Thank you for your many alphabetical suggestions.
Let's see if some of them have legs.
» How about embassies of countries beginning with each letter?
The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in London(31 Princes Gate, SW7)
You'll find the Afghan embassy in Princes Gate on the south side of Hyde Park, a diplomatic cluster that's widely known because the Iranian embassy interrupted the snooker finals in 1980. These very splendid five-storey houses were built in 1847 by C.J. Freake, an adherent of Italianate 'stucco classic' style, and are set back from Kensington Road behind a smart line of shrubbery and a limo-parking area patrolled by armed police. The great and good, like His Excellency Dr Zalmai Rassoul (Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary), enter through the posh doors with the twiddly ironwork. Lesser souls, like those in search of Passport, Visa, Tazkera, Power of Attorney & Other Consular Services, are directed towards a minor staircase leading down into the basement which I guess was once the servants' entrance. There would have been servants once, back when this was a private house before it was purchased by the Royal State of Afghanistan in 1925. A stucco annexe was added in 1955 which currently houses their consulate section and a secure garage for the parking of diplomatic cars. As the first country in alphabetical order Afghanistan has the honour of the premier 101 diplomatic registration, so for example that Range Rover parked outside has numberplate [101 D 216].
» We hear a lot about bus stop M, what about the other bus stops?
Bus Stop A - Harrow Manorway in Abbey Wood
There are 496 Bus Stop As in Greater London and here's a prime example in Abbey Wood. It's the northbound bus stop on Harrow Manorway, a short walk north of Abbey Wood station just past the enormous Sainsbury's. It's in the London borough of Greenwich but only just because Bus Stop B on the opposite side of the road is in Bexley. Just behind the bus stop is the Thistlebrook Travellers' site.
Routes served: 180 229 244 301 469 472 N1 Timetables present: 244 469 669 N1 (four are missing, which is a pretty poor show) Bus which won't be stopping here in 3 weeks time: 472 because TfL are Superlooping it Maps in shelter: Spider map and walking map (both appallingly grubby) Adverts in shelter: Eat Natural hazelnut and date bars; Michael Jackson the musical (closes next month) Other facilities: litter bin, bus-stop bypass Places of interest nearby: no
» Perhaps give unusual Blue Plaques in London a go.
Edward ARDIZZONE(1900-1979)
130 Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale
Edward Ardizzone was a British painter and illustrator of many talents including that of official war artist, but is best known for his children's books. If you went to school in the 70s or 80s your copy of Stig of the Dump was liberally illustrated by him so his penmanship will be innately familiar. Ardizzone grew up in Ipswich, but the family moved into Elgin Avenue in 1920 when he was working as an office clerk, and Edward was still there in 1972 after retiring as a tutor with the Royal College of Art. Alas these days his home at number 130 is a hollowed-out sham, a four bedroom split level luxury apartment with a minimum of interior walls, not that you'd ever guess from out front.
» An A-Z of musicians/bands who have lived or worked in London?
Blur's frontman was born at Whipps Cross hospital and grew up in a much bigger than average terraced house in Leytonstone. Damon's parents were artists, his upbringing bohemian, indeed there's still something screamingly middle class about this street. For his early education he attended George Tomlinson Primary School on the other side of the A12, not that the A12 was here at the time. The Albarns moved out of Waltham Forest in 1977 when Damon was ten, ensuring that all the formative Blur stuff took place on the outskirts of Colchester instead. Damon did however come back for the unveiling of his plaque in 2014 and grinned out of a bedroom window, mainly because he had a solo album to promote.
» An A-Z of public statues could be interesting.
King Alfred, Trinity Church Square SE1
Just off Borough High Street is the former Holy Trinity Church, now Henry Wood Hall, and in the garden out front is what's believed to be London's oldest statue. It's an eight foot high representation of proto-hero King Alfred, the top half being about 200 years old and the bottom half being Roman. The lower chunk isthought to have formed part of a colossal sculpture dedicated to Minerva in a temple on nearby Watling Street, and was carved from Cotswold limestone during the reign of Trajan or Hadrian. You can only see it from beyond the railings however, unless you're a resident or their guest and willing to abide by the list of rules posted by the gate. No daffodils and cherry blossom are currently present, but give it a few months.
» Have you done an A–Z of shops, defunct or extant?
AJ Sports, Robin Hood Way, Kingston Vale
Fordham Sports was founded by John Fordham in 1984 and claimed to be "the largest stockist of specialist Cricket, Hockey and Rugby equipment in the South of England". Their shop can be found on the A3 just south of Richmond Park - in fact three shops because they expanded into nextdoor early on. Then in 2019 they sold up to AJ Sports, a more cricket-focused business with branches in Clapham, Harrow and Guildford, who haven't yet fully updated the awning. It's very much a 'walls hung with equipment' kind of store arrayed with sports shoes and over 1000 hockey sticks, plus the latest Gray-Nicolls Imperia 2026 cricket bat and various duffle wheelies to stash your kit in. According to their newest window slogan HOCKEY'S BACK! ARE YOU READY? so why wait?
» Could you use alphabetical sandwich bars/cafes as a start point?
