Sunday, March 30, 2025
I got home yesterday after watching the eclipse, put the kettle on and opened up my laptop. No internet. Well that's annoying, I thought.
My BT Hub was displaying the dreaded red ring of doom, a bit like an eclipse in itself, and rebooting it didn't help. OK that's more annoying, I thought.
I hoped it would sort itself out because it usually does on the rare occasions it ever happens. I gave it an hour but no, the red ring remained. Annoying!
I gave BT a call to see what was up and they sent me a text message which led to a website, because that beats employing people. We're aware of a fault, they said, which was annoying.
We're working on fixing it, they added, which was somewhat reassuring. But then I saw the "estimated fix time" and clocked that it was Tuesday evening. Annoying doesn't even cover it.
Not Saturday evening or Sunday evening or Monday evening but Tuesday evening! It might be an overestimate of course, but they were suggesting I faced three whole days without the internet, so you can imagine my annoyance.
My laptop was suddenly an isolated computer like it was 1995 or something. Also I could no longer do any streaming, so my TV options were live only or anything I'd recorded, ditto 1995. I turned the radio on and read the paper again, somewhat annoyed.
I could of course take my laptop to a cafe and use their wi-fi, but that's not especially realistic on a Saturday evening. Usually I try piggybacking on a neighbour's wi-fi but those are all secure connections these days so annoyingly that no longer works.
They switched my landline to 'Digital Voice' a while ago so that's gone down too. I do at least have a smartphone which'll keep me connected and online and everything, but it's not the same as a laptop, it's annoyingly inefficient.
In particular a smartphone may be good for accessing written content but it's hopeless for generating 1000 words of thoughtful comment with links and photos. Little tippy tappy screen, no decent keyboard shortcuts. You would not believe how long it's taken me just to write this much - it's been frustratingly annoying.
So you're not getting a proper blogpost today, nor probably tomorrow, nor likely again until BT fix whatever's wrong. Sorry, I had today's post all planned but it'd be far too complicated to actually write so all you're getting is this annoying apology.
I hope normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. I'll probably come back later and fill this gap in with the missing post, hopefully. In the meantime I'm rediscovering all the things I can still do without the internet, and you can go away and do something else too.
Don't be annoyed. You all lost an hour overnight what with the clocks going forward, so if nothing else I've just saved you five minutes.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
45 Squared
45
11) BALGORES SQUARE, RM2
Borough of Havering, 110m×30m
Romford Garden Suburb was the brainchild of Liberal politician Herbert Raphael who in 1909 offered up his estate at Gidea Hall "to provide families with a well-built, modern home regardless of class or status". To encourage interest he established a competition to create 140 fully-furnished houses in the Arts and Crafts style, then invited the public to walk the streets as part of a domestic outdoor exhibition. A new station called Squirrels Heath & Gidea Park was opened to service visitors in 1910, and if you walk out of that station today and cross the car park you find yourself in Balgores Square.
It's long, thin and conveniently located, with a short parade of shops in one corner and a rim of large desirable homes. The first unit is occupied by a pleasingly retro dry cleaners, then a luxury dog groomers and a filler-friendly salon, as befits the denizens of pseudo-Essex. The original plan was that Balgores Square would be the estate's retail heart, entirely surrounded by arcaded shops with flats above by, but demand never quite materialised. A couple more commercial blocks were added on the north side, one with a splendid hare motif dated 1912, but the gap between them had to be filled by flats in the 1930s.
Likewise the centre of the square was originally pencilled in for an open-air market, but when developers discovered that Romford's ancient market charter forbade nearby competition that didn't happen either. Initially it remained as open space, as depicted in this rather lovely postcard of Balgores Square circa 1925, but eventually a few municipal tennis courts were added instead. More recently the council has shoehorned in a narrow car park instead and surrounded it with a hedge so neighbours can pretend it's not there. The majority of spaces are reserved for season ticket holders, and if you manage to grab one of the four others you've got 30 mins before charges kick in and rise steeply.
The two long sides of Balgores Square are endearingly residential, assuming you like large rustic semis with high gables, timber beams and decorative brickwork. The largest is Tudor House, which is only pretending to be that old and wouldn't have an integral garage were it genuine. One house had a geezery removal company in, the owners I suspect chuffed to have timed the changeover just before the stamp duty hike. Elsewhere I could only admire the effort put into all the front-gardening, especially the trimmed shrubbery, the full-on camellias and the bursts of pink blossom. I'm still not sure if the orange three-piece suite on the crazy paving outside number 8 was for sunbathing purposes or about to be chucked.
Architecturally the only duff note is the postwar office block at the southern end, occupied by a longstanding firm of Romford solicitors. But outside is an excellent double-sided map board provided by the Gidea Park and District Civic Society, which was erected to commemorate the centenary of Romford Garden Suburb. None of the Exhibition Houses are in Balgores Square but several lie along Balgores Lane, Squirrels Heath Avenue and Crossways which head north, and with the aid of these maps you can pick them out. Those maps are also on the excellent GPDCS website along with a full back history and two suggested walks and heavens look, here's the original 180 page exhibition brochure. If you like walking characterful suburban streets Gidea Park will not disappoint, perhaps all the way up to the 1930s Modernist houses and back, especially at this time of year when spring is at its most colourful.
You're only one purple train away from Balgores Square.
The TfL website last underwent a thorough design upgrade in 2014 and hasn't changed much since, template-wise. But times move on, not least the increased necessity for accessible responsive design, so a change is arguably long overdue. And here we go...
I think it's just the one main page so far - the Tube, Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR & Tram status page, i.e. tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status. It's gone big, it's gone narrow and it's got an awful lot of white space all over it. It is of course optimised for smartphone usage, where it looks quite swish and scrolls down smoothly with all sorts of additional information opening up if you touch the screen. It works less well on anything landscape, like my laptop screen, where information that used to be visible in one glance is now too large to fit.
