If you're colour blind you may be glad TfL didn't jump the gun in 2015.
Also it wasn't yet 100% certain how the line out of Liverpool Street should be rebranded.
Five alternative names were in the mix, the intention being to "run a competition asking customers of the service the name that they would like us to adopt. The competition would run in July."
POTENTAL ALTERNATIVE NAMES FOR THE LEA VALLEY LINE
• Hackney line (Branch lines converge at Hackney)
• William Morris line (famous English Artisan associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. Born in Walthamstow)
• Jazz line (Historical reference to the 1920 services from Liverpool Street high frequency suburban service)
• River Lea line (Geographical reference)
• Southbury line (Historical reference to the line linking Edmonton Green to Cheshunt)
Of those Hackney possibly makes the most sense, River Lea is worse than Lea Valley, Jazz would have baffled most passengers and Southbury didn't have a hope. William Morris probably came closest to making the cut, and committee-friendly Weaver is what we've eventually ended up with.
In that last graphic you may also have noticed the use of a pair of colours to depict each line, which brings us to the next document...
By October renaming the Overground lines was very much a proposal, no longer a done deal. This 20-page document kicks off with all the usual arguments regarding why renaming would be a good thing, without actually suggesting new names, then suggests four possible design options for depicting the lines on the map.
Option 1 is what we eventually ended up with nine years later. Options 2 and 3 reflected a perceived need to retain Overground orange alongside the new colours for overall branding reasons. They look very odd to our eyes now, and when you see them on a tube map they look odder still.
Meanwhile Option 4 was to do nothing and leave the Overground as two parallel orange lines. And what I believe happened is that when these four options were placed in front of the Mayor he chose option 4, i.e. the status quo, and the entire renaming project bit the dust.
These three documents from 2015 therefore exist only to show what might have been, indeed confirmation that if Boris had grasped the nettle we wouldn't have ended up with the six inclusive names Sadiq chose instead.
Windrush, not East London
Mildmay, not North London
Suffragette, not Barking
Weaver, not Lea Valley
Lioness, not Watford Local
Liberty, not Emerson Park
In December 2023 I decided to start an alphabetical quest at my local library, sequentially reading one work of fiction by an author from A to Z. I wanted to read books by classic authors I'd not properly read before and to nudge myself out of my usual literary oeuvre. Yesterday I finally finished book number 26, and it went so well I'm now wondering whether I should go round again.
a)Margaret Atwood: I plumped for a compilation of short stories, but should probably have picked one of her more obvious novels instead. b)Iain Banks: About halfway through The Crow Road I decided I didn't have to finish all 26 books, so back to the library it went. c)Agatha Christie: A compendium of Poirot short stories repeatedly confirmed the great lady's devious readability. d)Roddy Doyle: It's perhaps too early to be enjoying pandemic fiction, so I did not enjoy Life Without Children. e)Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho was a graphic account of backstabbing after hours in Manhattan, well worthy of a warning sticker. f)E.M. Forster: ...whereas Howards End was a more privileged softer world, another country. g)Graham Greene: I did The Human Factor for O Level, but Our Man in Havana is a better period piece. h)Ernest Hemingway: Short stories again, so short that the book contained 49 of them. i)Christopher Isherwood: I picked A Single Man because it had been a film I'd never seen, and now I think I probably should have. j)PD James: I picked The Children of Men because again I've never seen it, and now I think I definitely should have. k)Hanif Kureishi: I wonder if all authors start writing more about old age and frailty as they get older. l)Penelope Lively: Moon Tiger was the first time I picked a Booker winner, and by the end I could see why it had won. m)Ian McEwan: Premature ejaculation and longshore drift fatefully combined, that's On Chesil Beach. n)V.S. Naipaul: In A Free State was my second Booker winner, an intriguing window into another culture and another time. o)Ben Okri: The best I can say is that I think I picked one of his most-dashed-off books. p)Edgar Allan Poe: The entire whodunnit genre plainly has its roots in The Murder In The Rue Morgue (1841). q)Anthony Quinn: There aren't enough books about life in the Callaghan era, so London, Burning was a welcome read. r)Philip Roth: I wouldn't have picked up Everyman if I'd realised it was solid musings on death and mortality. s)Zadie Smith: the NW postcode fizzed to life, so I should tackle Zadie's White Teeth next. t)Colm Tóibín: I picked the thinnest Tóibín on the shelf, and it felt more like showing off than a story. u)John Updike: It was about time I met Rabbit Angstrom and the drab entrapment of the postwar Rust Belt. v)Gore Vidal: Blimey, The City And The Pillar was daring for 1948, a landmark in repressed queer fiction. w)Evelyn Waugh: I thought Scoop was a classic about journalism, but it's actually a classic about Empire. x)Douglas Coupland: Thanks for your recommendation, Alan. Generation X proved that even recent decades are ancient history. y)Richard Yates: From a limited set of Ys I picked eleven illuminating tales of ennui in postwar America. z)Emile Zola: And finally to France for another batch of 19th century short stories, the best of which involved wartime mill destruction.