Ace Cafe Stonebridge Park
Here's a legendary location - the famous Ace Cafe. It opened in 1938 to cater for passing roadside trade, but very soon upgraded to the Ace Service Station. The current building is a postwar rebuild, made popular then famous, then infamous as a Mecca for bikers and rock'n'rollers. The last fried breakfast was served in 1969, that is until a 2001 reboot that saw the Ace reborn for an older generation. Drop by and there's usually high octane action on the forecourt with a variety of bikes lined up proudly at the roadside for all to admire. If their owners aren't standing outside absorbing adulation they're likely sitting inside in full leathers with their helmet beside them on the table, swapping anecdotes over a nice cup of tea. Ace indeed.
I confess that fiveofthoseyou'veread on here before and two I went out and researched specially yesterday. My apologies if I didn't get round to road-testing your suggestion.
» A-Z of churches and places of worship? All Hallows-on-the-Wall, Bevis Marks, Croydon Minster, Dalston Methodist, East London Mosque etc
» An A-Z of sporting venues might offer considerable scope for variety. Alexandra Palace, Battersea Park, Crystal Palace, Dulwich College etc
» An A-Z of people associated with London rather than places? David Attenborough, Enid Blyton, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Dickens, etc
» An A to Z of people buried in one of the Magnificent Seven burial grounds? John Auldjo, William Booth, Betsi Cadwaladr, Fanny Dickens, etc
» Trees? Amwell Fig, Bexley Charter Oak, Cheapside Plane, Downe Yew, etc
» Cockney rhyming slang expressions working through the alphabet. Apples and pears, Bees and honey, Cream-crackered, Dog and bone, etc
» Perhaps a series of articles that relate London to the phonetic alphabet? (great idea but, erm...)
» Cheeses? (no)
Key question: Would it make a broadly interesting year-long series without getting very stuck at X and Z?
I'm still mulling it over...
(I know this news is a fortnight old but it's still the subject of TfL's most recent press release)
It's pretty impressive.
A giant laminated timber shed has been constructed above the platforms, appealingly curved, whereas the previous entrance was a squat box with insufficient capacity. This has a huge gateline to ease the passage of thousands of new residents living in stacky flats, also no ticket office because TfL don't bother with those any more, also sustainable drainage, also occasional gold shiny surfaces, also the original brass clock from the southbound platform raised into pride of place, also a great big window looking down onto the tracks, also an unfinished unit awaiting full fit-out as a cafe, also a lift giving access from street to platform. The lift is rightly what TfL crowed about most, enabling Colindale to become the 94th step-free tube station, although with only one more due to become step-free this year it could be a very long time before we hit 100.
Ian Visits has all the background detail and more photos than my mere four, plus he published all this a fortnight ago when it was still current.
Meanwhile Southgate station closed yesterday until mid-March so that one of its escalators can be repaired.
Potential passengers were very cross.
(This message has not been the focus of a TfL press release because they only do good news these days)
The escalator on the left needs emergency repairs and has already been sealed off with blue hoardings. The escalator on the right is still operational but can only be used by passengers exiting the station. Normally what they do in these situations is use the staircase inbetween for passengers walking down but they haven't taken that option so Southgate has become exit-only. This is particularly annoying in the morning when most of the traffic would be commuters departing, but a kindness in the evening when most people want to exit anyway.
It's especially annoying because there are no other stations within a mile of Southgate, also the buses that go there aren't especially fast or frequent. TfL could have put on a special tube replacement service but not this time. Despite a lengthy publicity campaign several people turned up yesterday unawares and were halted by the posters, interrogated the gateline staff, then resigned themselves to a bus. I won't repeat what a man in a black jacket said to me when the penny dropped but it wasn't polite, indeed he wandered off furious and open-mouthed. Also the 'no entry' message is so strong that I hope nobody fails to twig that Southgate is still open for exits so gets off one station early to catch an unnecessary bus home.
I've blogged the A2026, B2026, SE26 and the number 26 bus.
That's all I have for '26' posts.
I could have ridden the N26 bus but I had no desire to end up in Chingford at 2am.
I could have gone for brunch at 26 Grains but it was full.
26 Grains is the brainchild of Alex Hely-Hutchinson, a food entrepreneur inspired by Danish oats. She started out in 2014 with a pop-up selling porridge pots to commuters and now runs a restaurant in Neal's Yard selling sweet and savoury porridge and topped toasts. Don't expect more than five grains in her signature Hazelnut & Butter porridge, also I can't imagine 'Mushrooms on Toast' is worth £16 even if it comes with truffle chestnut cream and pickled celeriac on sourdough. But the place was packed out, even on the most miserable Monday of the year while most people were back at work, so I guess 26 Grains does very nicely thankyou.
I could have travelled the A26 but it's 50 miles long and nobody wants to read that amount of bloggage. FYI it starts in Maidstone, passes through Tunbridge Wells and ends up in Newhaven, and would require four hours travel on threebusroutes to negotiate without a car. I can however show you the highest point on the A26 which is here in Crowborough at 240m above sea level.
I considered riding a tube line with exactly 26 stations but there aren't any (Bakerloo 25, Jubilee 27), nor indeed on the Overground (Weaver 25, Mildmay 28).
So I think that'll do for '26' posts.
There is of course one other obvious 26-related subject and that's the alphabet.
So that's what I intend to run with as my ongoing themed series this year.
A London Alphabet of something.
But an Alphabet of What?
» I love old cinemas. You should do an A-Z of old cinemas.
