Thursday, April 03, 2025
When the Silvertown Tunnel opens next week, one thing the Mayor will enthuse about is the new Superloop bus route running through it. People like the Superloop, they know it gets them places fast, so no doubt they'll be enthused too. But the new SL4 isn't going to be as super as people might think, nor as fast, because in this case SL might as well stand for Stopping Lots.
There are two kinds of Superloop route. The SL1/2/3/5/7/8/9/10 are limited stop services, pausing only at key points to pick up passengers who want to travel longer distances. Then there's the SL6, the former X68, which should never have come under the Superloop umbrella in the first place. It stops at every stop except for a five mile hyperleap in the middle, all the better for whisking commuters rapidly between West Norwood and Waterloo. It also only runs during the rush hour and then only in one direction, which is why barely a thousand passengers use it daily. But the important thing is that it stops lots at one end, lots at the other end and not in the middle, which is precisely what the SL4 is about to do.
The SL4 starts at Westferry Circus, which is near enough but not quite Canary Wharf. Were this the normal Superloop it'd only stop outside the station, maybe once more to the east, but instead it'll stop eight times on the way to the tunnel. Every stop between Canary Wharf and the tunnel portal gets an SL4 tile, every single one. Then comes the big dive under the Thames, deliberately not stopping at North Greenwich because that would slow things down. And after climbing to the fringes of Blackheath it then stops at every single stop all the way to Grove Park, every single one. Nine stops, three mile gap, seventeen stops. Hardly Super.
When the route was announced everyone wondered why the SL4 wasn't continuing to Bromley because a fast bus between Canary Wharf and Bromley might have purpose. But it was never intended this would be a fast bus, hence the SL4 merely serves the Lewisham/Greenwich fringes and then grinds to a halt. Should you ever need a bus between Blackheath and Grove Park it'll be great because you'll be able to do it in one bus rather than switching between the 202 and 261 in Lee, plus a bus will come along more often. But the only Super bit of the SL4 is the non-stop section mid-journey, and arguably that isn't especially super either. It starts here.
This is the last stop before the Silvertown tunnel heading north. It's at the Sun-in-the-Sands roundabout where Shooters Hill Road meets the A2 dual carriageway, two whole miles from the tunnel portal. It's not near any stations, nor an especially easy place to get to, nor somewhere you can reach North Greenwich quickly from. And yet this is the last place south of the river you can board or alight, the stopping pattern assuming that what you really want to do from here is go to Canary Wharf, not anywhere inbetween.
If the Silvertown Tunnel had been built with public transport in mind, someone would have included a bus stop on the approach to the tunnel portal which passengers on the peninsula could use. When they built the Blackwall Tunnel they added just such a layby for the 108, and admittedly it's an unpleasant place to wait but it's better than not being able to catch the bus at all. Alas the Silvertown Tunnel has no such provision on either side so buses can only whizz through without stopping.
It's just as non-stop on the northern side. The SL4 emerges by a snazzy new gyratory but there's nowhere to stop so it doesn't. City Hall is close by, also the Royal Docks, the Dangleway, Royal Victoria DLR and lots of flats, but no way to get on or off. Indeed although the SL4 emerges in Newham it doesn't stop anywhere in the borough so there's no easy way to make onward connections. Serving Newham is the 129's job, the other new bus through the Silvertown Tunnel, but at no point do the SL4 and 129 stop anywhere near each other so potential interchange doesn't work either.
Instead the SL4 launches across Bow Creek via the Lower Lea Crossing, landing after half a mile at the Leamouth Roundabout. No other London bus does this so there's never been a bus stop up here and they haven't added one. We're now in Tower Hamlets on the Leamouth Peninsula and it's time for the SL4 to make its first stop north of the Thames. Almost inexplicably it does this by bearing off the roundabout, doubling back down the ramp and stopping underneath the flyover. Ridiculously for a so-called express service that first stop is here.
This is Orchard Place, a backwater road which ten years ago you'd only have visited if you were hiking to the cultural outpost of Trinity Buoy Wharf. It first gained a bus service in 2017 when hundreds of new flats started to be built at City Island, joined since by hundreds more at Goodluck Hope. Route D3 already terminates here four times an hour and is about to be joined by the SL4, in both directions, running twice as often. That's brilliant if you live here and want go to Canary Wharf, but less useful if you thought you were riding a fast bus and find yourself dawdling down here instead.
There is a reason for this detour which is that the public specifically requested it. In their 2022 consultation TfL asked whether respondents would prefer the new bus to take the most direct route or to go via Orchard Place to serve the Leamouth Peninsula. "Our preferred option is the direct route", TfL wrote. But the public disagreed, quite significantly...
A total of 613 respondents answered with the majority, 58 per cent, preferring the route to go via Orchard Place. This is compared to 19 per cent who preferred the most direct routing, and the remaining 24 per cent of respondents who had no preference.... hence the extra twiddle. My hunch is that the London City Island and Goodluck Hope Leaseholders’ and Residents’ Association strongly encouraged their leaseholders and residents to respond to the consultation, and this pile-on swung the results decisively in favour of Orchard Place. The LCIGHLRA didn't get everything their way. In their submission they also asked for a 'vital' extra stop at North Greenwich for the benefit of their residents, and also could the bus please go to Lewisham because Grove Park lacked useful amenities. But they did get TfL to gift them 250 extra Superloops per day, so you can curse them for the delay should you ever decide to take a ride.
The SL4 was originally supposed to approach its destination through Wood Wharf, Docklands' new eastern upthrust, rather than entering direct. Fortunately the roads through Wood Wharf aren't ready yet and won't be until 2027 so the quicker route wins for now. But it's still not going to be especially quick. Grove Park to Canary Wharf is timetabled to take an hour in the morning peak, 45 minutes during the day and, OK, just 35 minutes on the last bus after midnight. Even the express section in the middle could take anything from 13 to 20 minutes depending on the traffic. And all this will be running remarkably often - every eight minutes from 6am to 8pm - based on the untested proposition that thousands of people want to travel by bus to Canary Wharf from a thin sliver of southeast London.
I should say that back in November 2022 when TfL first proposed the SL4, then called the X239, they provided an extraordinary amount of detail on why they chose this particular route. I summarised what they said in this post here, and basically it's because their planning models suggested this was the best way of maximising demand. If you want to mouth off and say "But I don't see why they didn't..." go read that first.