I see I complained about precisely this back in 2014.
The key difference is that TfL's new website has been designed with smartphones in mind. Text links have been replaced by buttons that are easier for chunky fingers to push, and the layout of pages is mostly portrait rather than landscape. For those out and about with a mobile device the design will be more intuitive, whereas those at home with a computer screen should expect more white space and more scrolling.And I'm complaining again. As is so often the way the laptop/desktop experience gets worse when the mobile experience gets better, because designers never seem to include platform-responsive formatting or the ability to tweak the layout somehow. "We think this is better for you" is their watchword even when it patently isn't, "so this what you're getting".
In bad news TfL appear to have fully given up on including a map of disruptions on their website, copping out with an instruction to use the TfL Go app instead. Forcing users off one device onto another is never an accessibility plus. I understand that coding such a map is difficult, or maybe just expensive, but it's truly galling that we will never again see a pictorial disruption map online, only a less helpful list of atomised bits.
Other changes are lovely, like the summaries of line closures using endpoints and arrows, also the graphic depiction of future disruption over the upcoming week. And other changes are frustrating, like the list of affected stations which appears in alphabetical order rather than most serious incident first, and where 'part closure' has suddenly been given undue prominence.
We've seen pages using a similar template for several years in the Board Meetings section of the TfL website but it looks like this is the beginning of changes on pages people actually use. Look out for further sequential metamorphosis as things you've got used to disappear and things you'll soon love magically arrive. I'm pretty disappointed so far though.
Friday, March 28, 2025
Tomorrow is partial solar eclipse day, peaking at 11:03am in London.
The weather, I'm pleased to say, looks perfect.
The eclipse will be visible across northwest Europe, peaking in eastern Canada where 92% of the solar disc will be obscured. In London it's 31%.
Nova Scotia 80%, Reykjavik 68%, Stornoway 47%, Glasgow 42%, Dublin 41%, London 31%, Paris 24%, Rome 2%You might not think 31% is great, and it is indeed low enough that most of the population won't notice anything eclipsy is happening. But solar eclipses are so rare that only four in the last 25 years have been better, as seen from London.
All the solar eclipses visble from London during the last 25 yearsIn good news the next 25 years are better, indeed the next 12 years are particularly good, kicking off with a monster obscuration next summer. That'll be 91% covered in London which is the greatest extent since 1999 and won't be exceeded until 2081, so for most Londoners the last significant eclipse of their lifetime. Plymouth'll do even better with 95% and the Scillies 96%, but if you can get to Reykjavik or northern Spain you could see the magic 100%.
• 31st May 2003 (52%)
• 3rd October 2005 (57%)
• 29th March 2006 (17%)
• 1st October 2008 (12%)
• 4th January 2011 (67%)
• 20th March 2015 (84%)
• 21st August 2017 (4%)
• 10th June 2021 (20%)
• 25th October 2022 (15%)
All the solar eclipses visble from London during the next 25 yearsBut notice the drought after 2039 with just the one solar eclipse during the entire 2040s, because celestial geometry is nothing if not predictably irregular.
• Wed 12 August 2026 (19:13 BST) 91%
• Mon 2 August 2027 (10:00 BST) 42%
• Wed 26 January 2028 (16:34 GMT) 51%
• Sat 1 June 2030 (06:21 BST) 48%
• Thu 21 Aug 2036 (19:07 BST) 60%
• Fri 16 January 2037 (09:06 GMT) 46%
• Tue 5 January 2038 (14:34 GMT) 5%
• Fri July 2038 (15:03 BST) 8%
• Tue 21 June 2039 (19:35 BST) 63%
• Thu 11 June 2048 (13:22 BST) 62%
Best make the most of tomorrow's eclipse, which in a clear blue sky means using eye protection or projecting shadows rather than staring direct. I have eclipse glasses leftover from the 1999 event and they're excellent, so through those I hope to see a bite of sun missing from the top of the disc, starting at 10.07am, ending at noon and peaking at 11.03. You don't get many chances, and for once the weather is playing ball.
From Monday e-bikes will be banned from TfL services because they pose a fire risk.
That means no more e-bikes on the tube, the Overground, the Elizabeth line or the DLR. Currently they're allowed off-peak†, which is why I often see lazy delivery riders lugging their electro-steeds onto the District line and clogging up the doorway.
From next week that won't be allowed and e-bikes will have to stay at street level, protecting passengers from the dangers of potential conflagration. It's bad news for Londoners who've bought e-bikes as an integral part of their commute, whose sustainable micromobility travel options are about to be expunged. But as Charlie Pugsley of the London Fire Brigade says, "we welcome this move by TfL following their detailed safety review as it acknowledges the risks that we know e-bike batteries can pose."
But not all e-bikes. TfL could have banned the lot but they're allowing Bromptons and other e-bikes you can fold away because no fires have been reported erupting from them. Evidence suggests the main danger is from bikes converted into e-bikes, and because staff can't tell which have and which haven't they're banning all the full-sized ones, even if they're well-made and expensive.
And this exclusion of certain e-bikes has forced TfL's messaging to be awkwardly complex.
"Non-foldable e-bikes" is not the simplest of phrases, indeed it manages to include two hyphens as well as a negative. But it is I think better than "unfolded" which was the previous buzzword bandied about in messaging across the network. "Unfolded" was always a stupid word because ordinary bikes can't be folded, therefore by definition they are never unfolded. It always grated to hear announcements about unfolded bikes, especially that bloody message about unfolded e-scooters and unfolded e-unicycles.
All folded and unfolded e-scooters and e-unicycles are prohibited on all TfL premises and services.E-unicycles are hardly common, and folded e-unicycles so abhorrently unlikely that the fact they need to be mentioned is absurd. But this is what happens when you decide to mention subcategories of wheeled transport - the complexity of the phraseology ramps up and dilutes the safety message you want everyone to hear.