» Bottoms up dg, it's got to be an A-Z of London pubs.
» London has hundreds of stations, how about an A-Z of them?
» You've just done 45 Squares so it has to be an A-Z of Streets.
» Is it possible to do an A-Z of London parks?
» It's a shame you've already done an A-Z of London museums.
» I'd love you to excoriate an A-Z of London businesses.
» Why don't you contact a reader starting with each letter of the alphabet and ask them to nominate a favourite place in London starting with that letter and then write about your visit without using that letter in your blogpost?
Some of those would be very tedious, some very repetitive, some of remarkably limited interest and some potentially fascinating, but I'm sure we'd disagree which is which.
What I think I'm going to do is an A-Z of London locations I haven't blogged about before, but I haven't narrowed it down yet and there's still time for you to persuade me otherwise.
A is for... Abbey Creek? Abney Park? Addington Palace? Addiscombe? Albert Bridge? Aldersbrook? Aldi? Aldwych? Alexandra Palace? Amazon? Amersham Arms? Andy's Sandwich Bar? Anerley? Aperfield? Appledore Avenue? Apples and Pears? Ardleigh Green? Argos? Arizona Fried Chicken? Arkley? Army & Navy? Arnos Park? Arts Cafe? AstraZeneca? Avenue Road?
1) Study the Sydenham Mosaic
The best place for Sydenham spoilers is the facade of The Sydenham Centre, a community hub in the high street that's half taproom half Post Office. In 2013 it was decorated with eleven circular mosaics to celebrate local points of historic interest, each beautifully designed by artist Oliver Budd, many of which I'll describe further in what follows. It kicks off with the Croydon Canal (18), ends with Ernest Shackleton (16) and along the way celebrates cricket in Mayow Park (19), John Logie Baird (11) and the Crystal Palace Bowl (5). Between the upper windows is a representation of the Naborhood Cinema which once stood on this site and in circle number four is a kitten in a jug, a backstory thankfully explained on the mosaic's website. It turns out kittens were the favoured focus of Victorian artist Horatio Couldery who lived just down the road in Addington Grove, his work once described by John Ruskin as “Unsurpassable in its depiction of kitten meditation”. And he's not the most prestigious artist in the Sydenham Mosaic because the beardy bloke in circle number two is one of the most famous of the French impressionists (2)...
2) Follow in Pissaro's footsteps
In 1870 Camille Pissaro fled Paris to escape the Franco-Prussian War and spent a year living in Upper Norwood, SE19. Twelve paintings from that time survive, one of which is titled The Avenue, Sydenham. It shows a scene in early spring on a broad tree-lined thoroughfare lined by white posts, a bit like Dulwich Village looks today, with a horse and cart approaching and a church tower at the far end. That parish church is St Bartholomew's and 'The Avenue' is Lawrie Park Avenue, the centrepiece of one of Sydenham's finest estates. It's a lot fuller with parked cars than it was when Claude set up his easel but still recognisably the same vista. The National Gallery has the original.
3) Be bowled over by WG Grace
After WG Grace finished his county cricket career with Gloucestershire he moved to London to set up London County cricket club, a breakaway side who played at Crystal Palace. In 1899 he moved into a large villa nearby at 7 Lawrie Park Road and used it as a surgery where he continued his day job as a doctor. He played his last professional match in 1908 and moved the following year to Mottingham where his blue plaque is. It used to be here in Sydenham but the house was demolished the year after they unveiled it (!) and in its place today is a four storey block of flats with a local Lewisham brown plaque instead. The stubby cul-de-sac alongside has subsequently been called Cricketers Walk, although that hardly seems sufficient mitigation. n.b. Rolf Harris used to live round the corner at 4/4A Border Road in the 1970s, but unsurprisingly that's plaqueless.
4) See where a Booker Prize winner was written
In 1989 author Kazuo Ishiguro came to live in the top floor flat at 9 Charleville Circus, a fine villa owned by a colleague his wife had met at Lewisham Social Services. Here he wrote his Booker Prize winning novel The Remains of the Day, apparently in four weeks flat sustained by regular breaks for tea and Mr Kipling cakes with the Marshall family downstairs. The book is dedicated to Lenore Marshall who passed away soon after it was completed. No plaque has been added here either.
5) Make a pilgrimage to the site of Bob Marley's last UK performance
The vast majority of Crystal Palace Park is in SE19 but the northern edge for some reason lies in SE26, and it's here that the Crystal PalaceBowl was located. Here a semi-cylindrical stage faced a small lake with a sloping grass amphitheatre beyond, notionally seating 8000 but almost twice as many turned up for Pink Floyd in 1971. Others who performed here include the Beach Boys, Lou Reed, Elton John, Ian Dury and Vera Lynn, plus Bob Marley's final UK concert on 7th June 1980. The structure gradually fell into disrepair so in 2007 was replaced by an angled metal roof with a capacious platform underneath, the floor of which has itself recently been replaced in the hope of encouraging greater use.
6) Take the waters at Sydenham Wells
Medicinal springs were discovered in Sydenham in 1640 and many came to take the waters, including (many years later) King George III. But magnesium sulphate gave the water a bitter taste so the drinkers eventually headed somewhere nicer and the wells were removed in the mid 19th century. The site would have been built on had it not been for a local campaign group, hence 18 acres were transformed instead into a sloping park with broad paths, ornamental plantations and a chain of water features. Sydenham Wells Park is lovely but best not drink the water these days because there are an awful lot of ducks in it.