My hunch is that the SL4 will be an insanely frequent white elephant of limited use, made worse by the lengthy gap in the middle. But it'll also be free to use for the first year which'll bump up its ridership no end, especially for local journeys in Lewisham where only a fool would board a 202 or 261 when they could board the SL4 for free. It will thus appear hugely successful, its ridership figures inherently meaningless, and the Mayor will clap his hands and say I told you it'd be brilliant. As with so many dubious projects it'll only look great to those who've never ridden it, the frankly baffling SL4, Stopping Lots.
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Estimated fix time: Tue 01/04/2025 at 19:00
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Estimated fix time: Mon 31/03/2025 at 02:34
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Estimated fix time: Wed 02/04/2025 at 00:00
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Tuesday, April 01, 2025
25 things we (genuinely) learnt from TfL FoI requests in March 2025
1) Only two refurbished Central line trains have so far entered service. Three more are planned to enter service by January 2026. The overall programme is planned to complete in 2029.
2) Seat cushions on Victoria line trains are made up from moquette, firebarrier, anti-vandal mesh and graphite foam.
3) There are no current plans to re-open the Waterloo and City line on Saturdays.
4) TfL currently owns 998 New Routemaster vehicles because two have been withdrawn. LT174 was withdrawn in May 2022 after being involved in a fire and LT045 was withdrawn in July 2022 after being involved in an accident.
5) TfL's bus fleet includes 1750 single decker diesels and 1400 double decker diesels. 700 electric single deckers are in use, with about 300 more due to enter service over the next 12 months.
6) TfL is responsible for 6500 sets of traffic signals, of which 248 have fixed traffic light cameras.
7) Excluding schoolbuses, nightbuses and mobility buses, the ten buses most likely to run late are the 492, 273, 228, 42, 246, 225, H28, 223, S1 and 367.
8) Over the last year, the lift with the most outages was Lift 8 at Stratford station (103 outages) and the lift with the most time out of service was Lift 1 at Canary Wharf Crossrail station (3216 hours).
9) Since the closure of Hammersmith Bridge, traffic flow on Putney Bridge has remained stable, traffic flow on Kew Bridge has recovered to 2018 levels and traffic flow on both Chiswick and Wandsworth Bridges has experienced a steady decline.
10) Last year only one passenger travelled from Amersham to Emerson Park, from Enfield Town to North Dulwich or from Ickenham to Chessington North.
11) During 2023 there were 652 'soiled saloon' incidents on the Underground (spillages, vomit, glass, etc) which required the train to be cleaned or taken out of service. 32% of these were on the Northern line and 25% were on a Saturday.
12) TfL has no plans at present to stop printing the pocket tube map. The next is due to be issued in early July 2025 and will have a 12 month life span.
13) TfL hopes to proceed with the introduction of a permanent female voice on the refurbished Bakerloo and Central line fleet as soon as possible to replace the current test voice. This female voice "will better reflect our customer research findings".
14) In 2023 the Lost Property Office recorded one set of false teeth, six sex toys and 23 wigs.
15) In 2024 TfL enforcement officers reprimanded two individuals for singing or playing music without permission. In one case a warning was issued and in the other no further action was taken. Neither was prosecuted.
16) In 2024 passengers on the Central line made 1906 complaints about the temperature, more than on any other line. January was the peak month for complaints.
17) In the financial year 2023/24 the total sale of paper One Day Bus & Tram Passes from Tube stations was 84,661. They are now only available from Oyster Ticket Stops.
18) TfL are considering integrating Oyster with Apple wallets but do not yet have a viable business case. Card readers on buses and in stations would need to be updated. This project is in-flight but will take a further 3-4 years to deliver. There are no plans to integrate the 60+ card with Apple Pay.
19) £1.27m has been spent improving Walthamstow Bus Station after "the incident" that took place last year.
20) There are no plans at present to replace the diversity pedestrian green signals installed around Trafalgar Square. A thorough risk assessment deemed them safe for use as they only apply to the green aspect.
21) Seats across the Underground fleet are brushed and checked daily prior and post going into service. The seats are also further cleaned and hoovered every 28 days, with the Northern Line also receiving an annual steam clean due to the levels of dirt and dust being seen.
22) Celebrations marking TfL's 25th anniversary are expected to cost around £90k and will be funded via sponsorship. The cost to produce 40,000 pin badges was £23,965 +VAT and is covered through TfL's normal Employee Communications budget.
23) On the DLR, direct trains between Stratford International and Beckton only run on weekdays between 10am and 4pm and between 7.30pm and 11.30pm.
24) As far as TfL are aware, they did not exercise any compulsory powers of purchase pursuant to the Croxley Rail Link Order 2013.
25) The Silvertown Cycle Shuttle bus will have space for four standard bikes, one adaptive bike, four folding bikes and five folding e-bikes. If no adaptive bikes are present, up to four standard bikes can use its space.
25 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in March 2025
1) On average the seat moquette on a New Routemaster bus lasts 7.3 years before replacement. Used moquette is recycled by foreign aid charities.
2) Only 0.003% of Elizabeth Line journeys result in Delay Repay payments even though 1.7% would be eligible.
3) In 2024 the bus routes generating the most advertising revenue through the use of full-coverage vinyl wraps were the 137 (£465,000), the 8 (£427,500) and the 103 (£388,000).
4) For fare payment, Oyster cards were overtaken by contactless cards in February 2018, by smartphones in August 2022 and by smartwatches in December 2024.
5) The thickness of the printed tube map has decreased from 0.17mm in June 2016 to 0.09mm in December 2024.
6) Only three Croydon trams have been officially named - Dame Janet Wiseman, Femi Mahmood and Henry Banks CBE.
7) The oldest passenger lift still in use on the Underground is Lift 3 at Caledonian Road which was installed on 17th October 1936. The newest is the mezzanine lift at Paddington's new Bakerloo line entrance.
8) There are 5017 ULEZ cameras in London, of which 143 have each raised more than £1m in fines.
9) According to traffic counts, the busiest Cycleways over the last twelve months have been C3, C5, C2, C6, CS7, C57, C1, C4, C58 and C90.
10) Since April 2024 there have been 612 incidents involving bus lanes blocked by dockless e-bikes causing a total of 185,263 lost passenger hours.
11) Last year 7% of contactless journeys were incomplete (either no touch-in, no touch-out or both).
12) The middle carriage of a 5-car Overground train is 18mm wider than the other carriages to accommodate air cooling power systems.
13) For taxi drivers learning The Knowledge the most northerly Point of Interest is Wood Green Highway, the most easterly is Trinity Buoy Wharf, the most southerly is Streatham Masonic Lodge, and the most westerly is Acton Waitrose.
14) During the financial year 2021/22 there were 16,738 incidents of roadworks on London's roads, 32% of which have subsequently been re-dug by the same utility company.
