Yesterday TfL launched a consultation proposing an extension of the DLR to Thamesmead. And not just "we think it would be a good idea to extend the DLR to Thamesmead" because they did that consultation last year. This is the proper full-on version including where the stations should be, the alignment of the tunnel, how often the trains should run, what needs a viaduct, how to avoid underground hazards, where to turn back additional services and how best to support loads of housing. This is where the project gets real, the point at which you can stand in a car park and say "one day there may be a station precisely here". So that's what I've done.
This DLR extension would be an additional 1½ mile spur bearing off near the end of the Beckton branch. The first new stop would be at Beckton Riverside, which is housing developer brandspeak for "the middle of the former Beckton Gasworks". The second and final stop would be in Thamesmead, a huge 1960s estate that still doesn't have a station because every subsequent administration has failed it. Between the two stations would be a 1.3km tunnel, potentially the DLR's third Thames crossing. Trains would run at least every 10 minutes direct to Custom House and Canning Town for onward connections. And it'd improve accessibility sufficiently for 25,000 homes to be built at each location, which is the sole reason anyone's thinking of building it.
If you're thinking "I would have extended the Overground from Barking Riverside, surely that would have been better?" you are very much behind the curve. Last year's consultation pointed out that this would be more expensive, less direct and more infrequent, thus worse in every way, and this is why TfL employs experts rather than opinionated armchair moaners.
This is the Gallions Reach Shopping Park, a car-focused collection of retail sheds opened in 2003. Specifically it's Armada Way, the sole access road that loops through this once godforsaken space. Specifically it's opposite the Tesco garage by the junction where buses turn off to deposit potential shoppers in the middle of a car park. And specifically it's a grassy ridge alongside the main road - part open lawn, part occupied by scrubby trees - close to where severalgasholders used to be. Here workers occasionally sit for a coffee or a smoke amid a mown selection of small yellow flowers, prevented from edging further by a spiky metal fence. Given current weather conditions I might best describe it as a dry hump. And yet if all goes to plan this yellowing stripe will become the location of a ground-level step-free station serving tens of thousands of newbuild homes, not just Next and Sports Direct.
The artist's impression is extraordinary, suggesting a forest of flats across what's long been contaminated post-industrial wasteland. It says a lot for London's desperate need for housing that former gasworks are now firmly on the development agenda, having previously been deemed far too awkward and expensive to remediate. The flats stretch all the way down to a sanitised riverside and also, notably, entirely replace the existing shopping centre. At present the land just south of the station site is securely sealed with notices on the railings warning of "multiple hazards", thus safe only for storing vehicles, but that becomes residential too. The only thing that doesn't get swept away is the 28 acre DLR depot, recently extended, because it would be self-defeating for a transport enhancement project to eat itself.
The consultation reveals that five different potential station locations were considered, two of them mid-car-park so now discounted, one too close to the DLR depot to be economically viable and one too near the river to permit a safe tunnel gradient. The selected 'Option 3' isn't without its downsides, not least that the grassy hump I mentioned earlier in fact covers a high pressure gas pipeline, hence the flurry of red and yellow warning signage along its length. But one day this scant verge could be the heart of a high-density high-vernacular neighbourhood, abuzz with opportunity, and all just eight stops from Canning Town.
This is the Cannon Retail Park, an outer corner of Thamesmead's shopping sprawl. The majority of the space is car park, and well used because the lack of a station means a lot of people round here drive. A row of five warehouse units runs along the far side, only two of which are currently occupied but both still relatively busy. And in the corner closest to the roundabout is a drive-thru KFC, a squat functional block offering 11 herbs and spices and a £1.79 Milkybar Raspberry Ripple Sundae. All of this would disappear in order to make way for the terminus, because never underestimate the ability of a transport planner to identify a patch of land as a potential worksite and then eradicate it entirely.
One end of the station would be in the far corner where Next and Pets At Home used to be. Given nobody's taken down the closure signs since 2021 I doubt anybody would mourn their demolition. By contrast B&M only opened last year and Puregym last month so they'll be less pleased to hear they're destined to become two platforms in zone 4. One of the two station options had the buffers coincide with McDonalds but that idea's been abandoned to cause less disruption and now they'll land bang on top of KFC instead. The plan also involves putting the station on a raised viaduct, partly to increase pedestrian permeability but also because (apparently) it'd make the line easier to extend in the future should a pie-in-the-sky line into Bexley ever get off the ground.