7) Track down a rail tunnel ventilation shaft
London's longest railway tunnel, once you discount Crossrail, HS1 and anything that's ever been on the tube, is 1.96km long between Sydenham Hill and Penge East. That was a long way for steam trains to run underground so a ventilation shaft was added midway through the Penge Tunnel in the centre of what's since become a highrise housing estate. It's to be found on High Level Drive, a candidate for London's most motivational street name, where hundreds of SE26's poorer residents live around a cul-de-sac loop within a woody bowl. These days the shaft top is merely a pillbox-shaped concrete plug surrounded by recreational grass, so nothing intrinsically interesting, but people have made infrastructural YouTube videos about far less.
8) Spot a disused railway station Upper Sydenham was the penultimate stop on the branch line to Crystal Palace High Level station, added to the line in 1884 as surrounding suburbia grew. After the Crystal Palace burned there was reduced need for a surplus railway here so passenger traffic ceased in 1954 and the platforms were demolished in 1961. The station area was subsequently subsumed into the estate on High Level Drive but the roadside ticket office survives on Wells Park Road and is now a private dwelling.
9) Discover the origin of the screw propeller
Even as a boy Francis Pettit Smith was propulsion-obsessed, and in the 1830s took out a patent for propelling vessels by means of a screw revolving beneath the water at the stern. He went on to design the world's first screw-propelled steamship and was instrumental in getting Isambard Kingdom Brunel to abandon paddles for screws to power the SS Great Britain. Now a wealthy man he succeeded in cadging land from the Dulwich Estate and building a house on the flank of Sydenham Hill, and that's where you'll see his blue plaque on the front of Fountain House.
10) Admire further fine homes atop Sydenham Hill
Sydenham Hill's more a ridge than a summit, but as one of the highest points in south London it's attracted many a wealthy homeowner since Victorian times. As London's contours go, the richer you were, the better your view. One of the most unusual houses is Six Pillars, a modernist creation added to Crescent Wood Road in 1935 and designed by architectural practice Harding and Tecton. Its six pillars are spaced at uneven intervals to support an overhanging first floor, the high facade conceals a long south-facing roof terrace and the whole thing could perhaps be described as 'flat white'. I love the line in the Grade II* citation which says of the interior simply "severe, with detail deliberately suppressed".
11) See where John Logie Baird received all his bad news
In the race to deliver the world's first public television service, technological battle lines were drawn between EMI based at Alexandra Palace and John Logie Baird based at Crystal Palace. Baird duly moved into a house at 3 Crescent Wood Road to be close to his nascent broadcasting system. When services launched at the start of November 1936 the BBC alternated between the two technologies daily before swiftly concluding that EMI was better and ditching Baird. At the end of the month the inventor of television suffered further indignity when the Crystal Palace burned down, destroying his workshops if not his studio, and ultimately saw out his days in ill health in Bexhill-on-Sea.
12) Explore Dulwich Wood
The ridge slope beneath all these big houses remains dense oak and hornbeam woodland and is a pleasure to wander through. Some of the paths are seriously steep, some are timber-edged for natural protection and some have been surfaced by the Dulwich Estate so local residents can walk dogs year round without getting their shoes muddy.
13) Continue into Sydenham Hill Wood
Just as ancient but considerably flatter, Sydenham Hill Wood is a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation and leased to the London Wildlife Trust. They even had a small tent set up when I visited from which a volunteer hoped to flog merchandise and annual subscriptions. The railway north from Upper Sydenham station once passed through the wood and you can still see the tunnel portal below the precipitous footpath at the entrance, now safely sealed off and doubling up as a registered bat hibernaculum. It's amazing how much there is of interest in SE26 and we're only halfway through...
14) Admire St Antholin's Spire
This is one of south London's proper peculiarities, a sight so incongruous that its backstory has to be extraordinary. Why on earth is there an old church spire on a plinth in the middle of a tiny housing estate? It started out on top of St Antholin's, one of the 51 churches in the City of London rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire. Several of these churches later proved superfluous, and in 1875 St Antholin's was demolished to make way for the development of Queen Victoria Street. In 1829 the top of its spire had been deemed unsafe and was duly snapped up for £5 by a builder called Robert Harrild, who had it moved to the garden of his house in Sydenham. That house too became derelict and in the 1960s its plot was replaced by a dozen very ordinary townhouses. The other houses on Round Hill look quite smart, then you turn off and there's a single cedar tree from Robert's garden, and behind that a glinting weathervane on a stunted spire atop a raised terrace faced by bins and uPVC windows. The stonework was restored by the Heritage of London Trust in 2019 so looks splendid, but I can't imagine what it's like to open your curtains every morning and see a Wren spire in lieu of a daisy lawn and dog mess bin.