Which makes me wonder what the new e-bike announcement is going to be and whether it's possible to make it simple.
How succinct can you make it without losing sufficient clarity?
For example if you look at that poster, even that requires an asterisk because you can't say "all TfL premises and services" any more, the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle and Woolwich Ferry are exempt.
None of these quite work...
• e-bikes, e-scooters and e-unicycles are not allowed on tubes and trains
• Non-folded e-bikes, e-scooters and e-unicycles are not allowed on TfL services
• Only folded e-bikes are allowed on our trains
• e-bikes are not allowed on this train unless folded
So my challenge for you today is to come up with an appropriate e-bike announcement which could be played from next week. Can you be simple, clear and precise simultaneously? Here's a special comments box for your attempts. comments
n.b. Please only post potential announcements in this box. If you think someone else's message is pedantically inappropriate don't tell us, just come up with something better! For all other comments, whether about e-bikes or linguistic suitability, please use the normal comments box below.
† A pedantic apology: When I said bikes were currently allowed off-peak I was being over-simplistic. At present bikes are only allowed on some parts of some tube lines, not the whole network. Basically trains in deep tunnels are excluded, so for example Edgware to Golders Green is fine except between Colindale and Hendon Central, which makes the whole thing so complicated that TfL have to provide a map. Also bikes are allowed at peak times on certain lines if travelling against the flow, for example out of Shenfield in the evening, and these complexities require an entire page on the TfL website. This is how difficult it is to be simple, clear and precise!
Thursday, March 27, 2025
London's next dead bus
R6: Orpington to St Mary Cray
Location: southeast London, outer
Length of journey: 4 miles, 25 minutes
It's time to kill off another London bus route, the fourth such erasure this year. Routes 347, 118 and 414 have already been extinguished and at the end of this week it's time for the R6 to join them at the big terminus in the sky. You won't miss it.
Orpington has a long-standing network of R-prefix buses, introduced in 1986 under the 'Roundabout' brand. Every few years they get rejigged, so for example the R6 which dies this week is the third such route with that number and was introduced in 2001. At present there are 11 buses numbered R1 to R11 but this withdrawal removes the middle one, ending the consecutive streak.
The R6 exists to serve a couple of estates on Orpington's periphery and also to link them to trains at St Mary Cray station. It runs every half an hour and operates with two vehicles. It's not the least used of the R buses - the R2, R5, R8 and R10 have fewer passengers - but it is probably the least consequential unless you happen to live in the right place.
In a now familiar tactic, TfL are withdrawing the R6 and replacing it in full by another route. That replacement is the B14, an outlier from the Bexley bus empire which runs via a fairly twiddly route between Bexleyheath and Orpington. The intention is to add one more twiddle at the southern end, following the R6's route in its entirety rather than a direct run from St Mary Cray to Orpington. It'll make every journey on the B14 at least ten minutes longer, the mitigation being that B14 passengers can always catch the more frequent R11 instead and not end up wasting their lives on a lengthy detour.
The B14 also runs every half an hour so nobody's getting a less frequent service, indeed the new timetable means a better early morning and late evening service so it's an improvement overall. And because the B14 only needs one extra vehicle to cover the withdrawal of the R6's two, TfL's accountants also save some money in the process. The aim as ever is "to operate a more efficient bus service", and the appropriate buzzphrase is "to better match bus services to customer demand".
In the interests of documenting an imminently extinct species, let's go for a ride.
The R6 kicks off from the lengthy bus stand outside Orpington station, alongside its single decker sisters R3, R5, R9 and R10. The parking space at the end now accommodates the overhead charger for the pantographs on route 358, the tram buses that got social media excited a few months ago. The B14 also starts here, conveniently, and will be shadowing us for the next mile and a half through the town centre.
The first stop at the bottom of the road is Tubbenden Lane. It ranks highly amongst the busiest bus stops in London, being served by as many as 17 TfL bus routes, although that'll be going down to 16 from Saturday. It's also despised by at least one local resident who recently submitted a vituperative FoI.
“The bus stop opposite the Maxwell is lunacy!! It is: Virtually opposite another bus stop; Adjacent to a box junction; Opposite a T junction; Near a junction where pedestrians cross. I would struggle to think of a more dangerous place to put a bus stop. Please consider removing or moving it. I would be interested to know the number of road accidents in that spot, and if the frequency of accidents has increased since the last road amendments there.”TfL fobbed him off with a suggestion he looked at their collisions dashboard, which I have and there have only been two 'slight' collisions here over a seven year period. Those fears of lunacy are thus misplaced, which is good news for the hordes of passengers who would have been instantly disadvantaged had this awkwardly located stop been closed.
Orpington High Street is a peculiar beast, bus-wise, with umpteen different routes launching off in all directions and shoppers keenly squinting to see precisely which R this is. Some of those routes have to deviate off-piste to get here but the R6 is heading through anyway, which always helps. A dozen passengers pile aboard with bags of shopping, which I reckon is impressive for a minor route mid-morning, or might be because the bus is running fifteen minutes late and they've been waiting ages. One is recognised by a seated neighbour... "Hello John" she says. Two others suffer the beep of shame when neither of their cards work, nor on the second attempt but alternative plastic means third time lucky.
We bear off from the main drag at Priory Gardens, which is good because there are long-term roadworks on Cray Avenue so we're dodging a bullet there. Only the R4 and R6 head up the High Street so they're the go-to choice for every car-less resident this side of the River Cray. The houses are older here and the roads narrower because this has been a hub of cottages since Victorian times. I'm mystified by the name of the next stop being Reynolds Cross/Red Lion because no pub of that name exists, but all is explained by a converted residential building on the corner of Red Lion Close. The White Horse, more recently shuttered, looks like it'll be going the same way soon.
