Once a year the Environment Agency checks that the Thames Barrier is working by giving it a full tidal closure. They haven't really needed to do this in 2014, which is by far the most uppy downy year in the barrier's 30 year history. The gates rose only four times throughout the 1980s, whereas this year the tally is already 48 and there are still twelve weeks to go. Nevertheless the planned annual exercise must always go ahead, invariably on a post-equinoctial Sunday morning, and precise times can be determined by checking the official website in advance. This year, October the fifth.
Events always begin at low tide, in this case quarter to four in the morning, at which point the gates are raised one by one to stem the river's flow. Over the next six hours the tide is prevented from passing upriver and a height differential is created on either side of the barrier. Upstream the river level stays low, while downstream the river rises three metres, which looks simply unnatural. There is alas no viewing position from which both sides can be seen simultaneously, not unless you're standing on topof the barrier itself, which only employees and their special guests can do. There did seem to be a roaring trade in special guests this Sunday, parading out across the first bridge in their official black helmets before burrowing onwards to a central vantagepoint. Lucky them.
Those of us not fortunate enough to be a Thames Barrier special guest could only stand onthe banks and gawp. Admittedly the view from the banks was fantastic (and better from the south side than the north because the sun was behind you). The barrier's seven streamlined silver piers stretched out across the river, their gates twisted into full defensive position, creating an artificialglassysea. Normally the Thames is never still, but on closure day the water is becalmed and spectacularreflections spread across the surface with barely a ripple.
I'd turned up at high tide, an hour early for the main event or so I thought, and the paltry number of observers suggested others had thought the same. But then a siren went. The tide was running early (such phenomena are rarely as precise as nautical tables would have you believe) so the engineers in the control room had decided to move to the next phase an hour earlier than scheduled. One of the central 61m gates moved slowly into underspill mode, that's to an angle of 118°, creating a three foot gap beneath the water. This was enough to restart the flow, thereby beginning a three hour journey to eventual equilibrium. Protecting the capital is slow and steady, never speedy.
A second siren followed a quarter of an hour later, this the signal for a second gate to swivel into underspill. As the high tide trickled through, cleaning out the sills on the river bed, so a large flock of seagulls flocked and swooped above the waves. The churning water made for easy pickings, of whatever tasty aquatic morsels they could find, and even after a further hour the aerial display showed no signs of stopping. Further upriver the Greenwich Yacht Club were out on the water in force, taking advantage of the unnatural conditions and the absence of all other river traffic. And steadily the crowd of spectators grew, too late for the start of the flood but in plenty of time to watch it grow.
The rise in water level was almost imperceptible, it taking millions of cubic metres to fill a river half a kilometre wide. But still the tide squeezed in, creating choppyripples across the upstream side (but still flat as a millpond on the other). Over the subsequent couple of hours this crystal pool gently sank as the high tide receded, eventually matching the rising level on the opposite side and allowing the gates to be heaved back into horizontal position. The event was an awesome sight, indeed it was hard to point a camera anywhere and get a less than amazing photo. And it all ran like clockwork, which is exactly what you want to hear if you live or work anywhere near the river between Silvertown and Putney. Sunday's closure confirmed the taming of the Thames, and all with consummate style, a tribute to 30-year-oldtechnology that still protects and inspires.
The town most closely associated with Reigate isn't Banstead, it's Redhill. The two 'R's sit side by side on the Surrey Weald, the one's suburbs merging into the other, and a fairly straightforward walk apart. One has history and character, the other has better trains to London. Residents pay their money and take their choice.[5 photos]
Somewhere historic: Reigate
You'll find Reigate twenty miles south of central London on a low lumpy section of the Greensand Ridge. It's a damned obvious place for a settlement, hence the town has Anglo-Saxon, medieval and Tudor layers if you dig deep enough, and a cave system if you dig deeper still. Most of the good bits are hidden within the central core behind the shops, while others can be found a little further out in the rather posh park. To make sure you miss nothing, grab a Reigate History Treasure Trailleaflet from the Library (just inside the door on the right) and try to follow the mapless path around town.