The elevated station also protects the Twin Tumps, a pair of moated bunkers once used to safely store ammunition. Thamesmead is riddled with tumps, some since transformed into compact watery parklets, but these two are out of sight out of mind. The intention is to make them the focus of a new transport nexus with the DLR gliding between the two like some kind of futuristic green utopia, then open up the untouched landfill marshland beyond. A ridiculously large wedge of Thamesmead has gone undeveloped over the last few decades, in part for lack of transport but mainly because it's been safeguarded for the Thames Gateway Bridge. Boris scrapped this in 2008 so TfL are dead keen to remove unnecessary planning protection and drive through a railway and tens of thousands of homes instead, and you can see their point.
Two distant stations could also be affected by the extension, and all because the Beckton/Thamesmead branch would eventually need more trains so both termini could be served at a reasonable frequency. The DLR thus needs a 'turnback' location so that these extra services don't need to run all the way into central London and clog up the existing network. TfL identified eight potential sites for an additional siding or platform, six of which were swiftly proven to be impractical. The two that remain in the running are at Royal Victoria and Canning Town, as pictured here.
Royal Victoria already has a surplus track from the time when Silverlink trains ran this way, and it would be cheap and easy to repurpose this for a third platform allowing reversing trains to terminate here. However from a practical point of view it's very much suboptimal, turfing off passengers one stop before Canning Town, so a Canning Town turnback is likely to be preferred instead. This would squeeze into the neck of a meander on Bow Creek, just past the station, where an unsafe footbridge currently crosses the tracks. Demolishing this would allow a fractional widening with a reversing siding in the centre, although space is tight and the local pedestrian promenade could be adversely affected. Watch this space.
It's only a consultation at this stage, contingent on the government eventually stumping up funding to support their growth agenda. If all goes to plan there could be spades in the ground by the end of the decade with services commencing "in the early 2030s". But we've all been here before so we know it might never happen, indeed London is brimming with potential stations planned in depth which never saw the light of day. The Bakerloo and Metropolitan line extensions once looked likely, ditto Surrey Canal Road and Beam Park, but remain out of reach due to lack of cash. But sometimes it all comes together, like that time in 2012 I stood in a Sainsbury's car park and noted that it could one day become Nine Elms station. Perhaps a humpy grass verge and a KFC drive-thru will one day become the outer reaches of the DLR, in which case best read the fine detail in the consultation so you won't appear ignorant when it finally arrives.
Ten years ago I visited (and blogged about) London's most extreme bus stops - that's the most northerly, easterly, southerly and westerly bus stops inside the Greater London boundary. But TfL's reach spreads wider than that so today I'm going one better, to the most northerly, easterly, southerly and westerly bus stops served by a TfL bus.
The northernmost TfL bus stop: Potters Bar Railway Station(stop C)
[route served: 298] [county: Herts] [streetview: EN6 1AU] [map] [photo]
Until 2017 TfL's northernmost bus stop was at the end of a godforsaken industrial estate in Potters Bar where most of the businesses tinkered with cars. Then accountants finally saw the flaw in sending 83 buses a day to a worksite beyond the London boundary and cut back the 298 permanently to Potters Bar station, its previous weekend terminus. And that's why TfL's northernmost bus stop is now outside a hefty redbrick Sainsbury's beside a parcel collection locker, somewhere eminently more sensible.
The station forecourt feels very much like the heart of Potters Bar, a key commuter portal amid the main parade of shops. Residents flood in to catch a train, to slump with an alfresco coffee, to avail themselves of the supermarket or to troop through to the well hidden Post Office. Four bus stops are located around the short forecourt loop, two used only by non-London services and two where TfL still stop. The northernmost of these is Stop C, the northern terminus of the 298, which is also the only stop without a shelter because you can simply hide beneath the rim of Sainsbury's if it starts to rain. It also means there's no proper bus stop, only a Herts-issue metal flag bolted to the brickwork. The timetable underneath confirms that Stop C is used exclusively by route 298... except on Sundays when the 242 pulls up just five times in case anyone wants to go to Welham Green. Modern, busy and wholly unimpressive, that's TfL's northernmost bus stop.
• Of all the four compass point bus stops this is the only one to be used by buses in both directions - it's both the last stop on route 298 and the first.
• TfL's second most northerly bus stop is stop D, used exclusively by the 313, one of the most scenic double decker rides in the capital.
• The 298 runs to Arnos Grove and has been operated by Uno, a Hatfield-based company, since Sullivan Buses threw in the towel last summer.
• Technically TfL has a more northerly bus stop quarter of a mile away at Laurel Avenue. However it's only served by school route 699 and this blog has always taken the editorial line that school routes don't count. Also it's the penultimate stop and no Dame Alice Owen's pupil is going get on or off here, two minutes before the school gate.