15) Go shopping where A-ha recorded Take on Me
Read that again because yes, this iconic Eighties song was recorded in Sydenham. Norwegian band A-ha moved from Oslo to London in January 1983 in search of a record deal and somewhere to record a demo. They plumped for Rendezvous Studios at 107b Kirkdale, run by producer John Ratcliff, supposedly enticed because it had a Space Invaders machine in the corner. Morten, Mags and Pål used after-hours time to lay down four tracks including 'Lesson One', whose title would later be changed to Take on Me. The trio rented a room just round the corner at 221 Dartmouth Road and, being proper lads, commuted to the studio every day by bounding across the intermediate rooftops. Their demo attracted the interest of EMI Records who requested three extra songs and a re-recording with a different producer, then brought in another new producer after the sure-fire hit only reached number 137 in the charts. It was Alan Tarney's version that finally hit the big time in 1985, boosted by a brilliant animated video, and very little of Sydenham remains in the final mix. But if you pop into Paro International Stores, hunting high and low for a wrapped snack, that's where A-ha's greatest hit first saw the light of day.
16) Spot an Antarctic blue plaque
These days you need to have been dead for 20 years before English Heritage will give you a blue plaque, but polar explorer Ernest Shackleton got his in 1928 just six years after his icy demise. His family moved from Ireland to Sydenham when Ernest was just ten, and father Henry maintained a doctor's surgery here at 12 Westwood Hill for the next 30 years. Ernest meanwhile undertook three heroic expeditions to not-quite-the-South-Pole, the second of which resulted in the Endurance being crushed by sea ice and the last of which alas kicked off with a fatal heart attack. His fine-looking childhood home is now subdivided into four flats and his blue plaque is hard to read because it's almost icily shiny.
17) Buy a pint in a rebuilt pub TheGreyhound looks too new to be a Victorian pub and that's because the original caught fire suspiciously in 2007 while plans were afoot to convert the site to 60 flats. The developers waited until 2012 to knock it down, alas without permission, and were subsequently forced to rebuild the pub in its original form because sly bastards don't always win. The brickwork's much too fresh and the interior far swisher than it ought to be, but head to the alley round the back and there's a really nice tiled artwork of a giant greyhound on the wall, so well done all.
18) Catch a train on a canal
SE26's most central station is plain Sydenham, opened in 1839 on the alignment of the former Croydon Canal. Its platforms both used to be south of the main road but were later shifted north, one in 1844 and the other in 1982. If you've ever caught a train here it should be obvious which is which.
19) Play cricket on a heritage oval Mayow Park isn't just a pleasant greenspace, it's the borough of Lewisham's oldest recreation ground. Local grandees grew concerned at the potential lack of open space while the surrounding suburbs were being developed so donated large sums to buy up 17 acres of fields at half market price. The landowner received £8500 and also the honour of having the recreation ground named after him, though thankfully not his full name because Mayow Wynell Adams Park would be a proper mouthful. It's thus a lot more pleasant than some later recs, indeed several of the mature oaks around the central cricket pitch mark the location of former field boundaries.
20) Purchase the original fried chicken Morley's is the quintessential name in fried chicken south of the river, and increasingly north of the river too, and it all began here in SE26. Kannalingam Selvendran opened his Sydenham store in 1985, initially as a restaurant with takeaways before pivoting to a takeout model with limited seating. By the turn of the century his empire had 30 stores and these days it's nearly 100, oft used when a big name rap star needs an edgy backdrop with on-set catering. You can still buy crispy poultry from the red & white checked haven at number 95 Sydenham Road, a high street where KFC haven't even bothered to turn up.
21) Play for Seymour Villa
You'll have been to Alexandra Recreation Ground if you've ever walked Capital Ring section 3, possibly quite unimpressed, but you could spend a lot more time here if you join the local football team. Only children get to be part of Seymour Villa FC, founded in honour of a promising 16 year old called Danny Wandangu who was stabbed in Anerley in 2001, but if you're the father of a player you can join Seymour Villa Vets instead. Plans to revamp the scuzzy changing rooms (in conjunction with the local bowls team) await necessary funding.
22) Take a seat at Sydenham Literary Piazza
Back in 2013 someone thought it would be a good idea to revamp the space outside Sydenham Library as a nicer place to sit down and a potential outdoor classroom. £75,000 of funding from the Mayor and the council helped clear some vegetation and add some wooden benches carved with bookends (Hornblower, Tarka The Otter, The Big Sleep, etc). And a dozen years later Sydenham Literary Piazza looks a busted flush, a tumbleweed corner with not a scrap of information nearby to explain its purpose bar a title on a noticeboard. The former Carnegie library is now on its second community owner, and the piazza cash should perhaps have been used to pay for librarians instead.
23) Stand where Bill Wyman grew up
Rolling Stone Bill Wyman initially lived in Forest Hill, moved to Nottingham during the Blitz and then returned to two different houses in Penge, but for a few months in 1943 was based at 38 Miall Road in Sydenham. Alas for Stones sightseers the entire terraced street was demolished postwar and replaced by some fairly anodyne cul-de-sacs so don't come looking, you'll get no satisfaction.
24) Buy stuff in a gas works
That's the former Bell Green gasworks, a huge site since repurposed as a retail park. You could buy an airfryer from Argos or Curry's. You could buy hot cross buns from a rack beside the entrance to the utterly enormous Sainsbury's. Or you could buy a flat on the site of the demolished gasholders, an up-and-coming development some marketing gibbon has christened Lightmakers to try to obscure the fact it'll look as tediously generic as you'd expect.
25) Throw a Sainsbury's trolley into the Pool River
It'd look right at home beside the plastic bottles, dumped roadsign and half-submerged Lime bike.