Priory Park: As municipal parks go, this one's out of the ordinary. It started out as the estate of a priory dissolved by Henry VIII and given to the family of his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. The mansion they created still stands, heavily upgraded, and is now a Grade I listed (non-private) primary school. Out front is a splendid sunken garden, an echo of the past, while one small wing houses the town's only museum. It's nominally open on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, but has been closed for years since the Priory's roof suffered significant snow damage in 2010. Thwarted in my visit, I set off round the park to follow the same two mile waymarked trail that 18th century houseguests would have followed around the estate. Past the mirrored pavilion cafe (bah, closed for refurbishment), past Priory Lake (home to some needy swans and ducks) and up a slippery sandy footpath (where the UK's tallest hornbeam tree is supposedly located). The highlight of the circuit should have been the ridgetop path in the southern woodland, but the rain was relentless and I succeeded only in getting very wet. Only the park's regular Saturday afternoon footballers seemed to be out enjoying the facilities, and then perhaps only reluctantly with a mudbath anticipated.
Reigate High Street: When your shopping district is a conservation area, your shops tend to be a little upmarket. From a gunmaker and gentleman's outfitter at one end to an interior designer and old coaching inn at the other, Reigate knows its target audience. I felt a little out of place in my walking boots, although a little less so when I found the Morrisons concealed up an alley behind the babywear boutique. Thanks to my leaflet I also found the town lock-up, the ex-market beneath the Old Town Hall (now a Caffè Nero) and a proper timber-framed Tudor house up the side of Boots.
Reigate Castle: Originally Norman, the outcrop of rock in the centre of Reigate made for a perfect defensive stronghold. All that's left of the original is the dry moat, around which a tarmac footpath runs, and a wet moat slightly to the north. There is a 'Castle Keep' in the centre with arrowslit windows, but that's a 19th century folly and looks like it would be more at home on a crazy golf course. I got a bit lost following the History Treasure Trail round the site, in part because the paths are laid out like a 3D maze, but eventually found the large garden in the centre which I assume was once the bailey. Find the right way down and you can follow the Donkey Steps, a narrow cobbled descent leading to another alleyway in the High Street, and lethally slippery in wet weather, so take care.
Reigate Caves: Oh yes, Reigate's tourist claim to fame is that it has not one but two underground cave systems at its heart. Even better they're open to the public, but only on five Saturdays a year and, alas, never between October and April. Instead I had to make do with staring at each cave's entrance, wistfully, starting with the caves in Tunnel Road. This is a very special street, incorporating the oldest road tunnel in Britain, dug in 1823 through the heart of the sandstone on which Reigate Castle stands. Sand mines were opened up to either side, additionally used for storing wines and beers, and also as a public air raid shelter during World War Two. Equally artificial, but much older, are the Barons' Caves accessed from the upper moat. Legend says King John's barons met here before riding to Runnymede to sign Magna Carta, but more likely is that the underground system is the Earl of Surrey's wine cellar. The pair reopen, I'd wager, on the second Saturday in May, courtesy of the Wealden Cave and Mine Society.
What with a museum that was closed, a park cafe that was closed, two caves that were closed and several millimetres of rain, I've certainly had more successful visits to places. But when all of Reigate's stars are again in alignment, I feel I should come back and try again. by train: Reigate
Somewhere retail: Redhill
No offence to Redhill, but it's not as special as Reigate. Before the 19th century it was simply fields, but emerged as a town when the London to Brighton turnpike was built, and burst forth when the London to Brighton railway followed. You'll look in vain for that Victorian heritage in the town centre today because a 1980s ring road plus pedestrianisation replaced pretty much everything. Most typically Eighties is the Warwick Quadranttheatre/cinema complex, a brick box with arched glass canopy out front, joined to a long low Sainsbury's of minimal architectural merit. Chas and Dave are playing this Friday, while this year's big panto star is Hev from Eastenders playing neither Beauty nor the Beast. Shoppers are drawn to the thrice weekly street market, less artisan foods and more household staples, should you need brushed flannel check shirts, bedding plants or a cigarette lighter. Saturday's weather kept trade less than brisk, and the Christian fellowship stall nearly lost half their stock thanks to an Act of God as the wind whipped through. Far better to be shopping under cover in the half-decent Belfry mall, run over several stacked floors, where a display of Irish dancing was almost drawing the crowds.