15) In 2023 the tube station with the highest recorded number of mouse sightings on its platforms was Piccadilly Circus. The peak time of day for sightings was between 10pm and 11pm.
16) Colours considered for the six new Overground lines, but not used, include Primrose Yellow (Pantone 115), Robin's Egg (Pantone 304), Heliotrope (Pantone 513), Laundry Grey (Pantone 421), Lobster Cardinal (Pantone 184) and Hepzibah's Shawl (Pantone 437).
17) Potholes on London bus routes are repaired on average 16 weeks before potholes on other roads.
18) The widest gap between the train and the platform on the London Underground is 279mm at Tower Hill (westbound). The narrowest is 3mm at Colindale (northbound).
19) The bus route with the greatest difference in air quality between its termini is the 14 (Russell Square 22.7µg/m3 NO2, Putney Heath 3.6µg/m3 NO2).
20) In 2024 the Woolwich Ferry operated 18,851 northbound river crossings and 15,964 southbound river crossings.
21) 17% of TfL office staff work from home at least two days a week, and 23% at least three days a week.
22) The Silvertown Tunnel contains eighteen '20' speed limit signs and sixteen '30' speed limit signs because the limit changes midway as traffic passes between the boroughs of Newham and Greenwich.
23) 56% of Underground tunnels now have 4G mobile coverage. This is anticipated to double by 2029.
24) The passenger display screens inside the 94 new Piccadilly line trains will be limited to showing adverts no more than 33% of the time.
25) A scrolling London bus map is expected to be added to the TfL Go app in March 2026.
Monday, March 31, 2025
31 unblogged things I did in March
Sat 1: The world is still reverberating after Trump and Vance admonished Zelensky in the White House yesterday, and you can sense that 2025 is going to be a turning point in geopolitical history but not in a good way.
Sun 2: Fish and Ships, the smart chippie just west of Victoria Park, has folded and been replaced by yet another cafe doing yet more coffee. Daytime refreshment is increasingly where it's at.
Mon 3: Last month I told you about the Algerian visiting London who'd spotted one of his father's poems inscribed by the Millennium Dome and contacted me via Flickr to try to find precisely where it was. I'm delighted to say that I got a message after he'd flown home saying "I was able to find the location thanks to your message! My father was really happy to see that it was still there :)", so hurrah for the internet.
Tue 4: If you upgrade your broadband contract in March they let you skip the 1st April price increase. Also, when your 24 month contract expires it's March again.
Wed 5: The salon at 733 Leytonstone High Road is called Gent's Barber Shop, an apostrophe error repeated three times across multiple signage. They got Men's Haircuts right on the price list but also claimed these cost 15£, so I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Thu 6: A film crew had taken over a street on the eastern edge of the City with a long-armed camera raised in the middle of the street to film what looked liked a police chase along the balconies of the Middlsex Street Estate. Unfortunately I missed the action, merely hanging around for quarter of an hour during a reset, but I now want to know what they were filming and whether I'll ever see it.
Fri 7: I walked to a nearby tube station to get my Senior Railcard discount added to my Oyster card. The member of staff looked mildly peeved and said "oh I suppose so", before adding it swiftly and professionally. I won't say where this was, but it is the station I most associate with passive aggressive signage.
Sat 8: My body has decided to celebrate my upcoming birthday with a massive blister on my left foot. I managed a five mile walk in the Essex countryside no problem, thankfully, but decided against the eight mile option.
Sun 9: There's a colourful poster in the waiting room at Croxley station which says "You are Loved & Wanted in London". This might be a warm, comforting and inclusive message were it not for the fact Croxley is not in London so it looks creepy and weird. If you're responsible for slapping up TfL posters, perhaps don't thoughtlessly post Mayor of London propaganda in Hertfordshire.
Mon 10: This new chess programme on BBC2 is very poor, all personality-obsessed and over-excitable with confected tension and barely any focus on the chess. Bring back The Master Game!
Tue 11: On the Scott Mills Breakfast Show they were discussing the songs people wanted played at their funeral, then a few records later played the song I want played at mine. It's barely two minutes long so would slot in perfectly at the start.
Wed 12: BBC4 have started repeating The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin again, and this brought hundreds of people to the blog keen to find out where in Ealing his house was located. Great! Super!
Thu 13: Following a Windows update, my laptop has started showing a row of browser thumbnails every time I accidentally hover over the taskbar. This annoying feature is the default behaviour but previously I'd managed to find a cunning registry tweak which stopped it. Alas they've now nullified the tweak so it's inescapable. What's wrong with giving us choices rather than a single prescribed option?
Fri 14: It's been several years since the legendary hot cross bun ceremony was held at The Widow's Son in Bromley-by-Bow, mainly because the pub's suffered repeated ownership crises, but in good news it's open again so things should be up and hanging again this April. The owner said hi anyway.
Sat 15: I went for a walk up the Olympic Park and got lucky beneath the cycle bridges, spotting my first kingfisher since 2021. It skimmed low above the river for at least 100m, like a sharp blue dart, and I suspect it was looking for brunch.
Sun 16: Walking through Stepney I assumed the gleaming gold-fronted bakery on Ben Johnson Road must be a gentrified interloper but it is in fact the same business as before - Johnny Walls - now focusing on pastries and drizzled treats rather than a traditional but lacklustre selection of pasties and loaves.
Mon 17: Had a 40 minute phone chat with my nephew about life and stuff. This never normally happens (and should probably be more normal).
Tue 18: I was going to write a post about fractional addresses, having spotted a cafe at 1½ Ardleigh Road in Dalston, but then my 60+ card turned up so I wrote about that instead. Another day.
Wed 19: Today, striding across sunny Farthing Downs, was the first "I've worn too many layers I need to take one off" day of 2025.
Thu 20: Last time I visited Crewe Market Hall I feared for its commercial success, the sense of tumbleweed being palpable. But I walked in tonight and every table was packed with happy punters enjoying food and drink, and all because Thursday Night is Quiz Night (from 7pm, hosted by The Cat). This is what successful community engagement looks like.
Fri 21: I spotted a new Silvertown Cycle Shuttle bus out doing driver training near City Hall. The bus you saw at the press junket might have had a snazzy blue vinyl wrap but this had a bog-standard red exterior, as hijacked off route 323.
Sat 22: Merton council are celebrating the borough's 60th birthday with community parties and a festival. The only borough which isn't 60 tomorrow is Harrow which is 90.
Sun 23: On a packed purple train speeding into Paddington, a kind younger gentleman offered me a seat. Sigh, I thought, how does he know I've just turned 60? It's not the first time it's happened, the first being when I was 58, but I really don't need a seat (yet) thanks, so feel free to hold off for several more years.