The easternmost TfL bus stop: High Street (Brentwood)(stop A)
[route served: 498] [county: Essex] [streetview: CM14 4RG] [map] [photo]
Before 2005 TfL's easternmost bus stop was at Lakeside, then came the launch of route 498 and a connection into Essex proper, not just Thurrock. Brentwood is only marginally further east but for the purposes of today's post that totally counts, hence I've journeyed to a well-to-do market town rather than a brazen temple to consumerism. The stop we seek is at the far end of the High Street, one of a cluster of six lettered from A to G (goodness knows where D went), specifically A.
Brentwood still has a pretty decent high street including a Marks & Spencer and several banks, although the anchor tenant in the shopping centre is Poundland so not everything's economically rosy. It also has two Greggs, one of which is immediately alongside Bus Stop A, as is a hugely more enticing Rossi's ice cream parlour. The three eastbound bus stops are diagonally indented with long glass shelters providing plenty of space to sit. However nobody ever waits here to catch the 498 because this is the penultimate stop and the terminus outside Sainsbury's is only 200m round the corner. One of the other bus routes goes not much further to the hospital, but the 81 to Shenfield and the 351 to Chelmsford are more substantial jaunts. If only the Romford-bound 498 called at 'E' outside KFC that would be London's easternmost bus stop, but by choice it picks up at 'F' outside Halifax so 'A' wins out instead. Shady, prosperous and cornet-adjacent, that's TfL's easternmost bus stop.
• This is the only 'extreme' bus stop not to be the bus route's starting point.
• Route 498 wasn't stopping here at the weekend because of a partial roundabout closure at M25 junction 28. Instead we went on a five mile(!) detour up the A12, which I think the driver secretly enjoyed, before creeping back to Sainsbury's through Shenfield. Scheduled diversions are rarely so extreme.
• When I visited in April a council operative was up a ladder beside the bus stop adding a VE Day 80 sign to the lamppost. Fair enough, but when I went back again on Saturday it was still there, as were all the others across the town centre and I can't decide if that's because of laziness or pride.
• Yet again a TfL school bus ventures further than standard bus services, in this case the 608 to Shenfield High School. Again it's the penultimate stop but in this case the terminus is a full 1½km further east making it TfL's easternmost bus stop by a country mile.
The southernmost TfL bus stop: Dorking Townfield Court(stop S)
[route served: 465] [county: Surrey] [streetview: RH4 2JE] [map] [photo]
A few London buses stretch ridiculously far into Surrey because the county council supports them, and one of those long penetrating fingers is the 465. It crosses the Greater London boundary at Malden Rushett and then continues for another ten miles through Leatherhead and the North Downs to Dorking. And not just Dorking town centre but a tad further on at the farthest tip of the inner loop road where, when it's time to return, almost nobody is waiting to catch it.
Dorking's lovely, a couple of notches above even Brentwood, as you can see from the calibre of the shops and cultural goodies down its High Street. But by the time you reach the end of South Street things have calmed down somewhat with a service centre, wine merchant and Topps Tiles the chief draws. Any final passengers are turfed off just before The Queens Head where the driver waits until the appointed time before nudging 50m further south to Townfield Court. This is a gated 1990s development built on the site of Dorking Bus Garage, one of whose residents has to put up with a glass shelter just outside their flat window. Adjacent houses are rather older and more characterful. Bus Stop S is highlighted in Surrey green with an extended flag that conceals a departures screen on the other side. Other routes serving the stop include the 21 to Epsom, the 22 from Crawley and the 93 from Horsham, and it says a lot for TfL services that the half-hourly 465 is by far the most frequent of the lot. Far-flung, stockbrokerish and almost pleasant, that's TfL's southernmost bus stop.
• TfL's southernmost bus stop is 32 miles south of its northernmost bus stop, because it felt like that was the kind of statistic you'd want.
• It's completely coincidental, but I like how TfL's southernmost bus stop has an S on it.
• Yes, Dorking is further south than Redhill and the National Trust car park at Chartwell the 246 extends to on summer Sundays, I checked.
• I haven't included the once-a-year TfL bus stop outside Warminster station in my calculations, because Imberbus is not a regular TfL service, but amazingly it's only 1½ miles further south so barely any distance at all.
• Vlogger Joe Dan Hirst filmed a bus journey from TfL's southernmost bus stop to its northernmost bus stop last week, in case you want to see what Townfield Court really looks like (and the school bus stop in Potters Bar he went to instead).
The westernmost TfL bus stop: Queensmere Centre (Slough)(stop PQ)
[route served: 81] [county: Berks] [streetview: SL1 1DH] [map] [photo]
The 81 has been running from Hounslow to Slough since before I was born, long providing London Transport's westernmost extent. This time we're heading 6 miles past the Greater London boundary, all the way through Colnbrook and Langley to terminate beside the whopping Tesco by Slough station. But that's not quite as far west as the first stop on the return trip which is just round the corner in the actual High Street, from which those seeking to escape Slough repeatedly flee.
