What is London's longest alphabetical train journey?
(this, of course, depends on what you mean by 'alphabetical journey')
Stations beginning A, B, C, D etc
Only nine tube stations start with the letter A.
Only one of these (Arnos Grove) is adjacent to a tube station starting with the letter B (Bounds Green).
But the next station (Wood Green) starts with a W, not a C, so that's the end of the chain.
The longest alphabetical journey on the tube is therefore Arnos Grove → Bounds Green.
So that's a disappointing start.
If you extend the search to the entire tube map, four more stations start with A.
But none of these are next to a station starting with B.
Purely in terms of probability, that's not really a surprise.
If you're happy to accept tram stops, there are three more A→B journeys. Addiscombe → Blackhorse Lane, Avenue Road → Birkbeck, Avenue Road → Beckenham Road
But there are still no adjacent Cs.
If you extend the search to all of London railways, hurrah, there's one better success. Albany Park → Bexley → Crayford
And if you allow any stations within the Oyster zone, hurrah, that chain gets even better. Albany Park → Bexley → Crayford → Dartford
Across the whole of the rest of the UK rail network, only one other chain of stations matches that.
It's up in Scotland, on the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Armadale → Blackridge → Caldercruix → Drumgelloch
But A-D is the very best we can do.
Stations beginning with consecutive letters
What if the first station can start with any letter, not just A?
I can find only one chain of three consecutive alphabetical tube stations. Ravenscourt Park → Stamford Brook → Turnham Green
Even changing trains mid-journey doesn't add any more to the list.
The wider tube map, adding DLR, tram and Overground, offers nothing as good.
Throw in the whole of the London rail network and there are a couple more chains of three. Lee → Mottingham → New Eltham Richmond → St Margarets → Twickenham
But three stations is London's maximum, which is somewhat disappointing (unless you know better).
Outside London, here's a four in South Wales (but I can't find a five). Barry Docks → Cadoxton → Dinas Powis → Eastbrook
Stations containing consecutive letters
Can we find consecutive tube stations containing A, then B, then C, then D, etc?
Yes we can. Here are some chains of five.
Fulham Broadway → West Brompton → Earl's Court → Gloucester Road → South Kensington
Edgware → Burnt Oak → Colindale → Hendon Central → Brent Cross
Hampstead → Belsize Park → Chalk Farm → Camden Town → Mornington Crescent
Those are all without changing trains.
Allow changing trains, and it's possible to get to nine.
Chancery Lane → Holborn → Tottenham Court Road → Goodge Street → Warren Street → Oxford Circus → Green Park → Hyde Park Corner → Knightsbridge
Starting with K instead of A, here's a tube journey which hits the maximum of eleven.
Bank → Liverpool Street → Moorgate → Barbican → Farringdon → King's Cross St Pancras → Euston Square → Great Portland Street → Baker Street → Regent's Park → Oxford Circus
...and here's another.
Southwark → Waterloo → Westminster → Embankment → Charing Cross → Piccadilly Circus → Leicester Square → Tottenham Court Road → Goodge Street → Warren Street → Euston
Stations in alphabetical order
This should be easier.
In good news, two adjacent stations are always in alphabetical order, in one direction or the other.
In bad news, the next station only has a 50/50 chance of following on, and then again, and then again.
This is similar to flipping a coin until you get a different result, so a long chain isn't very likely.
Here are several examples of five consecutive tube stations in alphabetical order on the same line. Arsenal → Finsbury Park → Manor House → Turnpike Lane → Wood Green Baker Street → Edgware Road → Paddington→ Royal Oak → Westbourne Park Barons Court → Hammersmith → Ravenscourt Park → Stamford Brook → Turnham Green Bermondsey → London Bridge → Southwark → Waterloo → Westminster Borough → Elephant & Castle → Kennington → Oval → Stockwell Croxley → Moor Park → Northwood → Northwood Hills → Pinner Eastcote → Rayners Lane → South Harrow → Sudbury Hill → Sudbury Town Leyton → Leytonstone → Snaresbrook → South Woodford → Woodford
If TfL ever build the Metropolitan line extension there'll be a six.
Cassiobridge → Croxley → Moor Park → Northwood → Northwood Hills → Pinner
(but they won't, so there won't be)
If changing trains is allowed, I can get to six. Baker Street → Bond Street → Green Park → Hyde Park Corner → Knightsbridge → South Kensington
There is a genuine consecutive six on the Overground. Canonbury → Dalston Junction → Haggerston → Hoxton → Shoreditch High Street → Whitechapel
Here's a seven on the wider London rail map. Barnes → Mortlake → North Sheen → Richmond → St Margarets → Twickenham → Whitton
And if you allow changing trains, this is a ten. Beckenham Hill → Bellingham → Catford → Catford Bridge → Ladywell → Lewisham → Nunhead → Peckham Rye → Queens Road Peckham → Surrey Quays
(this assumes it's OK to use the interchange at Catford/Catford Bridge)
Across the whole country, using NationalRail, here are two sevens. Cardiff Central → Cardiff Queen Street → Cathays → Llandaf → Radyr → Taffs Well → Trefforest Estate Bidston → Birkenhead North → Birkenhead Park → Conway Park → Hamilton Square → James Street → Moorfields
Change at Moorfields and you can travel one more station to Sandhills, scoring eight.
And if you focus instead on stations stopped at during a single train journey, this is ten. Barry → Barry Docks → Cadoxton → Cardiff Central → Cardiff Queen Street → Cathays → Llandaf → Radyr → Taffs Well → Trefforest
That train journey is the 07:42 from Bridgend to Aberdare, and well done to Tom Forth for finding it.
He has a lot more of this kind of thing, computer-churned, over here.
(we'd best leave reverse alphabetical order for some other time)
NATIONAL WATERWAYS MUSEUM Location: Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, CH65 4FW [map] Open: daily 10am-5pm (closed Mondays) Admission: £9.75 (ticket acts as annual pass) Website:canalrivertrust.org.uk/places-to-visit/national-waterways-museum Five word summary: Canal boats great and small Time to allow: half a day
It's not where you'd expect a National Waterways Museum to be - beside a chemical works in Cheshire - but there is a good reason. I note there's also a National Waterways Museum in Gloucester, and a Canal Museum at Stoke Bruerne in Northamptonshire... which used to be known as the National Waterways Museum, to complicate matters. But of these three sites operated by the Canal & River Trust, the admission charge in Cheshire is the highest, so I guess it must be the flagship.
Ellesmere Port exists solely because a canal was planned between the Mersey and the Severn in the late 18th century. It was to be called the Ellesmere Canal, named after a small town in Shropshire passed on the way, hence the docks on the Cheshire marshes were named Ellesmere Port. The link was never completed, and the northern end metamorphosed into the Shropshire Union instead, but the name stuck and the docks grew to be bustlingly profitable. The Manchester Ship Canal cut through in 1894, severing the original connection to the Mersey, but bringing even greater trade. That's long gone, but Ellesmere Port's location at the junction of two very different kinds of waterway makes it ideal for a broad-ranging museum.