Ten minutes in we turn off on our special excursion up Blacksmiths Lane. The only other bus that goes this way is the 477, an hourly non-TfL service to Swanley and Dartford, but you can't wave an Oyster on that. And then we turn off again for a trunk-shaped loop up a very ordinary residential sidestreet, the kind that wouldn't normally get a service elsewhere in London. Here it's needed so that a couple of hundred homes don't find themselves too far from a red bus, and also so that residents of the further-flung hamlet of Kevington get a vague return on their council tax. By the time we've done the one-way circuit barely anyone is left aboard.
For our second loop we veer off round another estate, poorer this time, wedged between the railway embankment and the edge of the Green Belt. If you always thought Orpington was well-to-do you've never been to these eastern fringes, ditto the Ramsden Estate the R9 serves. The trees certainly give the place a lift though. This also feels like the estate TfL forgot, with a faded mid-pandemic poster claiming "Contactless, the safest way to pay" still on display in the farthest shelter. The bus stops on Wotten Green are just flags on lampposts, one without a pavement so no chance of lowering a ramp were it needed, and both blocked by parked cars because nobody's ever come along and painted BUS STOP on the road.
A schoolboy hops aboard as we enter the last half mile, his target the station across the valley. To get there we return to the High Street by the village green, which isn't anywhere near as nice as you're imagining, then duck beneath a lofty railway viaduct. On one side are roofing supplies and auto traders, and on the other side a 13th century church with cedar shingles because St Mary Cray is much more historic than it looks.
But after the penultimate stop it all goes wrong as we join a short but persistent queue of traffic trying to pass a set of lights. It's all the fault of those aforementioned roadworks which are making it very difficult to filter onto Sevenoaks Way, whose queue looks considerably worse than ours. It takes eight minutes to escape, instantly wrecking the timetable and likely scuppering our student's rail connection. When there are only two vehicles operating a bus route it's never good to see both on the same street, right near the end of the route.
I'm guessing that passengers on the B14 won't be happy to find themselves dawdling round the outer estates of St Mary Cray next week, thinking "oh goodness we can't be turning off down there as well good grief we are". And there's every chance they won't be expecting it because from what I saw nobody's gone round and stuck up any posters advertising the change at any of the R6's bus stops, or they hadn't at the start of the week. It could be a very simple poster too, it only needs to say "catch the B14 instead" and be done with it. Instead a big surprise is coming to Orpington as yet another bus route dies, to better match services to customer demand and to save TfL a bit of dosh.
• Route R6: route map
• Route R6: live route map
• Route R6: route history
• Route R6: timetable
• Route R6: withdrawal consultation
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Unchosen Overground line names
Jim Waterson at London Centric had an excellent scoop yesterday by publishing the longlist of names which were under consideration for the six Overground lines. I'm not sure how much much of the list is behind his Substack paywall so what follows is abbreviated from someone else's cut-and-pasting on Twitter. I've organised the names into my own entirely unofficial categories.
(if you don't like these names that's fine because they weren't chosen, so don't moan)
Rejected because TfL ultimately decided not to name lines after people
🎭 Althea Line - Celebrating Althea McNish, a pioneering designer of African-Caribbean descent [Suffragette]
⚽ Cother Line - Honouring Jack Cother, the UK’s first Asian professional footballer [Lioness]
📜 Derham Line - Recognising scientist and cleric William Derham, rector in Upminster and chaplain to George II [Liberty]
🥋 Garrud Line - Honouring Edith Garrud, a pioneering female martial arts instructor and suffragist [Mildmay]
✊ Huggett Line - Honouring Annie Huggett, a suffragist who championed working-class women in East London [Suffragette]
🏭 Jayaben Line - Recognising Jayaben Desai’s fight for fair pay and workers’ rights in Willesden [Lioness]
🩺 Kaushal Line - Recognising Dr Baldev Kaushal, who aided victims of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster [Weaver]
🚂 Winton Line - Remembering Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 mostly Jewish children via the Czech Kindertransport [Weaver]
Considered for Liberty line
🌿 Fanns Line - Named after the Land of the Fanns, a project protecting the Thames Estuary landscape
🍺 Hops Line - Celebrating botanist William Coys, who introduced hops and other plants to the UK
🛹 Rom Line - Referencing Romford, the River Rom, and the historic Rom skatepark, Europe’s first listed skatepark
Considered for Mildmay line
☘️ Galtymore Line - A tribute to Willesden Green’s Galtymore dance hall, a hub for London’s Irish community
🏛️ Keskidee Line - Named after the UK’s first Black arts centre, founded in 1971 near Caledonian Road
🏅 Paralympic Line - Honouring the origins of the Paralympic Games, from Stoke Mandeville to London 2012
📚 Sisterwrite Line - Remembering Sisterwrite, the UK’s first feminist bookshop and a hub for lesbian literature
Considered for Suffragette line
💧 Ripple Line - Highlighting the line’s links to water, from Hampstead Ponds to the Thames at Barking
🎶 Skylark Line - Celebrating the skylark, found in Walthamstow Wetlands and suburban London
Considered for Weaver line
🐟 Malins Line - Honouring Malin’s, the UK’s first fish and chip shop, and its cultural ties to migration and trade
🔥 Moonshot Line - Named after the UK’s first Black community centre, founded in 1981 in New Cross Gate
🎨 Obaala Line - Named after a Black art gallery in South Tottenham, promoting African heritage
🌳 Willow Line - Representing the willow trees along the River Lea, conservation, and local furniture-making
Considered for Windrush line
🚩 Cable Street Line - Remembering the 1936 anti-fascist Battle of Cable Street in Shadwell
🎶 Lovers Rock Line - Celebrating Lovers Rock, a reggae subgenre created by London’s Caribbean community
🌸 Saffron Line - Referencing Croydon’s name origins and its historical role in saffron cultivation
Also, somehow
💚 Green Carnation Line - Representing the green carnation, a historic LGBTQ+ symbol popularised by Oscar Wilde
🏳️🌈 Polari Line - Named after Polari, a secret language used by London’s gay community for safety
🌻 Sunflower Line - Symbolising non-visible disabilities, especially autism and neurodiversity, and the lanyard scheme
Six of these - Jayaben, Keskidee, Malins, Sisterwrite, Althea and Obaala - were given a full write-up on the TfL website last year under the title Discovering Hidden Stories Around the London Overground. This was published on the day the actual six names were announced, so I suspect this half-dozen got further through the process than most.