I went in search of a brighter Redhill, in character if not radiant sunshine. Memorial Park was closed for a million pound makeover, its reopening unfortunately overdue. The area by the station offered roadworks and demolition, where one listed wall of a former nightclub has been retained so it can be incorporated into a new apartment development. I thought things were looking up for Redhill when I stumbled on a nearby windmill, but I'm told this is just over the border in Reigate so doesn't count. Ditto the splendid fingerpost on Wray Common, with two directions labelled "Dangerous Hill", and Brighton a terribly accurate 32¼ miles distant. In the end I had to climb up and out to the south to reach Redhill Common, the sandy summit here the feature after which the town was named. Where the woodland opened out to an open grassy plateau, I stood by the jubilee viewpoint and looked out past a church spire towards Gatwick and beyond. And even though the rain had paused I stood there entirely alone, the temporary king of Redhill and all I surveyed. by train: Redhill; by bus: 405
I'm continuing my outer orbit of London in Reigate and Banstead, two very different Surrey towns brought together solely for administrative purposes. Banstead's almost in London, indeed probably ought to be, a well-to-do commuter suburb on the Brighton Road. Reigate's much more Surrey proper, a historic settlement with a castle and everything, just far enough out to be generally overlooked. And inbetween the two there's rolling downland countryside, the M25 and a lot of big houses you probably couldn't afford to live in. I chose a relentlessly wet day to explore, which probably wasn't wise, but by setting out early I reached my first two stops before the heavens opened.
Somewhere famous: Kingswood Warren
OK, so it's not that famous. But Reigate and Banstead's not exactly dripping with places everyone knows, indeed even Gatwick Airport lies a few yards beyond the district's southern boundary. So I headed north to a stop on the Tattenham Corner railway line, that's Kingswood, to try to find a manorial outpost once owned by the BBC.
Private Roadway, the big sign said, just beyond the station at the entrance to Kingswood garden village. I wondered whether someone officious might pop out of the gatehouse (proudly bearing the name of Aspreys Estate Management) but nobody blinked, and in I stepped. The first cars to pass me on their way out were a Merc, a Land Rover and a Range Rover, which ought to have been a hint as to what was to come. I'd entered a particularly exclusive enclave, a swirl of leafy lanes where the moneyed hide away. A string of arcadian houses lined up on each side, some secured behind electronic gates, others with open gravel drives. Most are broad-gabled, with names like Fox Hollow, Bracken and Shepherd's Cot, as if the surrounding vegetation was somehow proper countryside rather than a lot of planted trees and a series of laurel hedges. You have to be seriously well off to afford to live on Beech Drive or Woodland Way, as a swimming pool count on an aerial photograph reveals. You can almost sense how someone back in the Thirties drew lines to divide up the fields into large plots, each big enough to satisfy a banker or a captain of industry. There are no pavements, walking's not really the done thing, although I did pass the occasional dressed-down gent in baseball cap or leading a dog. I thought I'd best keep moving, no photos.
Kingswood Warren lurks at the centre of the estate, the star around which the handful of private roads orbit. The building in its present form dates back to 1837, embellished by the first live-in Lord of the Manor. He created a mansion "embattled and ornamented with turrets in the castellated style", i.e. it looked like a Gothiccastle, very much the home of someone pretending to be a country gentleman. The BBC's Research and Development team moved in in the late 1940s, holing up the cream of the corporation's scientists and engineers forever chasing after something new. And their achievements make a damned impressive list. Ceefax was developed at Kingswood Warren, as were Nicam Digital Stereo, DAB radio, High Definition TV, Freeview and the "red button". On a slightly less highbrow note Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men was filmed and recorded here, while Peter Snow's Swingometer came out of one of the backroom workshops. You'd expect at least a plaque.