Mon 24: On the radio travel news I heard about delays on the M67 in Denton, and previously that would have gone right over my head but this time I was thinking "ooh, I know where that is, just past the station and the KFC approaching that giant roundabout", and this is how travel broadens your mind.
Tue 25: Does anyone know why a pub in Rotherhithe might be rammed with hockey players on a Tuesday evening?
Wed 26: Some BBC Sounds programmes I've enjoyed this month: a 2 hour Johnnie Walker tribute on what would have been his 80th birthday; X-Man - an 8 part series psychoanalysing the fantasy roots of the Elon Musk origin story; a '5 years on' documentary using archive clips to document the 3-month emergence of Covid; a 60th anniversary look at what the children in the Sound of Music did next.
Thu 27: I bought fish and chips at the splendidly traditional Uncle Jim's Fish Bar in Plaistow. While I was waiting at least two youths came in for a kebab but left when they spotted the sign saying Cash Only, and I don't know how the business survives in this modern age.
Fri 28: A new Brambly Hedge walking trail is being added on Chingford Plain, looping round Connaught Water with 17 delightful wooden hedgehog sculptures to spot. Author Jill Barklem lived locally in Loughton. The official launch will be in the summer once they've finished the all-weather path, but given the lack of rain recently the usual mudbath is absent so you could delight your toddlers now.
Sat 29: If you're wondering where my final Bow Roundabout roadworks update is, they still haven't removed the cones in the contraflow lane, three weeks after everything else vanished, despite everything looking fully complete. Rest assured a lengthy write-up will appear eventually.
Sun 30: I was waiting at Bus Stop M this morning when a 276 bus approached and pulled over. I boarded and the conversation went like this...
Driver: You're supposed to hold your arm out.
Me: But it's not a request stop.
Driver: Are you telling me how to do my job?
Me: Are you telling me how to do my bus stop?
He reiterated the need to signal and I pointed out I'd been using this stop for 25 years without a requirement to do so. The conversation remained civil, if increasingly strained, and I decided to withdraw from the bus to avoid further awkwardness.
Mon 31: I managed to write today's post by tethering my laptop to my mobile, opening up a blank Blogger window, de-tethering to save on data usage, writing for hours, then finally tethering again and pressing publish. Links and photos will follow after my broadband is reconnected.
Sunday, March 30, 2025
One of the key drivers behind London’s bus network is that 95% of the population should live within 400m of a bus route. There are indeed very few residential holes, at least with any significant population, as I documented in a past post called “Where in London is furthest from a bus route?”. Now two significant developments are filling two of those holes, one potentially via a new consultation, the other extending yesterday into unbussed territory. Hurrah for the SL12 and 434.
The SL12 is the latest proposed Superloop route and will bring the Mayoral express to the borough of Havering for the first time. It's very much not loopy, merely attaching to the existing network at the Gants Hill roundabout before bearing off to Romford and swooshing down towards Rainham. The first half shadows route 66 along Eastern Avenue but stops less often, and the second creates a fast north-south link the borough sorely lacks. It's all good, just so long as nobody cuts the frequency of the existing 66 and makes life worse for the people of Redbridge. And best of all, or perhaps most remarkably, it helps fills the London's largest busless hole on the godforsaken Rainham Marshes.
If you've ever walked the final section of the London Loop you'll know how remote it gets, the only buildings on the last mile down to the Thames being a crescent of well-hidden factories. It's these workplaces on the Ferry Lane Industrial Estate the SL12 will serve, which having watched employees yomping down to the estuary would be very welcome. It's highly unlikely five buses an hour is really necessary, especially when it's not shift changeover, and it'd be a distinctly isolated place for drivers to find themselves late in the evening. That said it's been TfL's aspiration to send a bus down here ever since they published a 50 page 'Review of bus services in London Riverside East' in 2019, so this is perhaps the ideal solution. The SL12 is "all gain", to use the jargon (although if they don't add an additional stop at Rainham Tesco that would be lunacy, just saying).
Meanwhile south of Purley another peripheral gap has just been plugged. The heights of Kenley have never seen a bus service before, not because it's difficult to get a bus up there but because it's difficult to get it out again. In 2020 TfL proposed a solution by diverting new route 439 up to the top and weaving it round quiet suburban avenues to turn it round, taking one hill in and one hill out. They eventually decided to send the existing 434 up there instead, then discovered it was harder than they thought to get it round all the corners which delayed things by twelve months. The final solution has required the painting of yellow lines round several awkward bends on Wattendon Road, whose residents could never have imagined a red bus weaving between their parked cars when they bought their outlying bungalows. Now here it is.
But upper Kenley's wider residents may not realise this new bus service exists because there's nothing up here to alert them. The entire elevated section is Hail and Ride so not a single bus stop has been added, nor even one of those little poles they sometimes sneak into H&R sections. That means there's nowhere to stick a tile, a timetable or a poster suggesting residents might want to take a ride, these only being present at bus stops down in the valley where none of these people live. In particular there isn't a map anywhere, not even on the TfL website where they normally hide one, so I've made one here where nobody will see either. See how the 407 runs along one side of the railway, the 439 runs along the other and the 434 now dawdles invisibly around the heights. It'll be noticed and welcomed eventually, another hole filled.
I got home yesterday after watching the eclipse, put the kettle on and opened up my laptop. No internet. Well that's annoying, I thought.
My BT Hub was displaying the dreaded red ring of doom, a bit like an eclipse in itself, and rebooting it didn't help. OK that's more annoying, I thought.
I hoped it would sort itself out because it usually does on the rare occasions it ever happens. I gave it an hour but no, the red ring remained. Annoying!
I gave BT a call to see what was up and they sent me a text message which led to a website, because that beats employing people. We're aware of a fault, they said, which was annoying.
We're working on fixing it, they added, which was somewhat reassuring. But then I saw the "estimated fix time" and clocked that it was Tuesday evening. Annoying doesn't even cover it.
Not Saturday evening or Sunday evening or Monday evening but Tuesday evening! It might be an overestimate of course, but they were suggesting I faced three whole days without the internet, so you can imagine my annoyance.
My laptop was suddenly an isolated computer like it was 1995 or something. Also I could no longer do any streaming, so my TV options were live only or anything I'd recorded, ditto 1995. I turned the radio on and read the paper again, somewhat annoyed.
I could of course take my laptop to a cafe and use their wi-fi, but that's not especially realistic on a Saturday evening. Usually I try piggybacking on a neighbour's wi-fi but those are all secure connections these days so annoyingly that no longer works.
