Tubewatch (1)IKEA on the map
Back in May IKEA paid £800,000 to plaster their name across the tube map. Specifically they got to add an advert on the online tube map, at the bottom of 2750 tube map posters and on the back page of 4 million paper tube maps. The deal runs for twelve months so covers two print runs, the first in May and the second in November. It also permits them to pollute the famous map itself with "nearest stations to IKEA Locations in London to be marked on map using a symbol (up to a maximum of 5 stations) with IKEA Logo included on the key."
But there's a big difference between 'nearest station to IKEA' and 'station near IKEA', as many people pointed out when the symbols first appeared. So I've bitten the bullet and tried walking from all the stations depicted to the IKEA stores in question to check just how practical this sponsored map might be.
IKEA Wembley (Neasden) [15 min walk]
God this is a miserable trek. It's not helped by the exit from Neasden station being at the 'wrong' end of the platforms, so by the time you've walked through the alleyway and onto the bridge where you can look down on where you just were, five minutes have elapsed. You're now walking alongside the exhaust-choked North Circular, and additionally forced to cross two arms of a sliproad unaided which can be dangerous. Then it's up and over a grotty footbridge, past reservoirs of can-based litter, and down into the less friendly environs of Wembley's Tesco Extra. The walk finishes by passing under a multi-storey car park, and that's 15 minutes you wouldn't want to tackle with a Billy bookcase. Five bus routes stop here, but none link to Neasden station, nor either of the other two nearest stations, because fundamentally (as we've long known) IKEA Wembley assumes you're coming by car.
IKEA Greenwich (North Greenwich) [20 min walk]
This isn't a fun trek either. You set off from the pizazz of Peninsula Square and, if you're going the quickest way, head off into the unbuilt heart of North Greenwich past car parks and future building sites. It's a bit nicer if you follow the linear park to Oval Square but that way's also longer so don't. Eventually you reach the Millennium Leisure Park where IKEA is but you have to pass the Odeon, B&Q and most of the car park before you get there. Obviously what you're supposed to do is catch the bus from North Greenwich station instead, and there are several, but that's an extra £3.30 added to your IKEA trip. The bus takes six minutes each way - I timed that too.
IKEA Croydon (Ampere Way) [4 min walk]
This isn't on the tube, it's near a tram stop, but it is an easy walk. A desire line path across the roundabout confirms that the impatient would rather not go out of their way to use the pedestrian crossing, then it's a quick zip round the car park and you're there.
IKEA Hammersmith (Hammersmith) [4 min walk]
Unfamiliar with this one? Well it only opened in February, and IKEA's sponsorship of the tube map is partly to ensure it's better known. It's the UK's first 'Mini Store' focusing on home accessories and soft furnishings, not self-assembly furniture, which is great because it means you don't have to negotiate an endless labyrinth before you get to the everyday stuff. Goods are appealingly priced as well as impeccably designed, so you could easily walk out with a basket of household goodies you never intended to buy when you went in. You'll find this quarter-sized store in a revamped corner of the Kings Mall Shopping Centre which is terribly convenient for the tube, indeed if you don't have a car it's probably the best IKEA to make a beeline for.
IKEA Tottenham (Tottenham Hale) [35 min walk]
Yes that's a 35 minute walk, which is almost two miles, along a miserable arterial road which I do not recommend. The 192 bus does it in 8 minutes which is clearly a much better option. But Tottenham Hale is by no means the closest station to the big blue shed, that's the almost-adjacent Meridian Water which is two stops further north. Tottenham Hale's not even the closest station on the tube map, that's Silver Street, but buses from there don't stop outside the entrance. Anyway all of this is irrelevant because Tottenham's IKEA closed five weeks ago, indeed TfL have already removed the IKEA symbol from their online map, and all you'll find there today is an unbranded hangar behind locked gates.
IKEA Oxford Street (Oxford Circus) [1 min walk]
Those Swedes are currently busy transforming the old Top Shop at Oxford Circus into another Mini Store, bringing sidetables, tealights and meatballs to the heart of the West End. But it's not due to open until this time next year, by which time IKEA's sponsorship of the tube map will have expired. Maybe they'll extend it, because TfL need money more than a design icon needs purity, and if they do then Oxford Street's IKEA will be the closest of the lot.