But the BBC moved out in 2010, relocating their R&D team in Manchester and White City, leaving KingswoodWarren ripe for redevelopment. The mansion's been divided up into eight luxury apartments, while 14 mega-detached homes have been built in the grounds with a £2½m price tag, seemingly with a particular appeal to Middle Eastern owners. And no, of course mere mortals aren't allowed anywhere near. I got no further than the gates at the top of the gravel drive, peering through the bars to catch sight of part of the distant castellated frontage part-obscured by trees. One sign on the gateposts warned that CCTV was in operation "for public safety", while another pleaded with residents to keep an eye open for "our beloved cat Lionel" in case he was locked in a shed. As I stepped away a van turned up, either collecting or delivering a pampered pooch, and the gates swung open to let their urgent mission pass. How things change, replacing a public sector workplace with exclusive accommodation for footballers and oligarchs, but Kingswood's perhaps nothing out of the ordinary in that respect. by train: Kingswood
Somewhere pretty: Reigate Fort You'd expect a defensive structure on the North Downs to be quite old - a Saxon hillfort, perhaps, or a medieval castle. But ReigateFort is very-late Victorian, dug out of the escarpment in the 1890s as part of the London Defence Scheme. About a dozen structures were built in total, in a chain from Essex to Surrey, the aim being to frustrate the bally French had they chosen to invade. Despite its elevated position there were never any big guns at Reigate, instead the site was used to store guns and other ammunition for distribution to ground troops in the event of landbased advance. Such an attack never came, of course, indeed the shape of warfare and the nature of the enemy changed utterly within only a few years. Reigate's earthworks were decommissioned in 1906 and fell into disrepair, restored only in the last decade courtesy of the National Trust and a lottery grant. It's one of their stranger properties. [listing][leaflet][map][walk]
And the view is fantastic. Reigate Fort sits on the brow of a high chalk ridge, at the point where the North Downs tumble sharply down towards the town below. I was blown away by the panorama when I stepped out onto the summit of Colley Hill, despite the weather being less than ideal. A mix of gabled roofs and fields spread out across the Wealden plain below, with a sightline all the way to the South Downs many miles hence. Several dog walkers had made it up here for a morning stroll, plus a number of serious looking ramblers and the occasional family group. One such group had colonised the seats inside the Inglis Memorial, a low rotunda originally built for horses, now the ideal spot for checking the map or eating your sandwiches. Along the ridge I met a metal detectorist who showed me a silver spoon he'd uncovered, then gave me the lowdown on the fierce looking black sheep who graze the slopes of the fort. "Ignore the curly horns," he said, "they're tame as anything," then clambered down into the ditch in search of better treasure. [5 photos]
The fort's entrance is via a thick set of gates in the earthen bank. Normally you'd expect these to be locked, but no, there's free access for all to the structures within. At one end are a tool store and a magazine, the latter dug down deep for the safe storage of ammo. And along the rim of the hillside are two casemates, long blocks of flexible accommodation accessed down a steep set of steps. There's not much else, bar a large central space large enough to line up troops, or to play frisbee in if yesterday's antics are anything to go by. But I was drawn up to the top of the ramparts, behind the electric fence, to stare down over Surrey and Sussex as the autumn rains approached. Gatwick Airport could be clearly seen, illuminated by a final burst of sunlight, as planes took off into the seething grey clouds approaching from the west. I watched as visibility turned from decent to imminently appalling, flicked up my hood and fled for cover. by train: Reigate
Welcome to the Creative Lounge
Take a seat. Take a deep breath.
Now, try flexing your creative muscle...
Today's creative challenge: See if you can come up with a few perfectly crafted names for the following.
I started you off, now I've added your best ideas. Any more?
Rebrand 1) Why stop at Midtown? The neighbourhood around Whitehall and Westminster could do with a new name more in tune with local goings on. How about it?