They switched my landline to 'Digital Voice' a while ago so that's gone down too. I do at least have a smartphone which'll keep me connected and online and everything, but it's not the same as a laptop, it's annoyingly inefficient.
In particular a smartphone may be good for accessing written content but it's hopeless for generating 1000 words of thoughtful comment with links and photos. Little tippy tappy screen, no decent keyboard shortcuts. You would not believe how long it's taken me just to write this much - it's been frustratingly annoying.
So you're not getting a proper blogpost today, nor probably tomorrow, nor likely again until BT fix whatever's wrong. Sorry, I had today's post all planned but it'd be far too complicated to actually write so all you're getting is this annoying apology.
I hope normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. I'll probably come back later and fill this gap in with the missing post, hopefully. In the meantime I'm rediscovering all the things I can still do without the internet, and you can go away and do something else too.
Don't be annoyed. You all lost an hour overnight what with the clocks going forward, so if nothing else I've just saved you five minutes.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
45 Squared
45
11) BALGORES SQUARE, RM2
Borough of Havering, 110m×30m
Romford Garden Suburb was the brainchild of Liberal politician Herbert Raphael who in 1909 offered up his estate at Gidea Hall "to provide families with a well-built, modern home regardless of class or status". To encourage interest he established a competition to create 140 fully-furnished houses in the Arts and Crafts style, then invited the public to walk the streets as part of a domestic outdoor exhibition. A new station called Squirrels Heath & Gidea Park was opened to service visitors in 1910, and if you walk out of that station today and cross the car park you find yourself in Balgores Square.
It's long, thin and conveniently located, with a short parade of shops in one corner and a rim of large desirable homes. The first unit is occupied by a pleasingly retro dry cleaners, then a luxury dog groomers and a filler-friendly salon, as befits the denizens of pseudo-Essex. The original plan was that Balgores Square would be the estate's retail heart, entirely surrounded by arcaded shops with flats above by, but demand never quite materialised. A couple more commercial blocks were added on the north side, one with a splendid hare motif dated 1912, but the gap between them had to be filled by flats in the 1930s.
Likewise the centre of the square was originally pencilled in for an open-air market, but when developers discovered that Romford's ancient market charter forbade nearby competition that didn't happen either. Initially it remained as open space, as depicted in this rather lovely postcard of Balgores Square circa 1925, but eventually a few municipal tennis courts were added instead. More recently the council has shoehorned in a narrow car park instead and surrounded it with a hedge so neighbours can pretend it's not there. The majority of spaces are reserved for season ticket holders, and if you manage to grab one of the four others you've got 30 mins before charges kick in and rise steeply.
The two long sides of Balgores Square are endearingly residential, assuming you like large rustic semis with high gables, timber beams and decorative brickwork. The largest is Tudor House, which is only pretending to be that old and wouldn't have an integral garage were it genuine. One house had a geezery removal company in, the owners I suspect chuffed to have timed the changeover just before the stamp duty hike. Elsewhere I could only admire the effort put into all the front-gardening, especially the trimmed shrubbery, the full-on camellias and the bursts of pink blossom. I'm still not sure if the orange three-piece suite on the crazy paving outside number 8 was for sunbathing purposes or about to be chucked.
Architecturally the only duff note is the postwar office block at the southern end, occupied by a longstanding firm of Romford solicitors. But outside is an excellent double-sided map board provided by the Gidea Park and District Civic Society, which was erected to commemorate the centenary of Romford Garden Suburb. None of the Exhibition Houses are in Balgores Square but several lie along Balgores Lane, Squirrels Heath Avenue and Crossways which head north, and with the aid of these maps you can pick them out. Those maps are also on the excellent GPDCS website along with a full back history and two suggested walks and heavens look, here's the original 180 page exhibition brochure. If you like walking characterful suburban streets Gidea Park will not disappoint, perhaps all the way up to the 1930s Modernist houses and back, especially at this time of year when spring is at its most colourful.
You're only one purple train away from Balgores Square.
The TfL website last underwent a thorough design upgrade in 2014 and hasn't changed much since, template-wise. But times move on, not least the increased necessity for accessible responsive design, so a change is arguably long overdue. And here we go...
I think it's just the one main page so far - the Tube, Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR & Tram status page, i.e. tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status. It's gone big, it's gone narrow and it's got an awful lot of white space all over it. It is of course optimised for smartphone usage, where it looks quite swish and scrolls down smoothly with all sorts of additional information opening up if you touch the screen. It works less well on anything landscape, like my laptop screen, where information that used to be visible in one glance is now too large to fit.
I see I complained about precisely this back in 2014.
The key difference is that TfL's new website has been designed with smartphones in mind. Text links have been replaced by buttons that are easier for chunky fingers to push, and the layout of pages is mostly portrait rather than landscape. For those out and about with a mobile device the design will be more intuitive, whereas those at home with a computer screen should expect more white space and more scrolling.And I'm complaining again. As is so often the way the laptop/desktop experience gets worse when the mobile experience gets better, because designers never seem to include platform-responsive formatting or the ability to tweak the layout somehow. "We think this is better for you" is their watchword even when it patently isn't, "so this what you're getting".
In bad news TfL appear to have fully given up on including a map of disruptions on their website, copping out with an instruction to use the TfL Go app instead. Forcing users off one device onto another is never an accessibility plus. I understand that coding such a map is difficult, or maybe just expensive, but it's truly galling that we will never again see a pictorial disruption map online, only a less helpful list of atomised bits.
Other changes are lovely, like the summaries of line closures using endpoints and arrows, also the graphic depiction of future disruption over the upcoming week. And other changes are frustrating, like the list of affected stations which appears in alphabetical order rather than most serious incident first, and where 'part closure' has suddenly been given undue prominence.
We've seen pages using a similar template for several years in the Board Meetings section of the TfL website but it looks like this is the beginning of changes on pages people actually use. Look out for further sequential metamorphosis as things you've got used to disappear and things you'll soon love magically arrive. I'm pretty disappointed so far though.
Friday, March 28, 2025
Tomorrow is partial solar eclipse day, peaking at 11:03am in London.
The weather, I'm pleased to say, looks perfect.
The eclipse will be visible across northwest Europe, peaking in eastern Canada where 92% of the solar disc will be obscured. In London it's 31%.
Nova Scotia 80%, Reykjavik 68%, Stornoway 47%, Glasgow 42%, Dublin 41%, London 31%, Paris 24%, Rome 2%You might not think 31% is great, and it is indeed low enough that most of the population won't notice anything eclipsy is happening. But solar eclipses are so rare that only four in the last 25 years have been better, as seen from London.