The NWM is based on a seven acre site sandwiched between the M53 and the Ship Canal, complete with two sets of locks and several large basins. Some of the surroundings have been gentrified Cheshire-style, with a Holiday Inn slapped on one of the quays and a private residential zone overlooking the lighthouse at the actual junction. It seems an odd place to want to live, overlooking flat estuarine nothingness, and with the chemical pipes of Stanlow Refinery flaring not far enough away. But the museum shields you from all that somewhat (so do remember to go and stare at the enormous Ship Canal properly before you leave).
In good news, there's more to look around than there initially appears. Initially you'll be nudged down towards the slipway, where boats were hauled up from the docks for maintenance, and get to meet various 'characters' who once worked here. What you're supposed to do is stand in the right place and use an augmented reality app on your phone to bring them to life, but life's too short, and I found that reading the script on a nearby laminated sheet wasted far less time. There's also the option of walking round with a free audio guide, which might have been excellent but I turned down because it would only have kept me out in the pouring rain for longer.
The main exhibit is inside three brick warehouses, today relabelled as the Exhibition Hall, with rather more tucked away upstairs than down. Here you'll find the full gamut of UK canalboating writ large, from reproduction boatyard toolsheds to painted narrowboats you can walk inside. It's often easy to forget that boating families were confined to a tiny cabin at the stern, with the majority of their internal space given over to precious cargo, rather than the luxurious full-length layout modern holidaymakers enjoy. Elsewhere all the canals' mechanisms and operational extras get a mention, for example painted jugs, mileposts and aqueducts, although if you really want to understand how locks work then best walk outside and inspect the real thing.
The displays are never overly parochial, so although NW England and Wales get a good look in, the rest of the country is covered as well. I smiled when I found a photo of Rickmansworth in a digital display, and grinned more broadly when I found specific reference to Common Moor Lock in a temporary exhibition. 'No Sign Of Canals On Mars' showcases the cruising logs of Eileen Burke, a boater on the Lea and Stort in the 1960s, in appealingly sellotaped scrapbooks interspersed with newspaper cuttings from the Space Race. It's gorgeous stuff (and also available in a limited edition boxed reproduction). Nextdoor I had a go at the icebreaker challenge, where you have to rock your body for 30 seconds to smash through a channel of virtual ice, but only because I knew absolutely nobody else was upstairs watching me.
It's not all about boats. The blacksmiths' forge which used to operate on site has been left as it was when the canal company moved out in the 1960s, and is still used to host day courses in smithing if that's your thing. Gentlemen who like greasy engines are well catered for in the former gasworks power hall, and also the enormous Pump Room, while others regularly get their hands dirty in the heritage boatyard. Another interesting diversion for visitors is the row of four dockers' cottages, each bedecked inside as it would have been in a different decade, from austere Victoriana to the almost comfortable 1950s.
But mainly it's about the boats. Several are moored up around the site, with the larger specimens in the lower basin, and often with the opportunity to clamber aboard unsupervised. Had I turned up the previous weekend there'd have been dozens more as part of the annual Easter Gathering, one of the seasonal cavalcades which keep places like this alive. In better weather the museum also runs a 30 minute barge trip, with commentary, up the Shropshire Union and back. The NWM's not where most locals go at the weekend - the massive shopping centre one junction down the M53 has far more allure. But if you're reading this you'd no doubt enjoy the old boats better.
Other things to do in Ellesmere Port (by reader Si)
1)Cheshire Oaks is not everyone's cup of tea. Nor is it in Chester - it's a few miles away on the outskirts of Ellesmere Port. However, Britain's largest Designer Outlet Mall is a popular destination for the city's tourists. Parking is free, though you can book and reserve a space for £5 as the owners understand the section of their clientele who'd see things like a designer shirt for £95 as a bargain too good to refuse. For those of us that aren't like that, while most of the shops will not be for us, there are some high street retailers offering some products for slightly less than they do on the high street. As such, clearly no visit to NW Cheshire is complete without walking the ¾ mile around this shrine to capitalism.
Tucked away in almost-Wales, Chester is a popular spot for international tourists 'doing' England. The city walls are the biggest draw, ostensibly Roman and remarkably complete, surrounding some unusually attractive shopping streets. With history and retail within easy walking distance, it's no wonder Chester reels them in. Here are ten things to see and do in the city (although I'm relying on you lot to supply 8, 9 and 10). [12 photos]
1) Walk the City Walls
These are extraordinary, forming a two mile circuit around the heart of the city, tracing out an approximately playing-card-shaped path. The Romans started them off as earthen banks, soon fronted with stone for greater defensive strength. City fathers later extended the ring to its current extent and topped it off with a capstone walkway. Large gateways allowed the populace in and out, and a variety of observation towers became embedded within. But whereas most English cities knocked most of theirs down, Chester retained its wall, and it's still possible to go for a complete circuit to this day.
Except it isn't quite. A 100m gap on the southern flank facing the River Dee takes you back to street level. Not all of the wall is original - some bits are Civil War restorations, others are Georgian infill, and the odd elevated section looks very much like late 20th century concrete. All the original 'gates' are long gone, replaced by wider vehicle-friendly gaps. One northern section has been fenced off for repairs for two years after the stairs were found to be highly unstable, and trains to Wales run straight through where the northwestern corner used to be. But the remainder's impressive enough, and that's most of it, rest assured.
2) Shop The Rows
Chester's central shopping district is lined by tall half-timbered buildings, very Elizabethan-looking (even if most are Victorian rebuilds), and collectively most striking. Some are boutiques, some are chains like W H Smiths, while others are nothing more than generic mobile phone repair shops in an impressive setting. Most notable are the Rows, a two storey configuration dating back to medieval times, where the upper floor is set back behind covered walkways and the ground floor nudged slightly underground. None of this looks especially disabled-friendly, and the upper terrace I walked along felt a bit untravelled, but my word it puts your local architecturally-bereft shopping centre to shame.
3) Snap the Eastgate Clock
It's said to be the second most photographed clock in England, after Big Ben (which I know is technically not a clock, before all the pedants write in). It's perched on what used to be the eastern gate into the city, replaced by a sandstone arch in the 18th century, and now located partway along the main shopping street. The four-faced clock, glinting gold beneath a copper cupola, was added for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, It looks good from below, but for a decent close-up is best approached along the city walls, and then you can wave backdown at all the shoppers snapping up.
4) Tour the Cathedral
The city boasts a middle-ranking cathedral, neither wildly alluring nor drably mundane, perhaps because it's built from local sandstone. Entrance is free, although you have to queue at a desk for a ticket on the way in, and when the till flashes up "Customer" it cheapens the experience somewhat. As well as a donation, what they're hoping is that you'll pay for an 'experience' up the tower, reached via various narrow elevated passageways, although I judged sodden spring days weren't the best time for a decent view. My favourite (downstairs) element was probably the cloisters, with second place to an under-construction 350000-brick model of the cathedral in Lego, currently risen to top-of-the-windows level.
5) Explore the Grosvenor Museum
Chester's museum straddles the needs of locals and tourists alike, hence feels a little underwhelming for a city of this historical calibre. The highlight is the gallery packed with Roman gravestones uncovered from the city walls during renovation, their inscriptions protected from the elements over the intervening centuries. The actual Roman gallery is perhaps a little dated, and the collection of fine silverware upstairs probably never gets busy. I liked the period rooms hidden behind the gift shop, and one of the contemporary art exhibitions, but gave the could've-been-anywhere natural history galleries a miss, sorry.