26) Play a few ends at Lewisham Indoor Bowls Centre
Their massive shed is really conveniently located beside Lower Sydenham station where the home side hope to thrash Bethlem at mixed triples this afternoon. And yes my list of things to do in SE26 has started to scrape the barrel somewhat the further down I've come, but well done to Sydenham because I found more genuinely interesting things here than I ever managed in SE23, SE24 or SE25.
The A2026 is only a mile long.
But the other road of the year is a contrast in every way.
It's not an urban road, it runs 20 miles across open country.
It's not in Dartford, it crosses rural Kent and East Sussex.
It's the B2026 and it runs due south from Westerham.
No I have not walked it all.
It starts here.
This is the junction of the A25 and the B2026 in Westerham, otherwise known as Quebec Square. It's immediately outside Quebec House, the National Trust property I visited last month and the childhood home of Major-General James Wolfe. James was born here on 2nd January 1726, appropriately enough, although that's 1726 Old Style (back when the new year started in March) so actually only 299 years ago. The road sign in front of Quebec House additionally points towards the B2024 which begins on the other side of Westerham, a town which thus boasts two recent roads of the year.
The opening half mile of the B2026 climbs Hosey Hill, a gentle flank of the Greensand Ridge, to a hamlet of the same name. I did walk the first bit past several big houses and a chapel, there being a convenient pavement. One of the first houses has a blue plaque above the gate because it was the home of Catherine Victoria Hall, who I hadn't heard of but was apparently a 'philanthropist and co-founder of the RSPB'. The B2026 is already scoring big for famous names and one of the biggest lived just ahead, namely Sir Winston Churchill. His country seat at Chartwell is admittedly just off the main road, but it's the B2026 you follow right up to turning off up that impractically narrow woody lane.
Westerham → Hosey Hill → Crockham Hill → Edenbridge (4 miles)
Edenbridge is the westernmost town in Kent and strung out along an old Roman road, which for two miles is designated the B2026. Along the way it passes two stations on separate lines, namely Edenbridge and Edenbridge Town, these the only two railway stations along the entire B2026. And midway between the two, very close to the new health centre, is a particularly exciting T-junction because it's the start of the B2027. It's ten miles long and passes nowhere very interesting on its way to the outskirts of Tonbridge so I don't think I'll bother blogging it next year, but how exciting that the B2027 starts on the B2026.
The B2026 used to pass through the historic town centre until 2006 when a short bypass was built. They named it Mount St Aignan Way after Edenbridge's twin town, and added two sets of traffic lights making it notionally quicker to carry on driving through the middle. The bypassed section is really interesting with quaint shops, a museum and a narrow bit where an old building intrudes near the church. And that's why I blogged about this section three weeks ago under the banner A Nice Walk because I knew I couldn't officially write about it today in 2026.
It gets better.
This is a sign by the bridge over the River Eden, the bridge which gives Edenbridge its name, and it introduces the B2028 into the mix. This also starts in Edenbridge and also runs for 20 miles, this time curving southwest towards Haywards Heath. However it doesn't start here, it starts three-quarters of a mile down the road at Den Cross, just past the former windmill and decanted hospital. I cannot work out why the B2028 gets a namecheck in the High Street because that particular direction round the bypass is (and always has been) the B2026. I therefore believe this sign is incorrect, it should be the B2026 both ways, but at least it saved me a half hour walk simply to take a photo for today's post.
Edenbridge → Hartfield → Ashdown Forest (9 miles)
The B2026 then does a brilliant job of going nowhere near even anything as small as a hamlet for miles and miles. Along the way it crosses from Kent into East Sussex and also crosses the River Medway before finally arriving at a proper village. Hartfield is probably best known for the Pooh Corner Tea Room, this because it's the closest settlement to A A Milne's house and the Poohsticks Bridge. And that's where I went in August 2024, you may remember, though alas not quite to the centre of Hartfield where the road signs are. I did however continue walking past the Hundred Acre Wood into Ashdown Forest, a huge and glorious expanse of open heathland, and that's where I bumped into the B2026 again.
Now that's a fingerpost. Not only does it name the B Road at the top but it gives distances to the nearest quarter mile. I particularly love the pointless accuracy of describing London as 36¾ miles away given that absolutely nobody is going to drive via the appointed route to Trafalgar Square. A small car park behind the post allows motorists to walk a short distance to the viewpoint at Gills Lap, otherwise known as 'The Enchanted Place', which formed the setting for the last elegiac chapter in the Winnie the Pooh books. AA Milne was right, it really is a lovely spot (and is perhaps even more so in what's now Pooh's centenary year). And then we carried on for another two miles across the heath before contriving to cross the B2026 again.
I'd like to apologise to my hiking partner for deviating to this particular road junction on Camp Hill just to grab more photos. We clomped through thick ferns to reach the road, passed signs warning of 'Animals on road DAY AND NIGHT' and dodged onto a verge to get a final picture of a fingerpost. We later found ourselves less than a mile from the end of the B2026 at the foot of Lampool Hill but it didn't feel diplomatic to trudge to the final roundabout on the A22, plus I was knackered by that point and focused on getting to Uckfield as quickly as possible.
All I want to point out is that I planned ahead carefully here, basing today's post on three visits I made in August 2024 and the middle of last month. Also I now have photos I can re-use this time next year and the year after that, because the road of the year isn't always as excellent as the B2026.