All the solar eclipses visble from London during the last 25 yearsIn good news the next 25 years are better, indeed the next 12 years are particularly good, kicking off with a monster obscuration next summer. That'll be 91% covered in London which is the greatest extent since 1999 and won't be exceeded until 2081, so for most Londoners the last significant eclipse of their lifetime. Plymouth'll do even better with 95% and the Scillies 96%, but if you can get to Reykjavik or northern Spain you could see the magic 100%.
• 31st May 2003 (52%)
• 3rd October 2005 (57%)
• 29th March 2006 (17%)
• 1st October 2008 (12%)
• 4th January 2011 (67%)
• 20th March 2015 (84%)
• 21st August 2017 (4%)
• 10th June 2021 (20%)
• 25th October 2022 (15%)
All the solar eclipses visble from London during the next 25 yearsBut notice the drought after 2039 with just the one solar eclipse during the entire 2040s, because celestial geometry is nothing if not predictably irregular.
• Wed 12 August 2026 (19:13 BST) 91%
• Mon 2 August 2027 (10:00 BST) 42%
• Wed 26 January 2028 (16:34 GMT) 51%
• Sat 1 June 2030 (06:21 BST) 48%
• Thu 21 Aug 2036 (19:07 BST) 60%
• Fri 16 January 2037 (09:06 GMT) 46%
• Tue 5 January 2038 (14:34 GMT) 5%
• Fri July 2038 (15:03 BST) 8%
• Tue 21 June 2039 (19:35 BST) 63%
• Thu 11 June 2048 (13:22 BST) 62%
Best make the most of tomorrow's eclipse, which in a clear blue sky means using eye protection or projecting shadows rather than staring direct. I have eclipse glasses leftover from the 1999 event and they're excellent, so through those I hope to see a bite of sun missing from the top of the disc, starting at 10.07am, ending at noon and peaking at 11.03. You don't get many chances, and for once the weather is playing ball.
From Monday e-bikes will be banned from TfL services because they pose a fire risk.
That means no more e-bikes on the tube, the Overground, the Elizabeth line or the DLR. Currently they're allowed off-peak†, which is why I often see lazy delivery riders lugging their electro-steeds onto the District line and clogging up the doorway.
From next week that won't be allowed and e-bikes will have to stay at street level, protecting passengers from the dangers of potential conflagration. It's bad news for Londoners who've bought e-bikes as an integral part of their commute, whose sustainable micromobility travel options are about to be expunged. But as Charlie Pugsley of the London Fire Brigade says, "we welcome this move by TfL following their detailed safety review as it acknowledges the risks that we know e-bike batteries can pose."
But not all e-bikes. TfL could have banned the lot but they're allowing Bromptons and other e-bikes you can fold away because no fires have been reported erupting from them. Evidence suggests the main danger is from bikes converted into e-bikes, and because staff can't tell which have and which haven't they're banning all the full-sized ones, even if they're well-made and expensive.
And this exclusion of certain e-bikes has forced TfL's messaging to be awkwardly complex.
"Non-foldable e-bikes" is not the simplest of phrases, indeed it manages to include two hyphens as well as a negative. But it is I think better than "unfolded" which was the previous buzzword bandied about in messaging across the network. "Unfolded" was always a stupid word because ordinary bikes can't be folded, therefore by definition they are never unfolded. It always grated to hear announcements about unfolded bikes, especially that bloody message about unfolded e-scooters and unfolded e-unicycles.
All folded and unfolded e-scooters and e-unicycles are prohibited on all TfL premises and services.E-unicycles are hardly common, and folded e-unicycles so abhorrently unlikely that the fact they need to be mentioned is absurd. But this is what happens when you decide to mention subcategories of wheeled transport - the complexity of the phraseology ramps up and dilutes the safety message you want everyone to hear.
Which makes me wonder what the new e-bike announcement is going to be and whether it's possible to make it simple.
How succinct can you make it without losing sufficient clarity?
For example if you look at that poster, even that requires an asterisk because you can't say "all TfL premises and services" any more, the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle and Woolwich Ferry are exempt.
None of these quite work...
• e-bikes, e-scooters and e-unicycles are not allowed on tubes and trains
• Non-folded e-bikes, e-scooters and e-unicycles are not allowed on TfL services
• Only folded e-bikes are allowed on our trains
• e-bikes are not allowed on this train unless folded
So my challenge for you today is to come up with an appropriate e-bike announcement which could be played from next week. Can you be simple, clear and precise simultaneously? Here's a special comments box for your attempts. comments
n.b. Please only post potential announcements in this box. If you think someone else's message is pedantically inappropriate don't tell us, just come up with something better! For all other comments, whether about e-bikes or linguistic suitability, please use the normal comments box below.
† A pedantic apology: When I said bikes were currently allowed off-peak I was being over-simplistic. At present bikes are only allowed on some parts of some tube lines, not the whole network. Basically trains in deep tunnels are excluded, so for example Edgware to Golders Green is fine except between Colindale and Hendon Central, which makes the whole thing so complicated that TfL have to provide a map. Also bikes are allowed at peak times on certain lines if travelling against the flow, for example out of Shenfield in the evening, and these complexities require an entire page on the TfL website. This is how difficult it is to be simple, clear and precise!
Thursday, March 27, 2025
London's next dead bus
R6: Orpington to St Mary Cray
Location: southeast London, outer
Length of journey: 4 miles, 25 minutes
It's time to kill off another London bus route, the fourth such erasure this year. Routes 347, 118 and 414 have already been extinguished and at the end of this week it's time for the R6 to join them at the big terminus in the sky. You won't miss it.
Orpington has a long-standing network of R-prefix buses, introduced in 1986 under the 'Roundabout' brand. Every few years they get rejigged, so for example the R6 which dies this week is the third such route with that number and was introduced in 2001. At present there are 11 buses numbered R1 to R11 but this withdrawal removes the middle one, ending the consecutive streak.
The R6 exists to serve a couple of estates on Orpington's periphery and also to link them to trains at St Mary Cray station. It runs every half an hour and operates with two vehicles. It's not the least used of the R buses - the R2, R5, R8 and R10 have fewer passengers - but it is probably the least consequential unless you happen to live in the right place.
In a now familiar tactic, TfL are withdrawing the R6 and replacing it in full by another route. That replacement is the B14, an outlier from the Bexley bus empire which runs via a fairly twiddly route between Bexleyheath and Orpington. The intention is to add one more twiddle at the southern end, following the R6's route in its entirety rather than a direct run from St Mary Cray to Orpington. It'll make every journey on the B14 at least ten minutes longer, the mitigation being that B14 passengers can always catch the more frequent R11 instead and not end up wasting their lives on a lengthy detour.