The stop is named after the Queensmere Shopping Centre, Slough's first retail mall which opened in 1973. A main entrance was close by but has recently been closed off as has over half the sprawling complex. The rest has become depressingly empty and lowbrow, so much so that its multi-storey car park closed forever last night for simply not being up to scratch. I was thus unsurprised to discover that Queensmere was sold off to residential developer Berkeley in April with plans to demolish the lot and build 1600 homes. Any shops Slough feels it still needs will decant to the neighbouring Observatory, a smaller 1990s mall, and I suspect John Betjeman would be simultaneously thrilled to see the current mess knocked down and appalled by the upthrust that'll replace it.
Bus Stop PQ boasts a four-bench-long shelter, a leftover from when rather more routes stopped here, but these days it's only the 81. It is thus the only extreme bus stop to be served by a single route and also, alas, the only one without a timetable. There is an electronic display screen but on my visit it was showing all the wrong times because the TfL/Slough interface is decidedly poor. A bus gate restricts access to this one-way street so there's a proper pedestrianised feel, but also three betting shops and a pawnbroker in the parade behind because Slough is neither Brentwood nor Dorking. Shabby, down-at-heel and inaccurate, that's TfL's westernmost bus stop.
• This is the only 'extreme' bus stop to have a red roundel flag.
• TfL's westernmost bus stop is 39 miles west of its easternmost bus stop, which is 7 miles more than the north-south divide.
• Both the westernmost and easternmost TfL bus stops are served by a route 81, and what are the chances of that?
• I have only been to two of these extreme bus stops this weekend, and three in the last week, because a post like this takes careful planning.
• There is no need to follow in my footsteps, but if you are tempted best go east/south rather than north/west.
45 Squared 22) FERRY SQUARE, TW8
Borough of Hounslow, 40m×20m
This square's in old Brentford, inasmuch as old Brentford still exists, although all its buildings have somehow survived the recent cleansing of the riverside. The ferry in question was a horse ferry to Kew, an important crossing since medieval times and long under the control of the Crown. The pedestrian fare in 1536 was a farthing. Ferry Lane ran down to a landingstage at the mouth of the river Brent, a connection last used in 1939 when the economics of a link to the wrong side of Kew Gardens became untenable. And the open space where Ferry Lane met the High Street was called Ferry Square, indeed still is, although it's no longer open because the residents have chained it off so don't get your hopes up.
200 years ago the standalone building in the centre of Ferry Square was the 'Brentford Cage', the town's lock-up where ne'er-do-wells were stashed before appearing in front of the local magistrates. As Brentford docks were then a frenetic interface between the Grand Union Canal and the Thames, it would have been kept ferry busy. In 1898 a Fire Station was built in its place, a civic wonder in redbrick terracotta with space for two fire engines and a special tower for drying the leather hoses. This continued to serve the town until 1965 when the ambulance service moved in instead, then in 2003 came a restaurant inevitably called The Old Fire Station. The current hospitality occupants are Moisei at Makai who offer "a unique experience with seafood boils", i.e. Hawaiian fusion with cocktails, and who've recently ventured into Ukranier cuisine. The Middlesex coat of arms above the 'Please leave quietly' notice looks terribly out of place.
Ferry Square today is merely the road behind the Old Fire Station, a brief curl fronted by a brief terrace of half a dozen houses. These replaced a row of cottages which housed Thames Soap Works employees so must date to WWII-ish, although that still counts as properly old round here. And no you won't be getting a closer look because two planters and a chain block the entrance, just outside the replacement windows at number 1. 'PRIVATE' says a sign, also 'Access for residents & their visitors only' in case you haven't got the hint. The reclusive cul-de-sac boasts one council lamppost, a jointed concrete road surface and at the far end a small turning circle that appears to double up as a communal front garden. Here a curve of astroturf fronts the high street with an array of metal chairs, rustic planters and a cluster of frighteningly gauche garden gnomes courtesy of The Wilson Family at number 6. I didn't feel I'd missed much by not being able to venture within.
The east side of the square is officially Ferry Lane and somehow still cobbled. This is where the seven St Paul'salmshouses were once located, except in 1949 they were closed and demolished and now a Premier Inn occupies the site. The first extant building down Ferry Lane is the Watermans Arms, a 20th century rebuild of a much much older pub which now offers cask ales, traditional fayre and Japanese dishes. Had you been watching Z Cars on 1st August 1972 you'd have seen it featured as the site of dodgy cigarette deals and a bar brawl, the immediate relevance being that the two officers on watch outside were parked in front of 1 Ferry Square. And if you head any further down Ferry Lane it becomes Ferry Quays, an early millennial redevelopment of cheerless sterility, which alas is the direction much of riverside Brentford is going. If nothing else Ferry Square still has a bit of character, even it's just gnomes and terracotta.