» Fizzy-Go-Round, The Coca-Roller, The Diabetes Wheel, The Sugar Rush, The Hokey-Cokey, High on Coke, The No-Fruit Loop, Cokes Spokes, The Sugary Circle, The London Pshhht, The Coke Life London Experience, The Coke Zero, ...
Rebrand 3) Before West Ham move in, the Olympic Stadium's naming rights will be sold off to the highest most appropriate bidder. Your predictions?
» Wonga Stadium, Boris Arena, The Westfield Bowl, West(ham)field, The Iron-Bru Stadium, The Heatherwick Cauldron, Cash4gold Stadium, The Wrigley Bowl, ...
Rebrand 4) The Bakerloo line won't be extended to Lewisham and Bromley without development money. So what might the upgraded line be called?
Yesterday's Evening Standard contained a cringeworthy four page pullout section extolling the joys of Midtwon. It was packed with crass fatuous brandspeak, interviews with grinning local employees and the general bigging-up of various businesses in the Holborn/St Giles/Bloomsbury area. In total the name Midtwon appeared more than thirty times, in every case as if it was a normal word that drips naturally from people's lips. And it so doesn't.
Yesterday's Midtwon pullout came came hot on the heels of Friday's Hoxton Holborn hotel hogwash and a Midtwon lifestyle article on Tuesday so full of verbal diarrhoea that I had to wash my hands afterwards. Clearly some sort of promotional push is going on, so I wasn't surprised to see the pullout's online version labelled as advertorial, even though the printed version had no such warning. Indeed the drive to introduce Midtwon into Londoners' vocabulary is coming from just one source, a Business Improvement District funded by a levy on local companies. There's no cohesive community here, merely an artificial boundary marking out administrative territory which the inmidtown BID team are desperate to rebrand.
And Midtwon's not the only offender. The Northbank Business Improvement District covers an adjacent area along the Strand, and they too are trying to impose a bland portmanteau name across a well known part of London. But Northbank (like Midtwon) is a name with no history, indeed is the sort of empty terminology that could easily apply to parts of Detroit, Seattle, Melbourne or Birmingham. And each is symptomatic of a branding culture that commercial interests are increasingly trying to impose on places and things that have a perfectly good identity of their own.
Kate Bush has just finished her run of gigs at the Eventim Apollo, which you or I know as the Hammersmith Apollo, except officials choose to use the name of a ticketing company instead. The famous SSE Arena is named after three letters so unhelpfully vague that the venue feels forced to add the word "Wembley" under the logo, for fear nobody will have a clue where they're talking about. The Barclaycard Arena is an imminent renaming in the heart of (go on, try to wildly guess the city before clicking through to find out). Meanwhile Newcastle FC suffered considerable reputational damage for a few years by attempting to call St James' Park the Sports Direct Arena, whereas Arsenal and Manchester City have named their stadia after Middle Eastern airlines without a shadow of remorse.
It's all about the money, obviously. If the difference between The Ricoh Arena and The City of Coventry Stadium is enough to pay for additional players each year, what board would turn down the offer? Boris got his cablecar off the ground by selling the naming rights to a sponsor, ditto the cycle hire scheme was partly funded by a high street bank keen for high profile publicity. Labelling a project with the name of a financial backer is increasingly the modern way, which some would call bearing down on costs, but I find deeply depressing.
Because the problem is, as a society, we let the rebranding engineers get away with it. They offer up a new name for something and we start using it, succumbing to their cunning ploy like sheep. We start to call the Hammersmith Apollo by a bloody stupid new name because someone told us to. We've completely forgotten the Millennium Dome because someone persuaded us it's an oxygen molecule that represents a phone company. We go to matches at the Emirates because we're unwitting corporate whores. Repeat a name enough times in enough places and the unthinking masses adopt it as their own.
But renamings don't always bed down, don't always work. Nobody prefixes the London Eye with whatever the name of its sponsor is this week. The Kia Oval is only ever the Oval, unless you're the dull sucker writing the press release. Barclays Cycle hire steeds are known as Boris Bikes, which is indeed rebranding of a kind, but means the bank wasted its money. Sometimes the relaunch fails, when society collectively rejects the updated title in a mass outbreak of good taste.