6) See the Amphitheatre
The city's finest Roman remains lie just outside the walls, specifically England's largest amphitheatre, or rather what's left of it. Once a deep, fully-seated bowl, now only the lower level remains, and two-thirds of the oval has never been excavated. On the undisturbed side lies Dee House, a Georgian townhouse listed in its own right, leaving the council in a dilemma as to which feature should be more worthy of preservation. While they agonise over making their minds up, and whether a boutique hotel would be the best outcome, bring a packed lunch and imagine gladiators battling to the death.
7) Watch the Racing
Chester has the UK's oldest racecourse in continuous use, and also one of the shortest at barely one mile in length. It's located on The Roodee, adjacent to the city walls, inside a meander on the Dee which used to be Roman harbour. Racing's infrequent, between May and September only, and gives members of Cheshire society somewhere to see and be seen. Even without going to the races I was struck by how well-groomed many of the locals were, bedecked in the best labels, shod in proper footwear and with barely a hair out of place (blondes being more frequent than genetics would suggest). Check the dress code before attending.
8) Go to the Zoo
Regularly voted best zoo in Britain, and always the country's most-visited wildlife attraction, Chester Zoo has grown from a private collection to a genuine family-friendly success. I am however unable to write a review because a) I didn't go, b) I have a conflict of interest relating to The North of England Zoological Society. This is your chance to add your comments, if any of you have been, which seems likely given it gets almost two million visitors a year. Update: Andrew says "The zoo is a good one, particularly if you have children in train. Elephants, rhinos, chimpanzees, orangutans, etc. Monorail and boat trip. Some bits were somewhat tired when I was there last but I understand the owners have been/are refreshing parts of it." Caz adds "The enclosures are spacious and the animals look contented. The new Islands area is very attractive with themed structures, sound effects and planting – and there’s a fun boat trip."
9) Follow the River
The Dee loops around Chester's southern rim, and is easily accessed. Two readers recommend a boat trip "from the Groves upriver as far as the iron bridge", and a third once tried hiring a rowing boat to oar it himself. Mike also suggests "a stroll in the Meadows on the other side of the river, where the countryside comes right into the city". If it's a sunny day, Wole rates "a stroll through Grosvenor Park" (which I see also boasts a miniature railway open at weekends from Easter). Amber has particular memories of the swans, "lots of them, flying or paddling downstream to 'work' in the city centre where they would be fed and photographed."
10) Something else This one's are over to you. I only spent three hours in Chester, and spent an hour of that checking out a peripheral football stadium, plus I remember scandalously little of my previous visit in 1980. If you don't come up with something I shall be forced to write about a walk along the canal and the underwhelming castle. You can do better.
The odd thing about Chester FC, an English club in football's fifth tier, is that they play in Wales.
Not all of Chester is in England. The Welsh border swings in round the Dee estuary, crossing the river a mile downstream from the city centre, then bending west again. For centuries the boundary passed through saltmarsh and farmland, well away from any commercial activity, but suburbanisation nudged the city outwards, beyond its famous walls. In particular a huge trading estate grew up to the west, a warren of car dealers and builder merchants, and nudged inexorably closer to the country nextdoor.
Chester City FC used to play at SealandRoad, an ageing stadium at the top of Bumpers Lane. But in 1990 new owners took over and announced plans to redevelop the site as a retail park, like they do, and fans were forced to groundshare with distant Macclesfield for two years until a replacement could be built. The chosen site was farmland halfway down Bumpers Lane, slap bang on the border between England and Wales, hence the team's unique geographical quirk. At the new Deva Stadium the entire pitch and all four stands are in Wales. But the admin block stuck to the front nudges out just far enough to reach England, hence the main entrance isn't in Wales, hence the stadium is officially English.
I quite liked the idea of walking from Chester to Wales, so set off on a short trek up the Sealand Road. The site of the former stadium is now a Poundland and TX Maxx and, for now at least, a Maplin. Bumpers Lane is unrecognisable as the dead end dirttrack to the Dee it once was, lined by innumerable low-res warehouses. All the family-friendly chains and big supermarkets are at the top end, then come the retail sheds where Dads like to spend their weekend afternoons, and finally the council tip. And all the time the floodlights at the very far end were growing closer... and hang on, why were they blazing?
Deva Stadium is normally a silent void surrounded by an empty car park - ideal conditions for a spot of psychogeographical flaneury. On this occasion, however, the car park was full, and excitable shouts from within confirmed that a match was in progress. What's more a considerable number of police were present, far more than I'd expect to find at a National League match, and I realised I'd now have to carry out my stadium reconnaissance under their full scrutiny. Worst of all they'd parked their dog vans at the very point where Bumpers Lane reverts to a farm track and heads into Wales, and I no longer fancied walking past the barking to explore. Dammit. Always do your research before you visit, especially if your plans include a football stadium on a Saturday afternoon.
I wandered through the potholed car park to the front of the offices, where a club minion was shifting traffic cones in readiness for the end of the match. He eyed me suspiciously as a I took a photo of the doors to the bar and shop, made brief conversational contact (in English, not Welsh), then wandered off to shift some more. I took the opportunity to step into Wales. The border slants across the car park, with the disabled spaces against the back of the main stand a few yards on the Welsh side. But there were absolutely no signs anywhere to give the game away, and unless I'd checked on a map beforehand I'd never have known.
A roar went up from inside as the match reached fever pitch. I guessed from the noise level that the home side must have done something impressive, but not quite as impressive as scoring a goal. The gate at the back of the stand flapped open and a spectator emerged, walked round the side of the stadium, knocked, and popped back in. I considered trying the same and becoming spectator number 3104, but thought better of it, and continued round into the Welsh arm of the car park. The outsides of prefab football stadia alas aren't the most exciting of places, in this case a whitewashed wall with four doors, intermittently broken by adverts for the village chemist who sponsored the family stand.
A much longer roar erupted from the far side, sustained for celebratory length, which I assumed must be bad news for the home team. Sure enough a trickle of supporters appeared at the gates, heading silently for their cars parked in the adjacent country. One was a dad leading his young daughter, one of whom sounded sorry not to be staying until the final whistle. I finally checked on my phone and discovered that yes, Tranmere Rovers had just scored a goal. They're from just up the Wirral, making this a local derby, which suddenly explained the presence of police in large numbers. What's more that goal they'd just scored had condemned Chester to relegation, and a purgatorial season in the National League North now awaits. What a time to have turned up.
It's particularly gutting for supporters, whose team has been climbing the non-league echelons since the owners went bust in 2010, and who'd finally got back to where they were when they were kicked out. For 2018/19 they'll be one rung down. The replacement club is known as Chester rather than Chester City, and now has no connection to the bankrupt consortium who flogged off the original ground.
Further perambulation proved impractical, under the gaze of dozens of police officers with nobody else to look at, plus there's not much to be gained from following an invisible line across a packed car park. My planned escape down Bumpers Lane was still obstructed by trained canines, but I reassured myself that the brief footpath I'd planned to follow down to the Dee was probably a quagmire and I'd had a lucky escape. My visit to the start of the Wales Coast Path will have to wait. In the meantime I'm pleased to have visited the English football stadium that's actually in Wales, just as Nuneaton Town, Darlington and Southport will be doing next season.