1) As of yesterday the 205 bus goes to Marble Arch rather than Paddington. This means you can now get a bus to the end of Oxford Street from both sides of Bow Church. Route 205 starts from Bus Stop J and goes to the western end, and route 8 starts from Bus Stop M and goes to the eastern end.
2) The launderette on Bow Road has closed for refurbishment. A sign in the window reassures customers "we will be reopen soon".
3) It was Bow Arts Open Studios yesterday, and indeed the night before. I poked round some art, dropped by the Makers Market and listened to the band play. You can do none of these things until next June. However you can still book tickets for a Subversive Sandwich Workshop on 10th July.
4) In a Bow Roundabout update, the new contraflow lane under the roundabout still isn't open even though all other roadworks were completed three months ago. If this changes I'll be sure to let you know.
5) A customer incident closed Bow Church station yesterday morning. Judging by the presence of police vehicles, the TfL Emergency Response Unit and a private ambulance I fear it was a most unfortunate incident. Trains later passed through without stopping before the station reopened.
6) From 21st July DLR services at Bow Church station will be reduced due to the retirement of aged rolling stock. Off-peak frequencies will drop from every 5 minutes to every 6½ minutes, grrr, and peak trains to Lewisham will no longer run.
7) The magnetic letters on my freezer door are currently H, K and X.
8) The regeneration of Stroudley Walk has become increasingly more intrusive as the worksite has expanded to leave a ridiculously thin walkway in front of the existing shopping parade. It'll be a big improvement when the 274 new homes are finally finished, but I fear some of the shops may have gone bust by then.
9) Bow Wharf, the commercial cluster at the western end of the Hertford Canal, is to be mostly demolished and replaced by 66 homes. Of the existing businesses only the distillery building will remain. The Canal and River Trust own the site and as a charity need money, hence the inevitable shift to housing.
10) The horse chestnut tree outside Bow Road station is bursting with conkers so it must be nearly autumn.
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, bit of heritage, proper healthy, municipal-focused, hilltop views, football-related, flying balls, disused railway bridge, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a Healthy Heritage Walk from Barnet borough council, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
Having recommended that you might like to try walking a London borough walk I though it was only right to pick one myself and give it a go. I plumped for four-star borough Barnet and one of their seven Healthy Heritage Walks, conceived as a joint project with the Ramblers and the Institute of Tourist Guiding. Each features a map, a multi-page script with full directions, a Spotify playlist featuring the aforementioned script and a Google map of the appointed route, which is a pretty good going for a council resource. I picked a part of Barnet I was relatively unfamiliar with because it's always good to explore. And what I discovered was that the first kilometre was great, the second, third and fourth a bit of a slog, and the fifth didn't go as planned.
The Hendon to Mill Hill walk starts at Hendon Town Hall, which is both an obvious and a self-centred location for a borough-produced walk. The building's typically Edwardian, having been built in the era when local government was proudly emerging, and is also flying the Progress Pride flag because Barnet finally has a Labour council and it's June. The walk notes remind us that Margaret Thatcher was at the count here when she became Prime Minister in 1979, also that the adjacent fire station is from 1914 and the library from 1929. The peculiar statue outside resembling a giant drill bit is called Family Man, was unveiled by Mrs T in 1981 and celebrates the twinning of Barnet with the municipality of Ramat Gan in Israel. The other imposing municipal edifice is Hendon Technical Institute, later a founding part of Middlesex University, now the main campus of Middlesex University so potentially abuzz with students. If pre-walk reassurance is what you need, Hendon Library has toilets and the Costcutter across the road has water and snacks.
Once upon a time this was a quiet hamlet called The Burroughs and just up the lane was the village hub of Church End. That'll be why there's still a bank of 300-year-old almshouses along here, still providing accommodation for 16 needy persons over 50 years age, with one of those lovely old plaques above the door whose verbose wording kicks off with the phraſe "Theſe Alms Houſes were erected Purſuant to the laſt will of Robert Daniel". Turn the corner, very much avoiding the Barnet Wellbeing Centre, and lo the whitewashed walls of a medieval church. This is St Mary's whose tower is topped by a dazzling lofty weathercock, or more precisely weatherlamb. The walknotes recommend going inside if possible to see the 12th century font and the grave of Sir Stamford Raffles, but I'd turned up as Sung Eucharist was turfing out so it didn't seem appropriate. Instead I headed round the back as directed to see the grave of Herbert Chapman, Arsenal's pioneeringly excellent manager in the 1920s and 1930s, whose career was sadly cut short when he died of pneumonia aged 55.