It turns out this is excellent clickbait because when people see the question they want to know the answer. It didn't matter that I'd provided a really bad answer, they clicked through anyway.
Two online portals proved highly amenable to sending visitors my way. One was Reddit, the social news aggregation community, and the other was Hacker News which has a more technology/software-based focus. In each case a blogreader submitted my article to the portal and in each case a swoosh of upvotes fired it up the main list. It didn't remain high on the list for long, these things always fall back, but a few hours of prominence meant a substantial audience came to read what I'd written. In Reddit's case it was members of the r/London community, generally local, but with Hacker News the pile-on was substantially more global. Hence the fifteen thousand visitors.
My thanks to the readers who submitted the links in the first place because these don't always take off. For example "Diamond Geezer: Griping at length about TfL's handling of the 347 withdrawal" got only 275 views and no comments, whereas "Where is London's most central sheep?" hit the jackpot. It's also worth saying that the link was to my original incorrect post, not to my subsequent apology, so thousands of people now have an entirely incorrect understanding of London's most central sheep. In this case it's not an important distinction, but this is how disinformation spreads.
On Reddit most of the subsequent conversation was about where London's most central sheep might be. People suggested "Mudchute farm?", "Vauxhall farm?", "Hackney farm?" proving they hadn't read what I'd written, only responded to the title. Others responded with non-living sheep, for example "Lamb and Flag, Covent Garden", "Shepherd and Sheep Statue in Paternoster Square" or "probably a Kofta in a restaurant" because they weren't playing by my rules because they hadn't read them. This is the way with so much online discourse, a fervent debate about a headline rather than a nuanced discussion based on the actuality of the situation.
The discussion on Hacker News was longer and a lot more varied, spiralling off on all kinds of tangents. One of these, obviously, was where exactly the centre of London is, especially from people who didn't realise there's a long-standing location. Another was where the most central rabbit/cat/bear might be, not just sheep, not just in London. But the most interesting tangent regarded the significance of how far you have to travel from a city centre to find yourself in the country.
"When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in Bristol so much when we had such a hard time living in London."
This attracted responses from around the world...
» If we instead consider "time to cows" then Cambridge does quite well
» In Canada we call it "time to moose"!
» In Africa I suppose we have time to lion...
» My metric for when you've left the city is "have I passed a field of potatoes"
» There needs to be a counterbalancing variable, though; presumably you want to live in a city, otherwise you'd just live in the countryside somewhere with a TTS of zero :) Maybe the other factor is "time for pizza to arrive at door"?
London's quite good for being able to reach the countryside easily, as opposed to just a park or city farm. Technically the most central finger of Green Belt creeps down the Lea Valley to end at Tottenham Hale, although if you want proper unbroken fields and woodland you have to go a bit further. Step out of stations in Stanmore, Cockfosters, Chingford, Bexley or Coulsdon and the onward countryside never stops, although I think the most central/rural interface is in Mill Hill, eight miles out. It's mostly horses round there though, not sheep.
Sometimes the strangest questions turn out to have the most interesting answers. But I doubt most of the 15,000 souls who landed here for the first time yesterday will ever come back.