The B14 also runs every half an hour so nobody's getting a less frequent service, indeed the new timetable means a better early morning and late evening service so it's an improvement overall. And because the B14 only needs one extra vehicle to cover the withdrawal of the R6's two, TfL's accountants also save some money in the process. The aim as ever is "to operate a more efficient bus service", and the appropriate buzzphrase is "to better match bus services to customer demand".
In the interests of documenting an imminently extinct species, let's go for a ride.
The R6 kicks off from the lengthy bus stand outside Orpington station, alongside its single decker sisters R3, R5, R9 and R10. The parking space at the end now accommodates the overhead charger for the pantographs on route 358, the tram buses that got social media excited a few months ago. The B14 also starts here, conveniently, and will be shadowing us for the next mile and a half through the town centre.
The first stop at the bottom of the road is Tubbenden Lane. It ranks highly amongst the busiest bus stops in London, being served by as many as 17 TfL bus routes, although that'll be going down to 16 from Saturday. It's also despised by at least one local resident who recently submitted a vituperative FoI.
“The bus stop opposite the Maxwell is lunacy!! It is: Virtually opposite another bus stop; Adjacent to a box junction; Opposite a T junction; Near a junction where pedestrians cross. I would struggle to think of a more dangerous place to put a bus stop. Please consider removing or moving it. I would be interested to know the number of road accidents in that spot, and if the frequency of accidents has increased since the last road amendments there.”TfL fobbed him off with a suggestion he looked at their collisions dashboard, which I have and there have only been two 'slight' collisions here over a seven year period. Those fears of lunacy are thus misplaced, which is good news for the hordes of passengers who would have been instantly disadvantaged had this awkwardly located stop been closed.
Orpington High Street is a peculiar beast, bus-wise, with umpteen different routes launching off in all directions and shoppers keenly squinting to see precisely which R this is. Some of those routes have to deviate off-piste to get here but the R6 is heading through anyway, which always helps. A dozen passengers pile aboard with bags of shopping, which I reckon is impressive for a minor route mid-morning, or might be because the bus is running fifteen minutes late and they've been waiting ages. One is recognised by a seated neighbour... "Hello John" she says. Two others suffer the beep of shame when neither of their cards work, nor on the second attempt but alternative plastic means third time lucky.
We bear off from the main drag at Priory Gardens, which is good because there are long-term roadworks on Cray Avenue so we're dodging a bullet there. Only the R4 and R6 head up the High Street so they're the go-to choice for every car-less resident this side of the River Cray. The houses are older here and the roads narrower because this has been a hub of cottages since Victorian times. I'm mystified by the name of the next stop being Reynolds Cross/Red Lion because no pub of that name exists, but all is explained by a converted residential building on the corner of Red Lion Close. The White Horse, more recently shuttered, looks like it'll be going the same way soon.
Ten minutes in we turn off on our special excursion up Blacksmiths Lane. The only other bus that goes this way is the 477, an hourly non-TfL service to Swanley and Dartford, but you can't wave an Oyster on that. And then we turn off again for a trunk-shaped loop up a very ordinary residential sidestreet, the kind that wouldn't normally get a service elsewhere in London. Here it's needed so that a couple of hundred homes don't find themselves too far from a red bus, and also so that residents of the further-flung hamlet of Kevington get a vague return on their council tax. By the time we've done the one-way circuit barely anyone is left aboard.
For our second loop we veer off round another estate, poorer this time, wedged between the railway embankment and the edge of the Green Belt. If you always thought Orpington was well-to-do you've never been to these eastern fringes, ditto the Ramsden Estate the R9 serves. The trees certainly give the place a lift though. This also feels like the estate TfL forgot, with a faded mid-pandemic poster claiming "Contactless, the safest way to pay" still on display in the farthest shelter. The bus stops on Wotten Green are just flags on lampposts, one without a pavement so no chance of lowering a ramp were it needed, and both blocked by parked cars because nobody's ever come along and painted BUS STOP on the road.
A schoolboy hops aboard as we enter the last half mile, his target the station across the valley. To get there we return to the High Street by the village green, which isn't anywhere near as nice as you're imagining, then duck beneath a lofty railway viaduct. On one side are roofing supplies and auto traders, and on the other side a 13th century church with cedar shingles because St Mary Cray is much more historic than it looks.
But after the penultimate stop it all goes wrong as we join a short but persistent queue of traffic trying to pass a set of lights. It's all the fault of those aforementioned roadworks which are making it very difficult to filter onto Sevenoaks Way, whose queue looks considerably worse than ours. It takes eight minutes to escape, instantly wrecking the timetable and likely scuppering our student's rail connection. When there are only two vehicles operating a bus route it's never good to see both on the same street, right near the end of the route.
I'm guessing that passengers on the B14 won't be happy to find themselves dawdling round the outer estates of St Mary Cray next week, thinking "oh goodness we can't be turning off down there as well good grief we are". And there's every chance they won't be expecting it because from what I saw nobody's gone round and stuck up any posters advertising the change at any of the R6's bus stops, or they hadn't at the start of the week. It could be a very simple poster too, it only needs to say "catch the B14 instead" and be done with it. Instead a big surprise is coming to Orpington as yet another bus route dies, to better match services to customer demand and to save TfL a bit of dosh.
• Route R6: route map
• Route R6: live route map
• Route R6: route history
• Route R6: timetable
• Route R6: withdrawal consultation
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Unchosen Overground line names
Jim Waterson at London Centric had an excellent scoop yesterday by publishing the longlist of names which were under consideration for the six Overground lines. I'm not sure how much much of the list is behind his Substack paywall so what follows is abbreviated from someone else's cut-and-pasting on Twitter. I've organised the names into my own entirely unofficial categories.