Jim says several names were discarded because they would have been hard to hear clearly on announcements or could have been mistaken for safety-critical words, and some because there was a risk of the names being abbreviated or used as slurs. He also has fifty further names which didn't make the longlist, and if you hated these you'll hate them too. But it doesn't ultimately matter, remember, because none of them were chosen.
10 items of post-Stockport housekeeping
I'm still trying, very slowly, to visit England's 100 largest towns and cities by population. At the start of the year I had 13 to go but since then I've ticked off Sunderland (32nd), Hartlepool (84th) and Stockport (60th). Of the ten that remain the largest is now Huddersfield (33rd), the southernmost is Mansfield (99th) and they're all in a sort of stripe between Lancashire and Lincolnshire.
Visiting Sunderland ticked off another postcode area (SR), so my sole omissions within England and Wales are now BB, HD and WA, i.e. Blackburn, Huddersfield and Warrington.
In the last ten years I've been to every county in England at least once except Northumberland and Lancashire. I have obviously been to both of those, just longer ago. Technically I went to the historic county of Lancashire last week when I went to Stockport, but not the ceremonial county so it doesn't count.
My trip to Stockport cost just £15.20 thanks to buying ridiculously cheap tickets two months in advance during the Rail Sale earlier in the year. London to Crewe was £5.20 and Crewe to Stockport was £2.40. I can't currently find a way of getting to Stockport by train for less than £50 (or Chesterfield for less than £40, or Huddersfield for less than £90).
Yes I am a cheapskate, but if you're only going to visit a town once why not wait until a bargain fare is available? Here are the last ten farflung towns I visited and how much my bargain fare cost: Stockport (£15), Sunderland/Hartlepool (£28), Redditch (£18), Stafford/Crewe (£23), Rugby (£8), Nottingham (£30), Cheltenham/Gloucester (£34).
If you like bargain fares, be aware that Southeastern are offering thousands of £5 fares over the weekend of April 5th/6th as part of their Network Weekend promotion. There are still some left. More information here. I've snapped up two so I can fill in another gap in my attempt to (eventually) walk the entire Kent coast. Fingers crossed for non-windswept weather.
I got really lucky with the weather in Stockport because somehow in January I managed to book a trip in March on "the warmest day of the year so far". Ditto I played an advance blinder for Sunderland, unintentionally picking the one sunny day in a run of cold and damp. I assume my future meteorological luck has now run out.
My trip to Stockport very nearly never happened because the line north was blocked by "a casualty on the tracks" near Rugeley Trent Valley. My first train stalled at Milton Keynes for an hour while British Transport police 'conducted an investigation', which I fear was because this very train had been first over the tracks in Rugeley earlier that morning. Very few trains were going anywhere. I got lucky by eventually transferring to an Avanti service, next stop Crewe, although this subsequently went on a guided tour of the West Midlands which would have made certain trackbashers very happy. I was then permitted on a second Avanti where I sat amid business suits, somewhat embarrassed how little I'd paid, arriving into Stockport just half an hour late. That lost half hour ruined my chances of visiting a couple of attractions but it could have been much worse and I might have had to give up in Milton Keynes and go home.
(We all have similar tales of "oh my it was a dreadful journey" which nobody else is interested in, but sometimes it's a fine line between a fabulous day out and a full refund)
The Bee Network is bringing joined-up bus travel to Greater Manchester. A single bus journey in Manchester costs £2, but by scanning the QR code on your paper ticket "you can use it again to board any Bee Network bus within 60 minutes from the time it was issued." This is very similar to Hopper fares in London where the equivalent price is £1.75, but London's daily bus cap is £5.25 whereas in Manchester you can buy a one-day bus ticket for £5. Contactless payment launched on Bee Network buses earlier this week.
I also stopped off in Crewe for an hour on the way back, this because the homebound connection was otherwise too tight to risk. I can confirm that the new bus station is finally open and looks quite pretty at dusk.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
The least used station in Britain: DENTON
Greater Manchester
(Annual passenger usage: 54)
The least used railway station in Britain isn't in the wilds of Scotland or down some obscure country lane, it's in a Manchester suburb. Thousands of people live nearby, there's a huge Sainsbury's across the road and nine buses an hour stop immediately outside.
The problem thus isn't Denton's location it's the timetable, which these days consists of just two trains a week. Between 1992 and 2018 it was only one, so this is an improvement.
Saturdays Only southbound northbound Stalybridge 0830 0928 Guide Bridge 0837 0920 Denton 0842 0916 Reddish South 0846 0910 Stockport 0859 0904
We're on the Stockport-Stalybridge line, an outer orbital route through the outskirts of Manchester which opened in 1845. It was originally deemed useful as part of a connection between Crewe and Leeds, but when services started going via Manchester instead it lost its mojo. The towns the line passes through aren't insignificant, and the fact it's shadowed by a motorway suggests some underlying demand, but in the end it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in that if you run hardly any trains you get hardly any passengers.