Yesterday the government introduced a 'sugar tax' on soft drinks, affecting any beverage containing more than 50 grams of sugar per litre. The tax is 18p per litre for any drink with 5-8g of sugar per 100ml, and 24p per litre for any drink with more than 8g of sugar per 100ml. That's a hefty mark-up.
The idea is to dissuade us from buying drinks that are bad for our health, but also to nudge manufacturers into selling drinks with less sugar in. Irn-Bru, Ribena and Lucozade have all reformulated their recipes to have less than the threshold, so they're not affected by the tax hike. But Coca-Cola and Pepsi market themselves very much on taste, so didn't dare tweak their 11g per 100ml, so they're being charged top whack.
But what does this mean in practice? To find out I checked the prices of several well-known fizzy drinks on Thursday, before the sugar tax was introduced, and then checked them again on Friday to see what the impact had been.
On Thursday my local Tesco was selling the following sizes of ordinary 'Classic' Coca Cola.
If you like Coke, the best value deal was the 1.5 litre bottle (87p per litre), and the worst value was the 6 cans (£1.53 per litre). It is astonishing how much extra people will pay for exactly the same liquid in different packaging.
And what happened on Friday? Let's start with the 1 litre bottle, because that's easiest. The sugar tax on Coca Cola is 24p a litre, so we need to add 24p to the price, so the new price is £1.25.
Similarly the 1.5 litre bottle merits a sugar tax of 36p, so the new price is £1.66. And the 6 cans between them contain 2 litres of Coke, so that's 48p added, making a nice round price of £3.50. Hey presto.
And these are indeed the new prices being charged, except for the pack of 18 cans which for some reason is on sale at £8.00 rather than the expected seven. Special offers, and unexpected mark-ups, do sometimes muddy the calculations somewhat.
Oddly when I visited Tesco online on Thursday, rather than my local store, they were already charging Friday's prices. This premature surcharge seemed somewhat unfair. Meanwhile Sainsbury's and Asda didn't increase prices on their website until today, one day late, which is good news if you went shopping yesterday.
So I'll now focus on Waitrose, who charged different prices online on Thursday and Friday, to illustrate the impact of the sugar tax. Here are the overnight price rises for various quantities of standard Coca Cola at Waitrose, compared to what the sugar tax suggests they ought to have been.
Unlike Tesco, Waitrose have passed onto the consumer all the extra VAT the sugar tax incurs. With VAT included, the top rate of increase is 29%, not 24%, making this an even tougher discentive than it initially appears.
Other, non-sugar-heavy drinks are of course available, and their prices haven't risen. For example a 1.75 litre bottle of Diet Coke still costs £1.69 at Waitrose, and 8 cans of Diet Coke still cost £3.59. If you're in a shop and want to see the implementation of the sugar tax writ large, compare the prices of the diet and non-diet versions of your favourite fizzy drink. Once you've seen that the difference is as much as 50p on a 2 litre bottle, you'd be a fool to buy the expensive sugary version.
Coca Cola pulled a particularly crafty trick in advance of Sugar Tax Day by changing the size of their flagship bottle. This used to contain 1¾ litres but has now shrunk to 1½, which helps to disguise the true magnitude of the sugar tax increase. Cut the volume by 14% at the same time as slapping on a 24% tax, and the hope is that consumers won't get so cross about a 20p hike which would otherwise have been 36p.
Customers should of course also be shopping around. The prices of fizzy drinks vary massively between supermarkets, and what you think of as normal in your local store may be extortionate compared to elsewhere. For example, here are the prices of six cans of Coke in five online supermarkets, after the sugar tax has been added.
That's a 10% variation between Sainsbury's and Asda in the price of this six-pack staple. And remember, each of these cans contains 7 teaspoons of sugar, or 35g, which is the reason the sugar tax is so long overdue. Indeed, between them the six cans contain 210g of sugar, which is about as much as you'd normally put in an entire Victoria sponge.
Meanwhile, here's what's just happened to a 2 litre bottle of unadulterated Pepsi. The sugar tax plus VAT should be 58p on a 2 litre bottle, but these are the actual price rises this week.
Red Bull is another sugar-heavy beverage where the top rate of tax applies. Waitrose increased the price of eight 250ml cans this week from £7.99 to £8.57, an increase of 58p (48p sugar tax plus 10p VAT). But the sugar-free version still costs £7.99, which is yet another reason never to buy the sweeter version. If you insist, then you really should be buying your Red Bull at Asda, because eight cans only cost £6.79 there.
And what of Lucozade? A 1 litre bottle of Lucozade Original currently costs £1.50 at Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose, exactly the same as it did earlier in the week. It may be called 'Original' but the recipe is anything but, the sugar content having been cut by two-thirds last year to avoid the new tax. This particular reformulation hasn't been popular, with long-standing drinkers despising the taste, and diabetics angry the new formula can no longer halt a sugar dip. Assuming you still fancy a bottle you again want to be going to Asda, where the unoriginal Original only costs a quid.
In conclusion, the imposition of the sugar tax is a financial minefield, but with the underlying message that sugar-heavy drinks now cost considerably more. If you are so brand-obsessed that you can't deal with the artificial sweetener version, you deserve all the tax and cavities coming your way. Maybe you should switch to tap water, assuming you haven't already, and save pounds. Just give fruit juice a miss, because that's also ridiculously sugar heavy, but the government hasn't got round to taxing it yet.
Route 603: Muswell Hill to Swiss Cottage Location: London north, inner Length of journey: 6 miles, 40 minutes
Here's one of London's oddest bus services... a school bus which still runs in the school holidays.
Every schoolday TfL run dozens of school buses, each numbered in the six hundreds, for the benefit of nomadic students. Adults stay well away, there being no joy in boarding a capsule full of excitable teens. But the 603 is unique, running for the benefit of schoolchildren on schooldays, but for everyone else when school's out.
Two vehicles run south from Muswell Hill to Swiss Cottage every weekday morning, twenty minutes apart, then turn round and come back again. The return journeys are too late to be of use to schoolchildren, but run every weekday all the same. Something very similar happens in the afternoon. Below is the timetable for non-schooldays, when services are scheduled to run at approximately the same time, but fractionally faster.
southbound
northbound
Muswell Hill
0729 0749 1511 1531
Swiss Cottage
0832 0852 1616 1623
Highgate
0748 0808 1528 1548
Highgate
0854 0914 1636 1646
Swiss Cottage
0813 0833 1550 1610
Muswell Hill
0909 0929 1652 1702
But why bother? Why operate a London bus route with an eight hour gap in the middle of the day (and nothing in the evening), which is sometimes invaded by blazered children and sometimes not? I waited for the safety of the Easter holidays and took a ride to find out.
Surprise number one, the 603's a double decker, even on a non-school day when no raucous hordes will be boarding. It arrives on Muswell Hill Broadway a few minutes early, with Not in Service on the blind, swings round the roundabout at the far end and then parks up, because it would never do for such an infrequent service to be early. Stop number one is opposite a church converted into a steakhouse, and outside a swanky 'Butcher & Providore' selling charcuterie and boxed cheese, because Muswell Hill's affluent like that. It should come as no surprise that the 603 exists mostly to ferry children to private schools.