The pub outside is The Greyhound but was built as Church House, a place for parish meetings. A blue plaque confirms they've been held on this site since 1351 while a blackboard confirms they now sell Double Salami pizza. Nextdoor is the oldestdwelling in Hendon, a 17th century farmhouse, which from 1955 to 2011 housed Church Farmhouse Museum. Alas the council flogged it off at the first sign of austerity, much to the fury of many, so to see it still has a Barnet Property Services To Let sign out front suggests that wasn't a great decision. And beyond that is a footpath entrance to Sunny Hill Park, formerly Church Farmhouse's farm, and it was here my antennae really picked up because I'd never been before. It's big too, a 55 acre sloping tongue with uncut meadow, ridged peak and lower cafe. Pause by the tree with a bench and soak in the view, suggested the walk, and hell yes.
"From here it is possible to see across the valley to Harrow and Stanmore" says the rubric, and they are indeed the undulating woody peaks of Middlesex on the horizon. It then waxes lyrical for five paragraphs about the foreground because this used to include Hendon Aerodrome, a place of considerable aerial importance, but alas all this is now dominated by the boxy upthrust of Colindale. It's grown so much since this script was written in 2019 that you can no longer see 'the distinctive yellow roof' of Hendon Police College, not unless you shift to a completely different viewpoint, only an intrusion of semi-affordable brick vernacular.
You may be unnerved to discover that we're not yet even quarter of the way through the walk, after all my lengthy description thus far, but the good news is that the remainder's far less interesting so I can be briefer.
Kilometre 2: The walk now retreats all the way back to the park entrance, past the back of the churchyard and round the back of the Barnet Wellbeing Centre. It then follows a back alley rather than pass the multitude of takeaways on Church Lane before emerging partway up Parson Street.
Kilometre 3: Near the bottom of the hill you can't quite see Hendon Hall Hotel, a neoclassical mansion whose greatest claim to fame is that it was the hotel where the England football team stayed the night before the 1966 World Cup Final. Since the walknotes were written it's become a luxury care home, complete with '66 Bar and Lounge', so is even harder to see. The Brutalist block of flats in front with its jaggedy concrete profile is Hendon Hall Court, another 1966 triumph. Crossing the busy A1 is no fun, as if a pedestrian crossing were an afterthought, then turn left at North Hendon Synagogue into full-on suburban avenues.
Kilometre 4: Ooh, an unexpected bridleway. This is Ashley Lane, an ancient roadway once used by a fleeing Cardinal Wolsey, now preserved as a half mile strip of ancient woodland across the middle of a golf course. The gentle climb is shady and pleasant, if you don't mind repeated passive aggressive signs warning that unauthorised access onto the course by pedestrians, bikes and drones is strictly prohibited. At the far end is the back entrance to Hendon Cemetery, a multi-faith site since 1899 and the burial place of Lynsey de Paul, also absolutely no dogs permitted.
If you've bothered to schlep this far the final 15 minutes through Mill Hill promises more. Sanders Lane should lead to an old arched bridge over a disused railway, just beyond Mill Hill East, except the path has been fully blocked off with a sign saying 'Footway closed'. This is bloody annoying because there's no other easy way round, hence the local petition which in effect says for God's sake please reopen Sanders Lane. The cause is a structural defect discovered in March 2023 which created "an immediate safety risk", and Barnet council have only recently confirmed that their preferred solution is to entirely demolish the 145 year-old bridge and instead add a footpath at cutting level, with work starting next month. I was thus forced to walk up the road and then return along the actual disused railway, which to be fair was vastly more atmospheric, plus I got to see the doomed bridge from below just before it vanishes forever.
The walk ends by climbing Bittacy Hill onto the site of the former Inglis Barracks, the enormous camp where every WW1 soldier who signed up for the Middlesex Regiment did their training. All that remains today is the officers mess, a long brick building at the brow of the hill, every other space having been swallowed up by swirling townhouses and other semi-upmarket housing. With crushing inevitability the mess has been subdivided into further flats and become Officers Mess House, now fronted by a private garden and numerous signs warning anyone with a vehicle of a potential £100 parking fine. It's no longer the climactic end to the walk that the originators planned, or indeed saw six years ago, and I think what I'm saying is maybe just walk the first three quarters of a mile. Or go do the Totteridge walk instead.
Tomorrow is the summer solstice (3:42am BST).
Today and tomorrow are the longest days.
But tonight is the shortest night.