Year 16/17 17/18 18/19 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 Passengers 144 70 46 92 12 50 34 54 Rank 12th 3rd 1st 5th 7th 4th 2nd 1st
When they last totted up the annual passenger numbers Denton had just 54, fewer than at every other railway station in Britain, bringing a brief moment of celebratory notoriety. That's effectively just one passenger a week, which is remarkably low given you'd think stations like this would attract a fair number of traingeeks. Admittedly most of those would choose to ride the whole line rather than alighting at the halt in the middle, plus this is quite early on a Saturday morning, hence the tumbleweed.
I didn't visit on a Saturday so I won't be upping the numbers. But I did explore the station because you can just walk in, there being no gates let alone barriers or pads for tapping. The entrance is on a bridge above the railway on a slip road off a motorway junction, Denton being the place where the M67 bears off the looping M60. There are much nicer places to be, but also Victorian terraces round the corner and a fine parish church up the road so things could be worse. The boards outside the station include a warning not to bring e-scooters onto trains, a map with a sad-looking dotted line and a paltry list of train times, four destinations tops. It's 28 steps down to the platform, which I was surprised to see someone had salted despite no trains being due.
The station, such as it is, consists of a long island platform chopped off two-thirds of the way down because no trains ever stop at the far end. There are three station signs, all referencing the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive which rebranded in 2011. A single blue bench has been provided in case you face a long wait. There's no lighting because trains only stop during daylight hours. A sign tells you which side trains for Stalybridge depart, because when trains are weekly it would be terrible to get that wrong. And there are three rather nice wooden planters abuzz with shrubbery and even a few daffodils, these provided by The Friends of Denton Station. Alas a notice at the roadside reports that FODS have had to suspend activities "due to circumstances beyond their control", but someone's clearly still coming down and looking after things so thanks for that.
I was expecting to have the station completely to myself so really wasn't expecting to hear the sound of an approaching train. The driver honked to let me know they were coming, twice, presumably just as surprised to see someone wandering around in this godforsaken outpost. A lengthy freight train then rolled by, taking several minutes to pass, which did at least allow me to get some unusual photos of an already unusual station. Research later showed the train was on an eight hour safari from a freight terminal in Liverpool to a power station in Middlesbrough, and that's one good reason why this passenger-unfriendly line remains open.
There being no trains, and the local buses not going to either Stockport or Stalybridge, I headed off on foot. For locals it's 20 minutes down the A57 to the main crossroads in Denton, former hub of the hat industry, just far enough away for many of them not to realise the station exists. Instead I followed steep steps to a subway underneath the motorway, this evidently the most direct route south from the station, only to find two comfy sofas had got there first. Below them the path dipped down into a seasonal mudbath awash with plastic bottles and a couple of Sainsbury's trolleys, crossed by a handful of haphazard planks, and what I did was retreat very fast and go round the long way instead because it was horrible down there. Nobody cares, I thought, and maybe carelessness is why this is our least used station.
The 5th least used station in Britain: REDDISH SOUTH
Greater Manchester
(Annual passenger usage:128)
Reddish has two stations, North and South. Reddish North is on a busy line with regular services to Manchester and New Mills, thus attracts over 180,000 passengers annually. Reddish South however lies on the twice-a-week Stockport to Stalybridge line so is a railway white elephant, which is peeving because it's much closer to the town centre and ought to be much more useful.
Year 16/17 17/18 18/19 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 Passengers 94 104 60 158 18 108 100 128 Rank 6th 7th 3rd 9th 10th 8th 5th 5th
We've passed two miles down the line, a journey which can be made by train in four minutes once a week. Reddish South station lies below a road bridge thrumming with vehicles and pedestrian footfall, just around the back of Morrisons car park. Like Denton there are information boards at the roadside listing miserably few trains, but this time also a proper Transport for Greater Manchester station sign alerting everyone to its existence. The gate at the top of the steps is lockable but wasn't, and I suspect rarely is, which was great because it allowed me to head down to the platform again and explore.
Originally this was an island platform but one track's disappeared and been replaced of late by a rather nice garden. A white picket fence shields a bank of shrubbery, at one point with a carpet of blue spring flowers and at another with a burst of pink blossom. That's because as you might have guessed there's a group of volunteers called The Friends of Reddish South Station and they're still very much a going concern with an unexpectedly comprehensive website. Along the back wall is a vibrant mural symbolising 'Second Chances' and also a recent panel celebrating the line's 175th anniversary. According to signs on the fence Reddish South has won three times in the awards for Cheshire's Best Kept Station, which is incredible given it sees two trains a week and has never been in Cheshire.
The actual platform, however, is ill-surfaced with occasional humps which I nearly tripped over twice. No matter how poorly used the station there is of course a yellow line to stand behind and a parallel stripe of tactile paving. Again the far end of the platform is fenced off, this time not with flowerboxes but with a wonky station timeline. Here and there are plaques unveiled by former local MP Andrew Gwynne, who it seems was always willing to turn up so long as WW2 was being commemorated, and who was also a long-time supporter of returning better services to the station. The posters advertising Northern Rail services feel very out of place, especially given that if you ever head off on a day trip from here you can't get back. Also the sign saying this is platform 1 feels somewhat unnecessary because of course it is.
The southern half of Reddish meanwhile gets on with daily life without the availability of a decent rail connection. It boasts hilariously named businesses like Reddish Ale, Reddish Grill and Reddish Hair. It has a Conservative Club called the Reddish Con Club, which at first I thought was a gaffe but the more I think about it the more brilliant a name it is. It has a magnificent behemoth of a cotton mill at the heart of Houldsworth Model Village, since converted to flats. It has a Grade I listed gothic church at St Elizabeth's, which is where Ashley married Maxine in Coronation Street in 1999. And it's a lengthy yomp into Stockport or £2 on the bus whereas it could be a quick trip by train, and not just one-way before breakfast on a Saturday morning. Opportunity missed, or perhaps unnecessary, but definitely a right Northern quirk.