(if you don't like these names that's fine because they weren't chosen, so don't moan)
Rejected because TfL ultimately decided not to name lines after people
🎭 Althea Line - Celebrating Althea McNish, a pioneering designer of African-Caribbean descent [Suffragette]
⚽ Cother Line - Honouring Jack Cother, the UK’s first Asian professional footballer [Lioness]
📜 Derham Line - Recognising scientist and cleric William Derham, rector in Upminster and chaplain to George II [Liberty]
🥋 Garrud Line - Honouring Edith Garrud, a pioneering female martial arts instructor and suffragist [Mildmay]
✊ Huggett Line - Honouring Annie Huggett, a suffragist who championed working-class women in East London [Suffragette]
🏭 Jayaben Line - Recognising Jayaben Desai’s fight for fair pay and workers’ rights in Willesden [Lioness]
🩺 Kaushal Line - Recognising Dr Baldev Kaushal, who aided victims of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster [Weaver]
🚂 Winton Line - Remembering Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 mostly Jewish children via the Czech Kindertransport [Weaver]
Considered for Liberty line
🌿 Fanns Line - Named after the Land of the Fanns, a project protecting the Thames Estuary landscape
🍺 Hops Line - Celebrating botanist William Coys, who introduced hops and other plants to the UK
🛹 Rom Line - Referencing Romford, the River Rom, and the historic Rom skatepark, Europe’s first listed skatepark
Considered for Mildmay line
☘️ Galtymore Line - A tribute to Willesden Green’s Galtymore dance hall, a hub for London’s Irish community
🏛️ Keskidee Line - Named after the UK’s first Black arts centre, founded in 1971 near Caledonian Road
🏅 Paralympic Line - Honouring the origins of the Paralympic Games, from Stoke Mandeville to London 2012
📚 Sisterwrite Line - Remembering Sisterwrite, the UK’s first feminist bookshop and a hub for lesbian literature
Considered for Suffragette line
💧 Ripple Line - Highlighting the line’s links to water, from Hampstead Ponds to the Thames at Barking
🎶 Skylark Line - Celebrating the skylark, found in Walthamstow Wetlands and suburban London
Considered for Weaver line
🐟 Malins Line - Honouring Malin’s, the UK’s first fish and chip shop, and its cultural ties to migration and trade
🔥 Moonshot Line - Named after the UK’s first Black community centre, founded in 1981 in New Cross Gate
🎨 Obaala Line - Named after a Black art gallery in South Tottenham, promoting African heritage
🌳 Willow Line - Representing the willow trees along the River Lea, conservation, and local furniture-making
Considered for Windrush line
🚩 Cable Street Line - Remembering the 1936 anti-fascist Battle of Cable Street in Shadwell
🎶 Lovers Rock Line - Celebrating Lovers Rock, a reggae subgenre created by London’s Caribbean community
🌸 Saffron Line - Referencing Croydon’s name origins and its historical role in saffron cultivation
Also, somehow
💚 Green Carnation Line - Representing the green carnation, a historic LGBTQ+ symbol popularised by Oscar Wilde
🏳️🌈 Polari Line - Named after Polari, a secret language used by London’s gay community for safety
🌻 Sunflower Line - Symbolising non-visible disabilities, especially autism and neurodiversity, and the lanyard scheme
Six of these - Jayaben, Keskidee, Malins, Sisterwrite, Althea and Obaala - were given a full write-up on the TfL website last year under the title Discovering Hidden Stories Around the London Overground. This was published on the day the actual six names were announced, so I suspect this half-dozen got further through the process than most.
Jim says several names were discarded because they would have been hard to hear clearly on announcements or could have been mistaken for safety-critical words, and some because there was a risk of the names being abbreviated or used as slurs. He also has fifty further names which didn't make the longlist, and if you hated these you'll hate them too. But it doesn't ultimately matter, remember, because none of them were chosen.
10 items of post-Stockport housekeeping
I'm still trying, very slowly, to visit England's 100 largest towns and cities by population. At the start of the year I had 13 to go but since then I've ticked off Sunderland (32nd), Hartlepool (84th) and Stockport (60th). Of the ten that remain the largest is now Huddersfield (33rd), the southernmost is Mansfield (99th) and they're all in a sort of stripe between Lancashire and Lincolnshire.
Visiting Sunderland ticked off another postcode area (SR), so my sole omissions within England and Wales are now BB, HD and WA, i.e. Blackburn, Huddersfield and Warrington.
In the last ten years I've been to every county in England at least once except Northumberland and Lancashire. I have obviously been to both of those, just longer ago. Technically I went to the historic county of Lancashire last week when I went to Stockport, but not the ceremonial county so it doesn't count.
My trip to Stockport cost just £15.20 thanks to buying ridiculously cheap tickets two months in advance during the Rail Sale earlier in the year. London to Crewe was £5.20 and Crewe to Stockport was £2.40. I can't currently find a way of getting to Stockport by train for less than £50 (or Chesterfield for less than £40, or Huddersfield for less than £90).
Yes I am a cheapskate, but if you're only going to visit a town once why not wait until a bargain fare is available? Here are the last ten farflung towns I visited and how much my bargain fare cost: Stockport (£15), Sunderland/Hartlepool (£28), Redditch (£18), Stafford/Crewe (£23), Rugby (£8), Nottingham (£30), Cheltenham/Gloucester (£34).
If you like bargain fares, be aware that Southeastern are offering thousands of £5 fares over the weekend of April 5th/6th as part of their Network Weekend promotion. There are still some left. More information here. I've snapped up two so I can fill in another gap in my attempt to (eventually) walk the entire Kent coast. Fingers crossed for non-windswept weather.
I got really lucky with the weather in Stockport because somehow in January I managed to book a trip in March on "the warmest day of the year so far". Ditto I played an advance blinder for Sunderland, unintentionally picking the one sunny day in a run of cold and damp. I assume my future meteorological luck has now run out.
My trip to Stockport very nearly never happened because the line north was blocked by "a casualty on the tracks" near Rugeley Trent Valley. My first train stalled at Milton Keynes for an hour while British Transport police 'conducted an investigation', which I fear was because this very train had been first over the tracks in Rugeley earlier that morning. Very few trains were going anywhere. I got lucky by eventually transferring to an Avanti service, next stop Crewe, although this subsequently went on a guided tour of the West Midlands which would have made certain trackbashers very happy. I was then permitted on a second Avanti where I sat amid business suits, somewhat embarrassed how little I'd paid, arriving into Stockport just half an hour late. That lost half hour ruined my chances of visiting a couple of attractions but it could have been much worse and I might have had to give up in Milton Keynes and go home.
(We all have similar tales of "oh my it was a dreadful journey" which nobody else is interested in, but sometimes it's a fine line between a fabulous day out and a full refund)
The Bee Network is bringing joined-up bus travel to Greater Manchester. A single bus journey in Manchester costs £2, but by scanning the QR code on your paper ticket "you can use it again to board any Bee Network bus within 60 minutes from the time it was issued." This is very similar to Hopper fares in London where the equivalent price is £1.75, but London's daily bus cap is £5.25 whereas in Manchester you can buy a one-day bus ticket for £5. Contactless payment launched on Bee Network buses earlier this week.
I also stopped off in Crewe for an hour on the way back, this because the homebound connection was otherwise too tight to risk. I can confirm that the new bus station is finally open and looks quite pretty at dusk.