Route 26 from Hackney Wick to Victoria is the bus of the year.
And if you ride it on New Year's Day you see different things to normal.
1) The first stop on the 26 is outside Besi Food Centre, a convenience store so retro it still prioritises Oyster on its awning. Out front are grapes and garlic, brooms in buckets with tinsel attached, two leftover succulents, more bottled water than any sane human would buy and a rack of Instant BBQs. 2) Beside the gates to Victoria Park a cherry tree is in full blossom. It's obligatory to mention flowering cherries in any New Year bus blogpost, and also obligatory for a commenter to point out that this isn't special it's just what certain varieties do. 3) Pubs in Homerton are silently shuttered after New Year's Eve. The Eagle is advertising an upcoming Karaoke Night but The Kenton Arms has gone one better and has 'Karaoke Room' stencilled in gold on its front window. Hire costs increase to £119 per hour on New Year's Eve. 4) A dog squats beside a tomb in a former cemetery. 5) The nearest gasholder to the Regent's Canal is half scaffolding, half covered in white plastic sheeting, as its conversion into tiny homes for rich bastards continues. 6) In New Year sights repeated across the country, a hungover male in a grey hoodie is standing with a fag in hand in the front garden of a House In Multiple Occupation. 7) On Mare Street I spot a Tesco Express with 'Est. 1998' out front, which gets me wondering if this is Tesco's oldest 'Est. ????' in London. (It's not, because ten minutes later I spot an 'Est. 1988' on Bishopsgate)
8) Hackney Road is essentially shuttered, there being no commercial need to open on New Year's morning. Only convenience stores and a few tentative takeaways are giving it a try. 9) Rick Astley is the joint owner of that bar which serves pints of Birdbarker Sparkling Cider, Nimble Like A Treefrog and Grandma's Fridge Cake. 10) A dozen athletic types jog by, broadcasting very strong 'we didn't go out and party last night' vibes. 11) In entrance foyer after entrance foyer, a lone security guard sits at a small desk inside an enormous atrium beside a bank of security turnstiles nobody'll be walking through until tomorrow, at the earliest. 12) Liverpool Street station's entrances are all closed while they fiddle with the dodgy glass in the roof over Christmas and New Year. [Reopens today, might look a lot brighter] 13) Patrons disappear through a small door so they can be whisked up to the 40th floor for a posh waffle with some duck on it. 14) On Leadenhall Street another lofty office skyscraper is close to opening, its perimeter religiously surrounded by bollards so that the architects could get away with a rim of glass windows at ground level. 15) Over 100 red, white and black bollards weave across Bank junction, strategically positioned along every twisty pavement edge so it looks like a Bollard Convention may be taking place.
16) Traffic lights patiently wait for absolutely no other traffic to pass through, whilst keeping our bus on red for a full minute while the entire cycle completes. 17) A streetsweeper, who hopefully got paid extra if their shift started overnight. 18) The dome of St Paul's Cathedral gleams in the winter sun while umpteen tourists board the bus downstairs. I can see little people circumnavigating the Stone Gallery while even smaller people huddle on the Golden Gallery, and just imagine the windchill up there. 19) A European dad arrives up top, appalled that I'm in the front seat where he'd like his family to be. Later he'll phone his wife at the back of the bus and urge her to relocate up front, only to alight the bus two stops later because it wasn't going where he thought it was. 20) Oh god so many people have squeezed onto this bus since Bishopsgate that all its windows are steaming up... first a faint smear, then general blurriness, then a more opaque sheen... and I'm worried because I can't complete a post called 26 things I saw on route 26 if everything outside the bus has essentially vanished. 21) Sightseers in designer winterwear wondering why they came to a closed capital city on New Year's Day. 22) Two announcements at Aldwych: i) No standing on the upper deck or stairs ii) This bus is on diversion.
23) The trouble with riding the 26 on New Year's Day is that Trafalgar Square and Whitehall are closed for the London Parade, so the bus has to go the long way to Victoria via Waterloo Bridge and Lambeth Bridge. It takes forever (not technically forever but it took our bus 26 minutes which was grim but appropriate). The roadworks either side of Lambeth Bridge were the worst because it took at least eight goes to get through all the lights. Pretty much all the other passengers had piled off by Waterloo station, having correctly realised they really didn't want to go this way. 24) One bonus of the detour south of the river was that you got two world-class views of the Thames, in both cases including the London Eye which had been the world's focus just twelve hours earlier. All the accoutrements of crowd control were still present, including large green metal barriers to block the view from inappropriate locations and multiple banners directing arriving/departing spectators via the approved route. It must've been bloody cold waiting on that riverbank for hours before ten minutes you could have watched on TV. 25) And all that detour turned out to be for just two normal stops on Victoria Street, the penultimate and final, which made me question whether it was all worth it. 26) I walked back along the 26's normal route to watch some of the London Parade, the annual razzmatazz Americans go nuts for but Londoners barely notice. Freezing spectators sat in the VIP stands waiting for the parade to arrive, having spent a full hour watching big screens showing its approach. When it finally arrived it was led by a plumed marching band, because nothing says 'London at New Year' like feathered Pennsylvanians with euphoniums playing Kool & The Gang. If you've never seen the London Parade all three and a half hours is already on YouTube, and this may convince you not to watch it again.