» 11 photos Denton
» 9 photos of Reddish
» 30 photos of Stockport
» all 50 photos in one album
[FORSS has designated this Saturday's northbound service from Reddish South and Denton as the Breakfast Special Folk Train, leading to "music, bacon butties, hot drinks & local ales" at Stalybridge Buffet Bar (one way only, make your own way back), just in time to boost passenger numbers before the end of the financial year]
Monday, March 24, 2025
Gadabout: STOCKPORT
Stockport is a former textile town on the Lancashire/Cheshire border, since swallowed up by Greater Manchester. Of the ten metropolitan boroughs it's the southeasternmost. Previously I'd only ever seen it from the train while crossing the lofty viaduct over the River Mersey, noting the tall chimney with 'Hat Museum' written on it and thinking that might be a good place to visit. And indeed it was, not just the headgear repository but the unexpectedly split-level town, its heritage and its wider points of interest. Join me to discover what's underneath the shopping centre, where Joy Division recorded, what Lowry painted and how many rabbits it takes to make a hat. [Visit Stockport] [30 photos]
Let's start with the Hat Museum, or Hat Works as it's been officially branded, perhaps because museums are old hat. It's based in a former cotton mill with a striking 200 foot chimney, which thankfully for reasons of authenticity was later used for hat making by local company Ward Bros. A lottery grant helped transform it into a flats and a heritage centre, the latter opening in 2000, and a further grant funded a major "refurbishment and reinterpretation" which reopened last year. It's only open three days a week so I chose the date of my visit carefully, but it is free to enter which is good going for something they could easily have charged for.
The first floor down is the Gallery of Hats, because obviously what you do in a hat museum is display as many different types of headgear as you can. Here they have several hundred, from pillboxes to pith helmets and kepis to kippahs, appealingly laid out in bright display cases. A subject like hats screams out for thematic curation so that's what they've gone for, with underlying issues like faith, pride and sustainability subtly woven in throughout. The red Mini they've squeezed into one corner seems a bit redundant, but it does at least signpost the way to some splendid Mary Quant numbers. Also full marks for filling the reading corner with appropriate children's books including I Want My Hat Back and The Quangle Wangle's Hat.
Downstairs is the factory floor which is awash with all kinds of machinery used to make all kinds of hats. I think sometimes they turn some of it on because there were a heck of a lot of ear defenders hanging on the wall outside. Separate gizmos helped with dyeing, shaping, lining, dimpling and even adding those little fiddly ribbons on the inside. Pick your time right and you can be led round on a proper tour, pick your time wrong and you end up mid-school-trip. One aspect of the latest reinterpretation is a sign warning that the room contains 'aspects of the hat trade which some people may find upsetting'. Skinning rabbits for their pelt fair enough, and maybe the manufacture of extra-cheap hats to send to slaves in the West Indies, but anyone upset by the concept of 'inequality' probably needs a better grip on the world. It was twelve rabbits per hat, by the way, so Stockport was once slaughtering 150,000 a week.
It feels odd that the Hat Works entrance is on the top floor but that's because Stockport is a split level town with an upper bit, a lower bit and several sloping connections. It takes some getting used to walking round and suddenly finding yourself on a high bridge crossing a low road, or realising that what looks like a neighbouring street on a map is in fact a steep climb away. High Street is well named. The quirkiest area is probably the Underbanks, a narrow meandering indent following the line of a former stream, the Tin Brook. Many of the trendier shops are down here, but also a proper chippie because Stockport is not yet up itself. The oldest building on Great Underbank is Underbank Hall, a three-gabled half-timbered Tudor townhouse which is now occupied, appropriately enough, by a branch of NatWest bank. I was so taken by Crowther Street's classic climbing cobbles that I paused for a photo, only to discover later that LS Lowry had done the same with his paintbrush in 1930. However the houses he saw were all demolished during later slum clearance and what's here now is a modern rebuild deliberately designed to echo Lowry's painting.
Stockport's main museum is in the historic heart of the town, up top on a red sandstone cliff where the castle no longer is. It too is free, although it does wrap around a paid-for attraction which is Staircase House, an original 15th century home with rare Jacobean newel staircase. I was all primed to make this the first attraction where I'd paid Senior rates but they didn't upsell it, I suspect because closing time was approaching, so I just went round the ordinary exhibits instead. These spread across five floors and are properly varied, from all the usual local Bronze Age and municipal stuff to a scale model exemplifying the restoration of the Iron Bridge in Marple. I particularly enjoyed the current temporary exhibition in the basement showcasing rediscovered camera shots of Stockport market in the mid 1970s, Heidi's black and white photos being emotionally evocative.
Another gallery focuses on Strawberry Studios, the first professional recording studio outside London, which was set up by early members of 10cc in 1968. The band recorded their first albums here and pumped some of the proceeds from their success into upgrading to a 36-track desk which attracted an eclectic selection of other artists. These included Hotlegs, Neil Sedaka, Sad Cafe, Cliff Richard, The Sisters of Mercy, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Barclay James Harvest, Echo & The Bunnymen and the St Winifred's School Choir. Several of these get a mention on the blue plaque outside the former studios on Wellington Street, plus the seminal Joy Division whose first album was recorded here at Strawberry (and can be played in full within the museum gallery). You may have the album's iconic cover art on a t-shirt but Stockport proudly slaps it up on buildings ("yeah, Unknown Pleasures, that's one of ours").
Opposite the museum is the Market Hall, a striking cast iron and glass confection that narrows as it climbs. It houses three dozen stalls in that appealing way only northern towns seem to manage, selling such delights as Polish plum donuts, mop and bucket sets and embroidered hedgehog cushions. Other buildings hereabouts include the Robinson Brewery, a towering redbrick presence which looks like it ought to be flats by now but is still the heart of a 250 year-old independent brewery chain. I wasn't prompt enough to see inside their small museum and shop. A memorial on Hopes Carr commemorates the 1967 Stockport plane disaster, still one of Britain's worst, in which fuel issues brought the plane down on a scrap of open ground perilously close to the town centre killing 72 of those aboard. The town is still very obviously on the flight path for Manchester Airport which is five miles away and whose runway annoyingly aligns.