I'm not expecting any other passengers to join me on the half past three. I am wrong. A lady with a shopping bag flags down the bus with her Oyster card, keen not to miss the last bus of the day. Another gentleman follows her aboard, and a third shopper is waiting at the first stop down the road. When a fourth boards I start to wonder whether they've been waiting specially, or whether they're aiming for East Finchley and just hopped on whichever of the three routes turned up first.
Fortis Green is very pleasant, a mix of Victorian villas and 60s flats, interspersed with florists, butchers and tasteful Mediterranean restaurants. Here we acquire four more passengers in one fell swoop, half of them schoolchildren in their non-spare time, as all my predictions regarding ridership go out the window. The dry cleaners on the corner has a depressing message in its window, "Be prepared, have your warmer clothes cleaned now", although from the look of the lettering I suspect it's been there for innumerable autumns.
It's my rule everytime I blog about a bus along this stretch of the High Road that I have to mention Amazing Grates, the fireplace showroom, and probably the Bald Faced Stag nextdoor. It's here that I first notice our driver is in no real hurry to get anywhere, as he pulls in at an empty stop nobody's dinged to get off at, flaps his doors briefly, then drives off. A heck of a lot more pointless flapping is coming up, almost as if the timetable has been deliberately padded out... except that this is the non-schoolday schedule, so it has absolutely no need to be.
Here's the Phoenix cinema, here's the Archer atop East Finchley station, and here are some temporary traffic lights, which our driver embraces optimally to waste another minute. A few passengers are starting to alight now, which is intriguing because they could probably have caught the bog standard 234 which was running a couple of minutes ahead of us, but chose the big rare bus instead. From the Esso Garage onwards, however, the 603 breaks off on its own, a genuinely useful onward connection from Muswell Hill, but running only four times a day.
North Hill is very pleasant, a soon-to-be leafy climb to Highgate, currently with branches brushing against each other high above the middle of the road. Another passenger joins us here, preferring our bus to the 143 that's normally the only bus up this stretch. We meet a 143 just past the next stop, obstructing the middle of the road with lights flashing and the door to its engine wide open. The driver is standing outside his cab, cigarette in hand, waiting patiently for mechanical deliverance. He breaks off for a while to help usher us through the awkward gap alongside his malfunctioning vehicle, then waves us off and grabs another puff.
Appreciators of modern architecture should watch out (on the right) for the glories of Lubetkin's High Point. Schoolchildren should watch out (on the left) for Highgate School, educational institute of legend, which is the chief reason route 603 exists. Today the memorial gates are locked, the chapel stands silent, and the steps up to the main door sparkle in the spring sunlight. Term restarts on the 17th of April, if you're interested in nipping along before the kids come back.
We turn right onto Hampstead Lane, which again no other bus does, to shadow route 210 across the top of Hampstead Heath. I am once again surprised when three more passengers board, one of them with a heavy suitcase, suggesting they've deliberately chosen our wilfully irregular service. Luggage man stays downstairs, but the posh young couple troop upstairs and shatter the silence on the upper deck, squishing into the other front seat and opening up a whole new layer of narrative.
"Omigod I love sitting at the front of the bus!" says the female of the pair, suggesting today's journey is a somewhat rare treat. She peruses the big houses, the high brick walls and the playing fields and declares "I feel like we're in Gerrards Cross", before squealing excitedly in the direction of Kenwood House. Her gentleman friend takes the opportunity to move in for a protracted snog and fumble, behaviour more normally attempted on the back seat by youngsters half their age, which I try my very hardest to ignore.
"What's that smell?" is the lady's somewhat unexpected response when the embrace finally breaks up. She rescues the situation somewhat by adding "It's really nice", and is delighted to discover she's been inhaling Chanel. She then proceeds to explain how her house shakes whenever a bus goes past, but not like in an earthquake, and is particularly excited when we squeeze past The Spaniards Inn. "This is so North London," she tells her other half, with blinkers fixed, as if every building this side of the Thames has 'circa 1585AD' painted on the front. I want to lean over and suggest she visits Tottenham or Colindale sometime, but think better of it.
The sun glints on the ripples of the Whitestone Pond at the top of the Heath. I watch as a heron swoops down from the top of a lamppost to land in the reeds, before stretching its wings and flapping off in an ostentatious arc towards the Vale of Health. My top deck partners have their eyes on their phones, and see nothing. Perhaps more surprisingly we're still picking up passengers, even at stops that wouldn't normally have buses going the way we're heading. Indeed the 603 is the only daytime double decker to head down Heath Street, into the affluent twists of Hampstead, and I revel in the unusual lofty view.
"This is us!" says the woman as we approach the station, before warning her partner to stay seated until the bus stops, as if he were her six year-old son. They only just alight in time. We push on down Fitzjohn's Avenue, now shadowing route 46, past all sorts of places the moneyed might head for nibbles. Again the houses are grand and expensive, with one particularly haunted example shrouded in a cloak of jungle foliage. Here our twentieth and final passenger flags us down, only for a few stops, but validating this peculiar service's unlikely existence.
Most passengers alight just before the Swiss Cottage roundabout, where our driver takes one last opportunity to wait for several unnecessary seconds to ensure he terminates two stops later at precisely the correct time. Outside the Hampstead Theatre a canopy of cherry blossom shields an outdoor gym space where dozens are freely exercising. Only two people are sat on the chalet terrace outside Ye Olde Swiss Cottage ingesting pints, and exhaust fumes, in the spring sunshine. And only I ride to the final stop opposite the Odeon, a bus stand specifically for route 603, hence used for just an hour a day.
I'm still left asking myself, why does route 603 exist? It's good at making connections no other routes manages, indeed you'd need to catch five separate buses to follow the same route we've just traced. In particular you'd think Highgate to Hampstead deserved a permanent link, but instead a change of buses (or a hike across the Heath) is still required. But oddest of all is the decision to run the service on days when schools are closed, scheduled annoyingly infrequently, at times no commuting adult would be likely to find useful.
Here's what TfL said in response to a Freedom of Information request in 2014.
That final economic argument rings hollow, especially this week, as the 603 shuttles back and forth collecting absolutely no schoolchildren whatsoever. But someone somewhere must think it's worth running a school bus in the school holidays, and I for one am glad they do, because I got to enjoy a properly interesting and often scenic ride. You have just over a week to embrace the opportunity before those pesky private pupils steal it back.
It's a week and a bit after Easter. It may be the school holidays, but our music teachers are no respecters of time off. They've signed our choir up for a big concert, along with schools from across Hertfordshire, which today requires everyone to assemble for a big all-day rehearsal. Alas we're based in Watford and the rehearsal is in Hertford, so the day starts with a lengthy coach trip to unsettle our stomachs. There are traffic jams to begin with, then later in the journey the driver goes the wrong way, neither of which help. The dress rehearsal is not exciting, and I pass the time drawing worms in my copy of Five Tudor Portraits. We're served up chicken for lunch, then a disappointing salad for tea. On the way home the coach driver pumps up the radio to jolt us back into the 20th century. A couple of days later I'll be on stage at the actual Albert Hall, actually singing, to an audience almost entirely composed of proud Hertfordshire parents. And OK, it's only as an insignificant part of an enormous choir, but hell yes, achievement unlocked.