As the new year begins, let's walk the A2026.
It used to be in Ewell, Surrey.
But it's now in Dartford, Kent.
To be fair it's not an especially exciting mile, but it is what the gods of road numbering have provided for us this new year.
The A2026 started life as the Crayford bypass, a flat estuarine alternative to the Roman road up West Hill. It was opened on 22 June 1923 by the wife of Wilford Ashley, Parliamentary Secretary to Ministry of Transport, and originally designated the A206. In 1993 it was finally time for Dartford to get a bypass, a speedy northern shortcut to the end of the QE2 Bridge, and that became the A206 instead leaving the chopped-off end to become the A2026. It slots into the wedge between the River Cray and the River Darent without quite meeting either, and its southern end is just outside Dartford station.
We're on Dartford's inner ring road, the twisted loop they added to make it easier to go shopping in the high street, not far from all the bus stops. The silver fortress on the street corner is Prospect Place, a retail mall entirely focused around its car park so all that's on show here is a row of blocked windows round the back of TK Maxx. None of the road signs at this junction mention the A2026, only the eventual A206, but don't worry we'll have more numerical luck at the other end.
Dartford's chosen method of dealing with cyclists is to split the pavement so mind which side you walk on the hemmed-in path ahead. Watch out too for the 'buses which look a bit like trams' on Fastrack routes A and B, at least until they head off into realms of new flats and spurn the older houses up the A2026. Board here to track down Ruby Tuesday Drive, Sympathy Vale and Tumbling Dice Mews. Meanwhile the bridge across the road here carries Southeastern trains, being just beyond the far end of Dartford's platforms, and deposits us at a new-ish roundabout linked to a multitude of eras.
Straight ahead is Hythe Road, an 18th century dead end that once led to wharves, mills and gas works. The swarthy men who ferried goods to vessels waiting offshore are commemorated in the name of The Hufflers Arms, a dour grey pub with dubious bow windows and cheap pump lager. Turn right for stacks of modern apartments slotted onto the former site of the Wellcome Chemical Works, a significant pharmaceutical site where key treatments for leprosy, diabetes and migraine were once manufactured. We are instead turning left past a horribly characterless block of flats with a corner shop underneath packed with energy drinks and Pringles.
This is Victoria Road, a soulless link road with a railway embankment on one side and a mass of commercial units on the other. One prong leads to the Victoria Industrial Estate and another to the Dartford Trading Estate, the ideal destination if you need timber joists, a hire car or a bike fixed. The only point of interest is a pillar box painted pink with yellow spots in tribute to Mr Blobby, the design now wearing off. Improbably I blogged about it last summer during an attempt to track down all the royal cyphers, which is how I know the offending artist was called Danny Whiskin and his punishment was 100 hours of community service and a fine of £2600.
No trading estate is complete without a greasy spoon and thus the A2026 hosts Kell's Cafe, a lowly-looking shack with a string of plastic lemons above the door. According to its sign it was established in 1994 and is now "in our 28th Year", a claim which is even more inaccurate as of midnight. Last of the urban grot is a fenced plot housing a water pumping station and a National Grid substation, this on the footprint of Dartford's former tramways depot. Town services launched in 1906 and ceased abruptly in August 1917 when a fire destroyed the depot and the full fleet of thirteen vehicles inside. Stop me if this gets too interesting.
The road now bends away from the railway and climbs a very gentle gradient with bungalows on one side and older terraces on the other. This is not the affluent side of Dartford, even relatively speaking. What's really at a premium here are parking spaces, even when the houses get a bit larger, with several cars assigned to the verge and most front gardens crammed with two vehicles in lieu of plants. It's thus no surprise when the first shop ahead is a 2-bay unit where new tyres are fitted, its forecourt abuzz with petrolheads and bonnet-fiddlers. Throw in a kebab shop, an off-licence and a barbershop and it's all a bit blokey on Burnham Road.
Sportspeople can instead push open a quirky blue gate and drop into the Invicta Bowls Club, at least when the pavilion reopens in April. For some idea of the clientele, its green is overlooked by adverts for Jay & Kay Coach Tours, NW Kent Oddfellows and Co-op Funeralcare. Various industrial units then intrude, enticed by the near-motorway location, plus a proper old-school clump of huts watched over by once-true metal signs that warn of Alsatian Patrolling. Meanwhile the houses on the other side of the road have become increasingly ugly - I'd say arse end of the 1930s - and then thank goodness we're at the final roundabout.
It's a big roundabout funnelling all kinds of vans and heavy lorries towards the M25, thus not really designed to be crossed on foot. I still did though to get a good look at three roadsigns which explicitly mention the A2026 because these are the holy grail for the year-based A-road blogger. The Crayford Marshes begin immediately to the north and stretch two miles to the Thames, should you ever be in need of a really bleak walk. Meanwhile that field to the left is actually in Bexley, so if you carry on a few metres beyond the pylons you'll suddenly find yourself in London, not Kent. The A2026 terminates just outside.
The road of the year is thus bleak, grey and peripheral, so let's hope that's not a sign for the twelve months to come.
Former year-road bloggage:A2018 (Dartford), A2021 (Eastbourne), A2022 (S London), A2023 (Hove), A2025 (Lancing) My map of this century's A Roads so far:here And then a gap until:A2029 (Lewes)
2026 anniversary quiz