Tube quiz (1)The longest loop
What's the longest unbroken tube journey you can make without repeating yourself? That's a journey which doesn't pass through any station more than once, never passes through a gateline and joins up with itself at the end.
Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you this question because I've answered it myself, and ridden it just to check.
This, I reckon, is the longest unbarriered loop of unique stations. It meanders all over zone 1 because that's where the most interchanges are, and incorporates circuits out to West Ham, Stockwell and Rayners Lane. Altogether it passes through 97 different tube stations, which is 36% of the overall total, and it took me 26 separate trains to complete. Also it looks like a giant flapping bird. You can click on the map for a closer look.
I'm a bit annoyed it's 97 because it'd be better to have reached a round 100, but I couldn't find any way of upping the total. I did manage to tick off every station inside the Circle line except Regent's Park and Russell Square, plus all but five around the edge. I couldn't loop out to Finsbury Park because that would have meant doing King's Cross twice, and I couldn't do Royal Oak to Goldhawk Road because there are gatelines either side of the road at Hammersmith. It's a good puzzle but sorry, I've solved it for you (unless you're the smart one who chips in after ten minutes and tells me I could have done better).
Instead my question is this. How long do you think it took me?
Answers to the nearest 5 minutes, thanks. comments
I started at Bow Road, obviously, and went round clockwise. I did it at the weekend when the trains were behaving themselves and the only engineering works were on a branch I didn't need. To help you with your estimate I spent 50 minutes interchanging between platforms and 1 hour 20 minutes waiting for trains. Half my waiting time was doing the twiddles at High Street Kensington and Liverpool Street, not helped by a Circle line train being cancelled. The longest interchanges were at Green Park and Paddington. The longest journey was from Acton Town to Rayners Lane. And I took a good book with me so the time wasn't all wasted.
Importantly, because this is a journey without any gatelines, it should only be tackled by someone with a Travelcard. If I'd tried to do it on Pay As You Go I'd have exceeded the Maximum Journey Time and been charged a maximum fare of £8.90, not just at the start of my journey but also at the end, and that'd be £17.80 down the drain. TfL fares aren't designed for dicking about on the tube, and dicking about is exactly what the longest unbroken loop requires.
n.b. If you take away the requirement for an unbroken loop then a longer journey is possible. Break the circuit between Mile End and West Ham, then start at Epping and end at Upminster and you can get the total up to 126 different stations. But I didn't try that, and I recommend you don't either.
So what's your best guess for the total duration of my 97 station journey? Add it to the special comments box further up the post (and any more general thoughts on the broader challenge in the normal box below). And at 7pm I'll come back and tell you who got closest.
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with a week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, quirks, commentary and obscure statistics. It's been a while.
Last time I tried this, in 2012, we discovered that Chesham has the least frequent service, that interchanging at Hammersmith takes 1½ minutes, that a Sainsbury's car park in Nine Elms was destined to become a tube station, that nine station names contain four vowels, that the Piccadilly line has 20 more 'listed' stations than any other line, that Ravenscourt Park used to be called Shaftesbury Road, that the Circle line runs through Bow Road really early in the morning, that nowhere is more than 19 stations away from Westminster, that some Next Train Indicators hide next trains when they're two minutes away, that Mornington Crescent is busier on Sundays than Saturdays and that the Kilburn viaduct has an excellent view. We even wondered whether Tramlink, Thameslink and riverboat services should be added to the tube map, because that's how forward-looking we were.
Tube Week normally consists of three posts a day but this year I'm going to try to do four. Normally we have a daily puzzle, a daily stats-bash and a daily drilldown - that's Tube quiz, Tube geek and Tubewatch respectively. This year I'm bunging in an extra category called Tubeticking, of which more details tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous because I worry I've blogged all the good stuff already (identifying station names from just their vowels - done it) (counting the stairs at deep stations - done it) (visiting the least used tube station - done it). But the London Underground is the gift that keeps on giving, even after twenty years of blogging, so I hope we're in for a smooth journey. Mind the doors.
Tubewatch (1) IKEA on the map
Tube quiz (1) The longest loop
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with a week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, quirks, commentary and obscure statistics. It's been a while.