Tuesday, April 05, 1983
It's a couple of days after Easter. I take the opportunity to sleep in until half past nine, although yesterday I managed half past ten. The weather isn't great. I have Coco Pops for breakfast. In what's left of the morning the family drives into Watford to do some shopping. I have some record tokens to spend which I received for my 18th birthday last month. I head for W H Smiths, and their well stocked record department on the raised platform at the back of the store. My chosen selection is a 2-in-1 cassette of Spandau Ballet albums, with Journeys to Glory on one side and Diamond on the other. Side A turns out to be much better than Side B. I have a burger for lunch, or at least what passes for a burger in the 1980s which is a limp circle of beef in a bread roll with ketchup. In the evening we watch a repeat of Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 AD, the film with Bernard Cribbins, and get excited when Watford crops up in the plot. Later we watch the start of the new series of Now Get Out Of That, with Bernard Falk, and a repeat of The Innes Book Of Records.
Tuesday, April 05, 1988
It's a couple of days after Easter. My grandmother has an early appointment at the chiropodist, so me and my brother are driving down to her house to pick her up. She's wants to talk about the last episode of Crossroads, which aired last night, but we pretend we didn't watch it otherwise we'll never hear the end of it. After our foot-related duty is discharged I run an errand to the library to see if my mum's reserved books are in yet. The librarian says not, then calls me back as I'm disappearing through the doors because actually yes they are. I get to walk home clutching a romantic historical novel. My mum spends the afternoon typing out my brother's dissertation, then I check it for errors, and she retypes the whole page if I find any. I shall be Letrasetting the title onto the front cover later. In the evening we hear that my grandmother has been taken into hospital with anaemia. My brother heads out for a beer with an old schoolmate, and I'm still up when he gets home (after midnight) because I'm watching the very last edition of The Roxy on ITV.
Monday, April 05, 1993
It's the week before Easter. I've having time off work, which is excellent, even if I'm not using it especially profitably. I eat breakfast while attempting to guess The Golden Hour, which is still hosted by Simon Bates because he won't be resigning for a few more months. I take a couple of suits to the dry cleaners, and then I walk down to Safeway for my weekly shop. I spend £17. Back at home I can't quite finish the crossword, so I turn my computer on and play several levels of Repton. John Peel is presenting his very first daytime programme on Radio 1, sitting in all week for Jakki Brambles. I cook a steak and kidney pie for lunch. A neighbour knocks to talk about getting smoke alarms, and another neighbour buzzes from downstairs to ask if I'd like some of her sausage rolls. It's John Craven's Newsround's 21st birthday, so they do a special programme before Blue Peter. And then I fix myself a blind date for tomorrow. Fixing blind dates in the early 1990s is hard. But no, we won't hit it off, so the evening in the pub will be awkward, and thankfully brief.
Sunday, April 05, 1998
It's a week before Easter. It's also three months after a blind date went well, so my bed is unexpectedly full. But not for long. My Not-Yet-Ex has to drive back to Essex, allegedly for a trip to the gym, which I think I believed at the time. I have deduced that ham and cheese croissants make for an acceptable breakfast. I am unconvinced that QVC is the best thing to watch while eating it, but in this relationship I'm not the one in charge of the remote control. At noon we head our separate ways, me to the bus station to start a journey to see the family in Norfolk. When I ring later to hear how the gym went, all I'll get is the answerphone, which is all too obvious now. At my parents' house a huge roast beef meal is waiting, accompanied by the soundtrack from Titanic, which is currently the big thing. My three year-old nephew plays a lot with fire engines, and my eighteen month-old niece is learning to string proper sentences together. And when they've gone home, and it's just me and my mum and my dad, there is a heck of a lot to talk about until late in the evening.
Saturday, April 05, 2003
It's a fortnight before Easter. BestMate emigrated a few weeks ago, so I am having to make my own entertainment. The day starts and ends in a nightclub, so I guess I'm doing OK. The first is full of bright young things, and I don't feel much at home, but the second is considerably more convivial. I sleep in late after both. I have a blog now, so in what's left of this morning I knock out a post on Thunderbirds. Then I head back into town, this time to Oxford Street, where I buy an emergency flapjack and a copy of The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. Tomorrow a dice roll will take me to the Boat Race, and that'll inspire a complete set of jamjar-related adventures. A new Tesco Local has opened in Dean Street (opposite where the Crossrail station will eventually be). I have tuna for tea, and watch The Murder Game on BBC1, then head out again for a night of Becks and loud music under a railway arch. The work colleague I go with gets increasingly drunk, and ends the night stumbling towards a kebab shop. I'm having none of that.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
It's a fortnight after Easter. BestMate is back in the country again, and we have a beery night out planned. Stepping on the scales this morning I'm delighted when it displays a number of stone I haven't been for years. This is down to the strict diet I've put myself on for the last few weeks, and which will eventually climax with the need to buy new trousers. I walk down to Tesco to buy some drearily worthy groceries. Today's blogpost is a map of independent bookshops, so I've decided to spend the day visiting five of them. Hackney's is rubbish, West Hampstead's a delight, Willesden's solid, Chelsea's antiquarian and Balham's very cramped. Ten years later, onlytwo of the five still trade. On my way home BestMate's OtherHalf rings to postpone tonight's beery night out because they're feeling a bit fragile. Never mind, the new series of Doctor Who starts this evening, and Catherine Tate's in it this year, and she's unexpectedly excellent. It'll snow tomorrow.
Friday, April 05, 2013
It's the week after Easter. It's also the first time since June 1987 that every digit in the day's date is different. This is the sort of thing I like to tell people at work, but then they just look at me. It's quiet at work today because most people with kids have the week off, but my team has a project with a deadline coming up so we're all in. There are contracts need sorting. There are names from the past I need to write tentative begging emails to. There are grumpy managers to placate. There's a jumped-up lad in a suit from the Programme Management team attempting to tell me how to write a project timeline. There is also roast duck for lunch, which is totally out of kilter from what the canteen usually serves, and is lovely. Very few of today's issues resolve themselves. I stay late, then go home and eat toast.
This is the British Schools Museum. It's not far from London.
Location: Queen Street, Hitchin, Herts SG4 9TS [map] Open: Friday & Saturday 10am-4pm (Sundays 2pm-5pm) Admission: £5.50 Website:britishschoolsmuseum.org.uk/ Time to allow: one or two hours
To clarify, this isn't a museum covering the history of British education, but of the pioneering British and Foreign Schools Society. As such it provides a unique insight into a lost form of collective primary education, long overtaken by more didactic methods, whose buildings now exist nowhere else in the world but here. The founder of the Monitorial system was Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker who set up his first school on Borough Road in Southwark in 1798. Rather than employ lots of teachers, Joseph's smart move was to get older pupils to teach younger pupils, thereby saving a lot of money on wages.
Hitchin's Monitorial school was once one of many, established in an old malthouse in 1810, and extended in 1837. Its huge early Victorian learning space survives, along with a more traditional classroom nextdoor, thanks to later repurposing as a Junior Mixed Infants school and then a Higher Education college. When the empty site finally went up for sale in 1990 an educational trust campaigned to take over, launching the museum in 1996, and adding the odd extra bit ever since.
The school, now museum, sits on the eastern edge of the town centre opposite the back of Asda. For your admission fee you get a short guided tour of two parts of the site, then the chance to wander round and explore on your own. First off it's across the yard and up the slope to the big building at the back, where the pièce de résistance is the huge monitorial classroom laid out behind a single teachers' desk.