So I trust that Midtwon is another name destined for the bargain bin. It's a vacuous label applied to a meaningless area, the whim of a committee who think their business strategy is more important than centuries of history. Repeating it several times in a free newspaper won't bring the term to everyone's lips, merely make the proponents look more desperate. And I realise I've made things worse by bringing the name to your attention, because the oxygen of publicity is what these lexicographical manipulators crave. But I'm sure I can trust you to continue to shun the Midtwon brand, because if we can't hang on to using the proper names of things then the marketing merchants have won.
Last week TfL launched a consultation on upgrading Cycle Superhighway 2 between Bow and Aldgate. Yesterday they finally got round to releasing data on how it will impact other road users. That's peculiar timing, especially given that half of CS2's four public consultation events have already taken place. Why the delay? Perhaps TfL held back because backroom staff couldn't churn out the numbers in time, or perhaps they delayed things deliberately to hide some nasty surprises in the figures. Let's investigate...
Smallprint: The datasheet is here. Before we dive in, you should note the following. TfL have compared journey times now with journey times two years hence, and assumed that traffic volumes in 2016 will remain at current levels. They've analysed road journeys to the nearest second, but I've rounded times to the nearest half minute to aid clarity. TfL's data considers only the morning and evening rush hours, because that's when the roads are at their busiest. They've taken into consideration 20 traffic upgrade schemes elsewhere in London which might have additional impact along CS2. And they've assumed the introduction of enhanced traffic signal phasing, as was used for Olympic traffic management.
We'll start with eastbound journeys from Aldgate to the Bow Roundabout. Eastbound traffic is busiest in the evening, and runs against the general flow in the morning. How long do these journeys take now, and how long will they take in 2016 after CS2 is upgraded?
CS2
Average eastbound travel times (Aldgate to Bow)
Morning peak
Evening peak
2014
2016
change
2014
2016
change
Cyclist
16m
17m
+1m
18m
17m
-1m
No. 25 bus
22m
23½m
+1½m
24½m
25m
+½m
Car driver
11½m
12m
+½m
13m
13½m
+½m
Interesting. Cyclists won't see much of a change in journey time, with speeds slightly slower in the morning peak and slightly faster in the evening. The real benefit for those on bikes isn't in getting from A to B more quickly, it's in getting there more safely. Buses will run a little slower as a result of the carriageway changes, but only by a minute or two, which the average passenger may not notice. And journeys by car will barely be affected at all, running only fractionally slower even at the busiest times. No road user faces a change in journey time greater than 7%. That's not too bad is it?
But things are different going the other way, that's from Bow to Aldgate. This is the direction that's busiest in the morning, and against the flow in the evening.
CS2
Average westbound travel times (Bow to Aldgate)
Morning peak
Evening peak
2014
2016
change
2014
2016
change
Cyclist
22m
19m
-3m
22m
19m
-3m
No. 25 bus
26m
27½m
+1½m
28m
29½m
+1½m
Car driver
14½m
21½m
+7m
15m
18m
+3m
In very good news, come 2016 westbound cyclists will be able to travel along the Bow, Mile End and Whitechapel Roads faster than they do now. That's a full three minutes faster from one end to the other, no matter what the time of day. The number 25 bus will take an extra minute and a half, again no matter what the time of day. But oh dear, things will be much worse for car drivers. They face a mammoth 50% increase in journey time in the morning rush hour, up from 14 minutes to 21, and a 20% increase in the evening. That's a highly significant slowdown, the equivalent of spending one extra day on the road each year, deliberately and directly caused by upgrading three miles of cycling infrastructure. Car drivers, truck drivers and taxi drivers aren't going to be happy.
Something else significant changes westbound in the morning peak, and that's the fastest form of transport. Normally cars are faster than bikes, indeed if you check all the other scenarios above they still are. But for those commuting into the City in the morning, by 2016 cycling will be quicker than driving your car. If anything's going to encourage modal shift from four wheels to two, it's the realisation that bike journeys might be both safer and faster.