Date
Sunrise
Day length
Sunset
Night length
Jun 15
04:42:13
16h37m54s
21:20:07
7h22m03s
Jun 16
04:42:10
16h38m24s
21:20:34
7h21m35s
Jun 17
04:42:09
16h38m50s
21:20:59
7h21m13s
Jun 18
04:42:12
16h39m08s
21:21:20
7h20m57s
Jun 19
04:42:17
16h39m21s
21:21:38
7h20m48s
Jun 20
04:42:26
16h39m28s
21:21:54
7h20m42s
Jun 21
04:42:38
16h39m28s
21:22:06
7h20m47s
Jun 22
04:42:53
16h39m22s
21:22:15
7h20m55s
Jun 23
04:43:10
16h39m11s
21:22:21
7h21m10s
Jun 24
04:43:31
16h38m53s
21:22:24
7h21m30s
Jun 25
04:43:54
16h38m30s
21:22:24
7h21m57s
Jun 26
04:44:21
16h38m00s
21:22:21
7h22m29s
data is for London, specifically the Houses of Parliament (51.5°N, 0.125W°)
Days are longer than 16h39m from June 18th to June 23rd.
Nights are shorter than 7h21m from June 18th to June 22nd.
We've already had the earliest sunrise (4:42am and 9 seconds) three days ago.
But the latest sunset (9.22pm and 24 seconds) isn't until next week.
Sunsets are still getting fractionally later for the next four days.
This is for previously-explained reasons.
All this balances out, marginally, to give a longest day of 16h39m28s.
This year June 20th and June 21st both have the same maximum day length.
This is because the solstice occurs overnight, inbetween.
It also means the night of the solstice is the shortest night.
Which is tonight.
But it's only 5 seconds shorter than tomorrow night, so nobody will notice.
WALK LONDON London borough walks (on London borough websites)
Walking is one of the easiest ways to make a journey - it costs nothing, it's good for your health and it's availably locally. So you might hope that London's borough websites would feature collateral encouraging their residents to head outside and enjoy all their area has offer on foot. Some nice walks for people to follow, perhaps, past sites of interest or across scenic landscapes. If the boroughs don't do it, who else will?
So I've been scouring the websites of all 33 London boroughs to see what walks they have to recommend. I've hunted for trails to follow, leaflets to download, circuits to trace, all specific to the borough, all for free. Some borough websites have the lot whereas others make little or no effort to encourage walkers to explore their leafy acres. I've awarded stars according to online route provision and knocked up a league table of walk-friendly boroughs.
I first did this back in 2008, then again in 2012, then again in 2016, then again at the start of 2021. Four years on, the majority of these borough websites have upgraded. A few have merely reorganised, breaking previous links. Others have substantially restructured, adding or pruning former pages and making themselves a lot more mobile-friendly. And a depressing number have dumbed down, deleting all the interesting stuff and concentrating solely on council services.
So I thought I'd update my previous list, for those of you who fancy spending some time exploring your part of the city on foot. To name and shame (or praise and cheer), I've included any changes since 2021 in brackets.
Here's my borough by borough London guide to free downloadable walks. Who'll spur you outdoors for a bit of healthy leisure and heritage, and whose website teams still need a bit of a kick?
Nothing about walks or walking, because these websites are repositories of information about council services (no star boroughs) Bexley(↓4), Kensington & Chelsea(↓3), Lambeth
It's the first time I've awarded five stars to four boroughs, so congratulations to Bromley, Hillingdon, Southwark and Waltham Forest.
Bromley has some of London's best countryside on its doorstep and has created some top-notch rambling resources to help explore it. These come highly recommended. Southwark scores highly for devising a themed walk beginning at each of its libraries, and Hillingdon and Waltham Forest have reached the upper echelons by adding to their previous four-star selections. If you're ever at a loss for something to do locally, dig deep.
The City of London used to be firmly five star but I've downgraded them for concealment reasons. Most of their excellent walking resources remain on the City website but only if you already know where to look, because the official walking page now redirects punters to the jazzier City of London website where everything's more commercial. Of the remaining four star boroughs, Barnet's six Healthy Heritage Walks are the most recent and come with a choice of accompanying podcast or transcript. Lewisham's unusual approach is to encourage everyone to walk to Blackheath from wherever they live.
Once you drop below four stars the offerings get less exciting. But well done to Brent for noticing that routes without maps aren't much use, hence by restoring these they go back up a place. Kingston have managed to put together three colourful walks by partnering with their local university, hence they spring up from zero stars to three. Hammersmith & Fulham's audience is people who hardly walk at all, so don't head there for anything meaty.
At the two star level councils are essentially abdicating responsibility for walking resources to external sources. Enfield and Haringey have dropped a star since 2021 by doing just that. I'm particularly ashamed that the Tower Hamlets web team have somehow retained the summary highlights of their walks while deleting the associated pdfs, making a long-standing collection of excellent leisure downloads utterly useless overnight.