Up to 300 boys could be taught in the same room at the same time, separated out by ability, bench by bench. Learning was by rote, with individual pages from the sole official textbook separated out and stuck to boards hung on the wall. Older pupils taught small groups in semicircles facing the wall, mainly through repetition. Every child giving an incorrect answer would be demoted to the bottom of the line, so the aim was to answer correctly and end up at the top. Once the day's lesson was fully instilled pupils returned to their bench to practice writing in sand trays, or on slates, or in ink, according to age. Modern educational theory describes this as 'peer tutoring', the big difference being that today it's one of many strategies, not the sole didactic method.
In an adjacent room is the Gallery classroom, a later addition, with a more traditional layout using stepped desks. The BBC used this set-up, minus stuffed squirrel, when filming Just William in 2010. A pair of more recent classrooms now house desks resembling those I remember sitting behind in a Hertfordshire school. Various old textbooks are hidden within, so lift up the lids to discover handwriting guides by Marion Richardson and a now-dubious reading scheme featuring Sunny Sambo. Today's children may endure nothing similar, but those present seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to play in the strict learning environment provided by the larger room.
A second mini-tour takes you round the Headmaster's house, home to Mr William Fitch for half a century, and restored to peak Victorian middle class respectability. And the rest of the buildings are given over to an alternative exhibition, not always education-related, indeed the current one focuses on Herts at War. It's impressively comprehensive, and full of excellent local detail, which I particularly appreciated as a child of the county. My great grandfather would have signed up to the Hertfordshire Regiment during WW1, so to be able to watch eight minutes of amateur film showing life at camp behind the main front was highly evocative.
Not your normal museum, anyway. That'll teach you.
A large north Hertfordshire market town, now overshadowed by neighbouring Stevenage, much of Hitchin's core is impressively unspoiled. Several of the scenes from the BBC's recent Doctor Foster drama were filmed in the characterful market square, a large part-cobbled empty space where the market is no longer held. Narrow twisty thoroughfares lead off, a few quirky alleys run beyond, and several half-timberedbuildings are liberally scattered before more typical suburbia kicks in. The photos above, for example, were taken on four different streets in and around the town centre, each dripping with a charm that growing up in Watford never provided.
The shops are well-pitched, neither over-chained or under-useful, and with enough bijou outlets to keep the moneyed in clover. My favourite find was Merryfields, ostensibly a traditional newsagents, but half of whose stock was racks of folded maps of every scale and hue. The market's now held round the back of Hitchin's only ill-advised shopping centre, and was bustling with assorted bric-a-brac you'd actually have been interested in. Alas the town's 150-year-old department store closed in January, the family business unable to survive the retirement of its final owner. And yes, there is a Hitchin Kitchen Cafe, halfway along the long walk from the station, because the town's name is too good a rhyme to be overlooked.
For an overview of the town, yomp up Windmill Hill to the toppermost cosy bench. Other things to look out for include the second largestchurch in Hertfordshire (only St Alban's Abbey is larger), a brand new town museum (which the incompetent council haven't yet got round to opening), and the insignificant River Hiz channelling through the backstreets. I liked the place considerably more than I was expecting. If you're looking for a different kind of day out, half an hour from the capital, bear Hitchin and its mega-classroom museum in mind.
• Blijf weg van geparkeerde auto's. In het ideale geval houdt de breedte van een deur van huis is in het geval dat de deur opent plotseling. Ook kunt u proberen om te rijden in een rechte lijn langs geparkeerde auto's in plaats van ontwijken tussen hen
• Restu for de HGVs. Kamionoj kaj aliaj grandaj veturiloj eble ne povos vidi vin klare, do restu bone reen malantaŭ ili
• Aina kiinnittää huomiota. Keskity mitä tapahtuu ympärilläsi niin näet mitä muita tienkäyttäjiä voisi tehdä
• Κάντε επαφή με τα μάτια. Προσπαθήστε να κάνετε οπτική επαφή με τους οδηγούς ώστε να είστε σίγουροι ότι έχετε δει
• אל המדרכה מחזור.האם לא מחזור על המדרכה או עד רחוב חד-סטרי (אלא אם כן מסומן בבירור עבור רוכבי אופניים)
• Notið björt föt. Dvöl öruggur með því að klæðast björt föt á daginn og hugsandi föt / fylgihlutir á nóttunni
• 신호. 당신이 왼쪽 또는 오른쪽으로 회전하고 있음을 나타 내기 위해 적절한 손 신호를 사용하여
• Non phones aut inventa. Non uti telephono mobili nec nonummy interdum
• ഹെൽമെറ്റ്. ഹെൽമറ്റ് ധരിച്ച് പരിഗണിക്കുക
• Syklus trening. Det er gratis, eller subsidiert sykle trening, inkludert pendler ferdigheter, for voksne og barn i de fleste Londons bydeler
One of the clever features on the TfL website, at the bottom of every page, is the ability to translate the text into numerous foreign tongues. These are (supposedly) cycle safety tips in an alphabetical sequence of languages from Arabic to Norwegian.
(the letter 'n' is intermittently missing in today's post)
Easter Avenue
Easter Avenue is a busy dual carriageway ferrying traffic towards Essex, otherwise known as the A12. It's one of the capital's longest roads, ten miles in total, the same length as Wester Avenue on the other side of town. It runs from the top of the Olympic Park to the Gallows Corner roundabout in Gidea Park. To celebrate the season I've been for an end-to-end journey, not entirely on foot because a) that's unhealthy b) you can't, but mostly by bus. A proper Easter treat.
Easter Avenue begins above the River Lea, where the Eastway and East Cross Route merge. This section was built in the late 1990s as the M11 Link road, not quite so massively controversial at this end as further along, and slots nicely between the London 2012 velodrome and the post-Olympic Hockey centre. No pedestrians are allowed, nor cycles, invalid carriages, animals or motorcycles under 50cc, the road being almost motorway standard for the next few miles. It swooshes over Temple Mills Lane then dips down round the back of B&Q, followable only by those in private vehicles and passengers on airport coaches.
From Leyton to Leytonstone Easter Avenue follows the Central line, deliberately squeezed in alongside the railway so that its construction would harm the fewest properties. Five hundred had to be demolished to allow this tarmac chasm through, which the local community were vocallyunhappy about, but ultimately all their disruptive sitting up trees failed to stop the diggers, and the road carved through anyway. Dead end streets now cut off at brick walls, and intermittent footbridges span the gap.
The Green Man roundabout lives up to its colourful name up top, round the palm-edged rim, not that drivers below would know. A far greater deception comes at Wanstead, where a cut and cover tunnel ducks underneath the village green, or rather ripped it apart before turfing across the roof. There are clues - the strip of grass facing the shops has no trees, and a line of saplings marks the last edge where soil still runs deep. But strolling across the green, ignoring one ugly brick wall topped with razorwire, Wanstead's rural illusion is unexpectedly successful.