Meanwhile, tucked away at the foot of TfL's CS2 datasheet are some figures about how pedestrians will be affected. Here the impact comes from the rephasing of traffic lights, and subsequent changes in how long it takes to cross a road. Four existing pedestrian crossings will change from staggered two-part crossings to straight-across, and this'll speed things up for those on foot. But at the six typical junctions sampled in TfL's data, pedestrians will have a lot more waiting around to do.
CS2
Average pedestrian waiting times
Morning peak
Evening peak
2014
2016
change
2014
2016
change
Aldgate Gyratory
43s
64s
+21s
42s
61s
+21s
Whitechapel station
48s
72s
+24s
48s
70s
+22s
Cambridge Heath Rd
54s
68s
+14s
54s
69s
+15s
Stepney Green
64s
74s
+10s
64s
77s
+13s
Mile End station
66s
83s
+17s
57s
73s
+16s
Bow Rd/Fairfield Rd
73s
98s
+25s
73s
98s
+25s
It seems pedestrians are the biggest losers. They're going to have to wait longer at junctions all along CS2, on average 10 to 25 seconds longer, as the traffic lights are rephased in favour of cyclists. TfL's plans require safe passage for bikes, which often means additional cycle-only phases and the introduction of early start lights. And this means that traffic lights will take longer to change, and so average waiting times will increase dramatically, by anything from 15% to 50%. I am not happy about this.
The worst figures are for my local road junction on the corner of Bow Road and Fairfield Road. At present pedestrians have to spend an average of 1 minute 13 seconds waiting for the green man, but in 2016 that increases to 1 minute 38 seconds. The extra 25 second delay is because two new right turns are being created for cyclists, which sounds great, but requires specific bike-only time in the traffic light cycle. What's more, relatively few cyclists use Fairfield Road at present, so this extra time may be entirely redundant for most of the day. More agile pedestrians are unlikely to hang around on the pavement for nearly two minutes, they'll carry on dashing across gaps in the traffic like they do now. But those of us on foot are clearly bottom of the heap in the CS2 upgrade, like it or lump it.
Have you responded to the CS2 upgrade consultation yet? If you're a cyclist, it's your chance to say how much you approve. But if you drive into the City in the morning, or if you're a lowly pedestrian, you may have harsher words. Speak now to prevent TfL wasting your time in 2016. Or buy a bike.
Beyond London (4): Reigate & Banstead (part 1)
Kingswood Warren lurks at the centre of the estate, the star around which the handful of private roads orbit. The building in its present form dates back to 1837, embellished by the first live-in Lord of the Manor. He created a mansion "embattled and ornamented with turrets in the castellated style", i.e. it looked like a Gothic castle, very much the home of someone pretending to be a country gentleman. The BBC's Research and Development team moved in in the late 1940s, holing up the cream of the corporation's scientists and engineers forever chasing after something new. And their achievements make a damned impressive list. Ceefax was developed at Kingswood Warren, as were Nicam Digital Stereo, DAB radio, High Definition TV, Freeview and the "red button". On a slightly less highbrow note Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men was filmed and recorded here, while Peter Snow's Swingometer came out of one of the backroom workshops. You'd expect at least a plaque.
You'd expect a defensive structure on the North Downs to be quite old - a Saxon hillfort, perhaps, or a medieval castle. But Reigate Fort is very-late Victorian, dug out of the escarpment in the 1890s as part of the London Defence Scheme. About a dozen structures were built in total, in a chain from Essex to Surrey, the aim being to frustrate the bally French had they chosen to invade. Despite its elevated position there were never any big guns at Reigate, instead the site was used to store guns and other ammunition for distribution to ground troops in the event of landbased advance. Such an attack never came, of course, indeed the shape of warfare and the nature of the enemy changed utterly within only a few years. Reigate's earthworks were decommissioned in 1906 and fell into disrepair, restored only in the last decade courtesy of the National Trust and a lottery grant. It's one of their stranger properties. [listing] [leaflet] [map] [walk]
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