Similar torching of resources has occurred in Kensington & Chelsea, and especially Bexley which has somehow managed to plummet from four stars to none at all. A third of London boroughs fall into my one- and zero-star categories because their websites are too keen on being functional instead of inspiring. The dilution and impoverishment of council websites has been a regular theme on this blog, and is one of the reasons why I revisit these lists every few years.
If you're fortunate to live in (or next to) one of the four- or five-star boroughs, maybe bookmark a few of these local walks and walking pages for later use. Even if this weekend's looking much too hot, getting out and about is always an excellent way to explore London and keep active at the same time.
An extraordinary thing has happened at the cablecar.
Some of the cabins now have a glass floor.
The bottom of the cabin has been removed and replaced with what I assume is an impressively chunky sheet of glass. It's not a small window, it's pretty much the entire floor, allowing a completely new perspective on a flight above the Thames. Are you brave enough?
It wholly surprised me when I first saw it. A typical cabin bottom is white and emblazoned with the name of the sponsor, so it was unexpected to see a pale blue rectangle approaching over the wires instead. As it drew nearer it became evident that I could see the sky through the bottom of the cabin, which very much isn't normal. And as it passed overhead I could see fully inside through what was plainly a transparent floor, confirming that TfL's engineers have been very busy. That's quite some gimmick, I thought.
Imagine setting off from the terminal with an additional view beneath your feet. The dock, the dockside, the roof of the Silvertown Tunnel and several building sites, all from an unusual angle. Then blimey the choppy waters of the River Thames from maybe 80m up, all grey and merciless, including that unnerving jiggle as you rumble over the mast. And all with the additional frisson that the glass might crack and you could tumble to your doom, even though you know that would never happen but your subconscious is more easily spooked. The TikTokkers will come storming in.
I should confirm it's not all the cabins, only a couple. The vast majority of cabin floors are still opaque and the experience is thus exactly the same as it was before. But if you happen to be ushered into one of the two glass-floored cabins you're in for additional thrills, quite possibly a shock, and maybe a little fistbump too as realise you got lucky.
All I can tell you is what I saw, which is two glass-floored cabins circulating across the river. One is cabin number 11 and the other is cabin number 29, in case you want to time your swipe through the gates to maximise your chances of boarding one or the other. They were also both empty, so I stayed to watch further passes to see whether either was in public service yet. At one point a very large group of international students boarded and staff spread them out across six separate cabins, but all sequentially behind the glass-floored one, so maybe not yet. But on a later pass suddenly two feet appeared above the glass, so yes it is already operational.
Just as those on board can look down so those below can look up, so be careful what you put on the floor. Also I hope that TfL's lawyers have grappled with the upskirting thing, because plonking a glass floor underneath someone without their consent and then hoisting them into the air does have potential repercussions.
What I can't tell you is what it's like up there because I didn't venture on board. I could have climbed the steps and tried my luck, basing today's post on a first-hand account rather than observation and presumption. How thrilling it would have been to be the first social media channel with factual glass floor reportage. But the main reason I didn't is because I'd done the maths and decided the odds very much weren't in my favour.
There are 34 cabins in circulation at any one time on the Dangleway, of which only two had a glass floor. That's a 1 in 17 chance of success which isn't great odds, especially now every single trip costs £7. There is thus a 94% chance that you won't be successful on your first attempt, and another 94% chance of failure on every subsequent occasion, and that's a lot of £7s to fork out in the hope of enjoying a glass bottom. A bit of maths suggests you'd probably end up spending over £70 before you finally got lucky and even then there are no guarantees so it's potentially a bottomless money pit.
What I don't know is whether it'll be first come first served or whether it'll need pre-booking. Will cabins 11 and 29 be meted out to whoever's at the front of the queue at the time or will you have to stake a claim, potentially by paying more. It's possible staff in each terminal may be helpful ("You want the glass floor? Sure, stand over here"), especially if you pick a really quiet time like a Thursday morning, but it's also possible this is a full-on money-spinner charging extra for giving you the willies.
As yet there's no official information about what's going on here. The Dangleway website has nothing, no additional signage has appeared at either terminal and the price list is unchanged. At present it's not clear whether this is a paid-for extra or an simply part of the usual package that a select few will enjoy. But I expect the TfL Press Office will fire off the loudest of press releases when the appointed time comes round because there's no point investing dosh in a tourist attraction without making a splash.
I wonder what they'll call it. My money's on The Glass Floor Experience because cablecar marketing has been obsessed with the word 'experience' over the years.
But yes you read it right, two Dangleway cabins now have glassfloors.
As gimmicks go, it's right up there.
4pm update: Opens to the public on Monday 23rd June. Tickets are now available to purchase. They cost £25 for a round trip! It is indeed called The Glass Floor Experience ;)
WALK LONDON