This is where I hop on the bus, specifically route 66, for taking an Easter Avenue trip. For the next half hour I'll have a prime view of relentless dual carriageway from the upper deck, to get my kicks on the highway that's the best. We start by dropping down onto the main road, skilfully overtaking the long queue of traffic which wants to turn left up the North Circular. The central reservation is broad, and could do with a visit from the litter clearance company whose advert is tied to the railings. The Redbridge roundabout is somewhat smarter, with a cloud of daffodils Wordsworth would have appreciated, although I doubt he'd have been quite so keen on the portaloo.
It's here that we switch to an arterial road constructed when the advance of the motor car required a bypass for Ilford and Romford, which unbelievably was in 1924. Back then most of this was fields, but suburbia inexorably encroached until ribbon development hugged most of the road. The first houses are substantial homes with decorated gables, and front gardens wide enough for three parking spaces. Gants Hill is next, a 7-way roundabout originally known as Arterial Circus, and berated by Ilford's journalists on opening day for its confusing orientation. Following the signs is easier today, but the traffic is immeasurably worse.
A mother and son have arrived on the top deck, visibly disappointed that the front seat is taken, and reluctantly sitting behind. The small boy likes being on the bus, and chants along every time the disembodied voice says 66 to Romford, but I am entirely blocking his view. "You want to sit here?" asks mum, in a way that suggests the answer should be yes, but it takes until the third time of asking for the small boy to swap seats. We plough on up the original Easter Avenue, past a cluster including B&Q, JD, McD and 2 BPs with an M&S, to Newbury Park. Its half-cylindrical bus station is a later addition, but a triumph all the same.
I'm intrigued by the yellow triangles stuck to the road signs as diversion markers, because when I look closer there are circles showing through underneath. Much later both symbols will appear separately, and it'll turn out triangles signify Chelmsford, whereas circles denote Southend. The A12 storms on past The Avenue - formerly a roadside pub, now a masala restaurant and used car showroom - and past the shops on Silverdale Parade - ornately dated 1933. Occasional gaps in the central reservation allow residents to dash carefully across one carriageway at a time, but a display of bouquets suggest not everybody makes it.
After Little Heath the houses get a little newer, and more diversely plain, including (on the brief dash through Barking and Dagenham) some morosely drab flats. The house numbers are up into four figures now, as a consequence of quite how far we've been going. Things perk up briefly at the Moby Dick crossroads, appropriately at Whalebone Lane, where the adjacent carvery must surely be known as the Moby Toby. More striking is the adventure golf course over the road, complete with sailing ship, gaping whale, and waterfall with frothing blue cataract the colour of a cistern rimblock.
Something odd happens Along Easter Avenue's next mile - there are no bus stops because there are no houses, indeed no buildings, as the A12 speeds across an unlikely farmscape. Here are actual fields, ploughed for spring, with only the occasional track, ditch or footpath leading off. It's by no means as attractive as you may be imagining. A road sign warns of Queues Likely, a prediction which soon turns out to be correct because the Romford junction is fast approaching. This is also where route 66 turns off, so I have to alight the bus outside Aldi, looking up to see a mother and her son rapidly manoeuvring into the front seat before it pulls away.
Chains of interwar houses now return with a vengeance, some of them even bungalows, interrupted by petrol stations offering fuel and refreshment to passing drivers. This stretch of the road is called Easter Avenue East, although it's much shorter and the house numbers barely nudge into the three hundreds. Beyond Rise Park even the local buses abandon the A12, so residents are forced to drive or walk (they drive, obviously). Some of the houses are copper tiled beauties on the periphery of Romford Garden Suburb, but the remainder grow increasingly scrappier until eventually they fade out altogether.
And the last mile is unattractively undeveloped, a single pavement plodding alongside perfunctory woodland shielding two downbeat golf courses from view. At one point a public footpath breaks off, sodden and unwelcoming, but that (and a litter-strewn layby) are the only points of interest. Easter Avenue finally terminates at the Gallows Corner Roundabout, once home to Havering's hangmen, now a KFC-enabled junction where local youth will sprayclean your car. Southend-bound traffic rises up onto a very-temporary-looking flyover, which has been here since 1969, and everyone else gets to queue at the lights. The A12 continues, but now called Colchester Road, and so my Easter pilgrimage is fially at a ed.
For a limited time only, a remarkable art exhibition is on display at Euston Square station.
Bold frames spaced along each platform have been filled with abstract designs assembled as a collage of jagged overlapping shapes. Each hand-crafted rectangle is unique, creating a portfolio piece whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Fragments of the past echo through each black-rimmed portal. Pause awhile and reflect on the fundamental nature of the composite message.
Euston Square is an Underground original, one of seven stations opened by the Metropolitan Railway in January 1863. Back then it was known as Gower Street, and steam trains puffed through, but much the same cut and cover layout remains today beneath the surface. Two platforms face each other across the tracks beneath a central vaulted roof. Which means, assuming no trains get in the way, the perfect spot to view each gallery is from the platform on the other side.
Most of the individual artworks are predominantly black and white, with sharp splashes of bright colour amid the decoupage. Geometric shapes jostle for dominance amid the tentative framing of the tiled surround.
Occasionally a portmanteau structure is used, with flashes of illustration and text to decipher, deftly stratified in cryptic layers. In one particularly striking composition a complete cultural hierarchy is revealed, with references to the 1996 film Small Faces masking details of a key Bizet opus, itself obscured by Sheryl Crow's seminal 1993 album Tuesday Night Music.
But what does it all mean?
Fret not. Passengers waiting on the platform can gain a deeper understanding from informative labels pasted up beside each artwork.
These are works by Undefined Artist, each entitled "Untitled".
As is self-evident, the materials used are concrete, tiles, paper, dust and dirt.
Suddenly all is clear!
Millions have stood on these platforms over the years, but only now has the full significance of this imaginative installation been revealed.
Hurry, these are the exhibition's final days - it must end soon! Why not pop along before this temporary gallery is lost for good?
Euston Square is one of a handful of Zone 1 stations given a makeover around fifty years ago during an era of drab postwar homogeneity. Its walls were covered in regular white tiles, topped off by a roundel-heavy frieze, with coloured tiles used to demarcate regular spaces for paper-based advertising. Beside the staircase this framing was enacted in orange and blue, but along the platforms a plain black outline was used, creating a simple border within which posters could be pasted.
This year the station is once again receiving a makeover, but in line with TfL's new Station Design Idiom, which mandates a restricted palette of elements at stations deemed to have limited existing architectural merit. In Euston Square's case this means the walls are about to be retiled in bright white rectangles, with a single stripe of navy blue across the top. The overall effect will be more communal bathroom than grimy subway.
The first patch of shiny rectangles is already in place on the eastbound platform near the stairs, and has been growing in size over the last week. Before each section of new tiles appears the walls are replastered in readiness, and before that the original ceramics have to be prized off. Several sections of wall are currently draped with ugly grey canvas, predominantly down the stairs where the orange- and blue-tiled frames are in imminent danger of extinction. Only on the westbound platform, and at the end of the east, do substantial portions of the old design remain.
Euston Square's long been a bit of a gloomy station. This tiling makeover may make it brighter, or may remove what little unsung character it once had. The old black frames are definitely going, though, with modern illuminated panels emerging in their place. No longer will a palimpsest of bygone posters lurk beneath the surface, awaiting ripped revelation, because sticky glue is very much a thing of the past. This really is an art exhibition whose time is nearly up. Tomorrow's digital heritage simply disappears, never to be seen again.