Stockport's main shopping mall is highly unusual in that it's built on top of a river. With nowhere else to cram it, town planners in the 1960s added concrete arches above a 500m stretch of the River Mersey and so created Merseyway. What's more the river was once the official boundary between two counties, so if you go shopping in Primark you're in historic Cheshire and if you cross the mall to River Island you're in what used to be Lancashire. The Mersey is a ridiculously young river at this point because its source is less than five minutes walk away, born at the confluence of the River Goyt and the River Tame. One starts in the Peak District and the other on Pennine moorland, meeting here in the town centre alongside the roaring ribbon of the elevated M60 motorway before launching off towards Liverpool.
Mersey-side is also the location of the town's newest regeneration locus, Stockport Interchange. This replacement bus station opened a year ago on the site of the old, a futuristic split-level swoosh with an airy timbered waiting space and an elliptical bus stand. Up top is a new park with fine views over the rim, accessed via lifts, a long staircase or an unwieldy outdoor spiral called the Stockport Helix. Manchester's recently-launched Bee Network is gradually turning all the local buses a gorgeous shade of custard yellow, and yesterday saw the introduction of tap and go fares for the very first time. Displays within the bus station are very clear and a full rack of paper timetables is available, but alas there's not a map to be seen - I did ask at the information desk and got a smiley "no". Roger has a full report from opening day if you'd like to see more photos.
And this whole area is dominated by the massive Stockport viaduct which remains one of the world's largest brick-built structures. It was built to carry the fledgling Manchester and Birmingham Railway across the River Mersey, comprises over 11 million bricks and was completed in less than two years. It looks splendid in the sunlight, and can be newly admired from a sinuous footpath connection which now links the bus station in the valley to the railway station on the escarpment. The best view however is from up top on a train, looking down across the town with its jumble of rooftops and occasional mill chimneys. I never got to see that because the station comes just before the viaduct, ditto I never quite made it to the Art Gallery, the Air Raid Shelters or Fred Perry's childhood home. But I really liked Stockport, it had unexpected character, so don't rule out a return visit.
» 30 photos of sunny Stockport
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Five years ago PM Boris Johnson addressed the nation from 10 Downing Street and told us "You must stay at home". All sorts of extraordinary restrictions were subsequently introduced, many of which were conveyed to us in signs and stickers slapped across our immediate environment. But many of these have never been removed, despite all restrictions having been withdrawn three years ago, so for today's post I've been collecting examples of such lingering signage. All photos were taken this year.
This a road sign at the Gallions Reach roundabout in the Royal Docks.
It points towards the Nightingale Hospital, a scary morgue-like contingency that was virtually never used. As far as I'm aware all the other road signs pointing to the Nightingale Hospital have been taken down, but not this one.
This is a crumpled poster in a bus shelter in Becontree Heath.
It's from that era when disinfectant, hand sanitiser and ventilation were key to providing confidence to returning passengers. And it really should have been taken down by now.
This is the foot of a totem outside the Priory Retail Park in Colliers Wood. Above Burger King are listed Currys, Aldi, Dunelm and the Kiss Me Hardy pub. Click to embiggen.
It was once appropriate to request that shoppers "maintain a distance of at least 2 metres from anyone", "do not shake hands" and "wash your hands regularly and for at least 20 seconds", but in 2025 it's pointless hectoring.
This is the front of the Lansbury Pharmacy in Poplar. They also have a sign on the pavement outside.
They always seemed overkeen to be a vaccination centre, and I don't think they've ever taken this signage down.
This sign's attached to a gate halfway up the long path down to Sydenham Hill station.
I've long suspected The Dulwich Estate of being behind the times, and here they definitely are.
This sticker lingers on a cycle hire station near the southern entrance to the Rotherhithe Tunnel.
It is arguably still good advice to 'wash your hands before and after you travel', but three years on from Covid now also overtly nannyish.
This is a sign at Islington Museum alongside a normally-handleable water jug and bowl.
It should have been simple for any member of staff to realise this sign was irrelevant, pick it up and remove it - they've had three years - but nobody ever has.
These signs survive in the subway at Bank station and on the pavement in Harold Road, Upton Park.
Erosion has got rid of most of the underfoot stickers and paintjobs urging us to keep 2m apart, but not yet all.
This sign is attached to a fingerpost beside the River Chess in Croxley Green.
The top row includes information now deemed irrelevant, including "do not touch your face", "wipe down equipment before use" and "if the park or play area is busy please come back another time". But the bottom row is evergreen behavioural advice and maybe that's why Three Rivers council have never spent money replacing these signs.
This is a sign beside a shopping parade in Kingsbury.
It's highly evocative of a time of press conferences and podium slogans, but it shouldn't be here.
This Priority Postbox sticker adorns a pillar box in Rush Green near Romford. It was a key part of the hopelessly inadequate Track and Trace system which relied on Royal Mail being selectively competent.
These stickers remain widespread and may be the last evidence of Covid to finally disappear.
This is perhaps my favourite leftover.
It's a bus stop and shelter introduced as part of a temporary bus network to help medical staff at the Nightingale Hospital get to work. This was the terminus of route 3, the last of the four routes to be withdrawn, strategically located outside a couple of hotels at Prince Regent.
It last saw a bus on 13th May 2020 and yet it's still here, ditto the bus stop across the road which was for alighting only. You'd think a superfluous bus shelter could be of more use elsewhere and would have been removed by now, but you'd think wrong.
It is perhaps impressive that after three months of looking this is all I've found. But it's also symptomatic of a system that rushes to put signs up but never notices it should also take them down.
