Where the heck are we? The far side of Redbridge, almost in Havering Be more precise: On the southern edge of Hainault Country Park Nearest tube station: Fairlop, but 1½ miles away so hardly near Nearest bus routes: both the 247 and 362 stop by the summit Heights of summits:Hog Hill (65m), Dog Kennel Hill (84m)
Thing 1 on Hog Hill: Redbridge Cycling Centre
Background: When the London 2012 Olympics swallowed the former Eastway cycle circuit, alternative facilities were created here on Hog Hill. The site included a road circuit, BMX bumps and off road tracks, all with rather more contours than Stratford could muster. Tentative plans were made to use Hog Hill for the actual 2012 mountain bike event but the IOC laughed and said it would be too tame so everything relocated to Essex. Redbridge took control of the Centre in 2014. A couple of hours of pedalling will set you back £4.70. Bike hire and kids' coaching are also available.
Experience: I was expecting a lot of happy middle class cyclists but instead I accidentally stumbled upon a British Biathlon Laser-Run & Laser-Rollerski event. They'd set up their laser shoot in the upper car park where helmeted folk with wheels on their feet were firing at targets in small white targets for the admiration of a very small crowd. To reach the pavilion you had to divert onto the road circuit dodging the occasional whoosh, and there didn't appear to be a cafe or spectator area only a reception desk, and it all looked very interesting but it was a bit uncomfortable and I swiftly left. Lesson learned: Check the list of Upcoming Track Bookings (Sunday 27 October – British Biathlon – Full road circuit booked 09.00-17.00) before you visit, and best do that with a bike.
Thing 2 on Hog Hill: Forest Park Cemetery
Background: The population of London is always growing but people keep dying so fresh burial space is always welcome. This hillside plot opened in 2005 and contains the first crematorium to be built in the capital for 40 years. The cemetery is large enough for 60 years use and is mainly, but not exclusively, for Redbridge residents.
Experience: The top of the cemetery has a great view, mainly because you can't see the crematorium at the far end. If you're mostly used to wandering around tumbledown gothic cemeteries this is very different, all upright stones and cosy epitaphs, plus the odd piece of reflective sculpture with glass petals awaiting memories of favourite grandparents. The most recent section is ablaze with floral tributes and quite affecting. Lesson learned: If a mourner arrives in a white van, best get out the way sharpish.
Thing 3 on Hog Hill: Hainault Lodge Local Nature Reserve
Background: In 1725 George I had a royal hunting lodge built at the summit of Hog Hill. It was later replaced by a little mansion, once occupied by the High Sheriff of Essex, and was later used as overspill for Oldchurch Hospital. The lodge was demolished in 1973 and the surrounding hornbeam woodland became a nature reserve, the only one in Redbridge borough.
Experience: I assumed it was all fenced off, the kind of nature reserve permanently reserved for flora and fauna, so even when I found a gap in the fence at the bottom of the hill I kept out. Lesson learned: It turns out there is an entrance, allegedly, somewhere near the cycle centre's lower car park, but I never it saw nor any sign pointing to it. This has annoyed me because I've subsequently found a nature trail leaflet online and it looks lovely and I bet it was entirely empty yesterday, so now I want to go back again to see the overgrown remains of the croquet lawn, the birch trees growing on the tennis courts and the City viewpoint beside the old oak tree.
Thing 1 on Dog Kennel Hill: Footpath to the summit
Background:Dog Kennel Hill is just a hill, I don't know why it's called that. The trig point at the summit is on the edge of a golf course so you can't quite get there without straying.
Experience: I followed Footpath 15 up from the bus stop, a weaving crunchy track through beech woodland which eventually leads to Lambourne End in Essex. Many squirrels were disturbed. It was a glorious autumnal yomp, just a stone's throw from the Country Park car park at the foot of the slope which was rammed, but not a single visitor had made their way up here. Lesson learned: As I stood in a golden brown clearing facing off against a cautious fox, I thought more fool them.
Thing 2 on Dog Kennel Hill: Hainault Golf Club
Background:The golf club opened in 1909 and has two 18 hole courses, one entirely in Redbridge, the other spreading into Havering and with two greens in Essex. If you've walked the London Loop you'll have cut across them both. There's also a Hainault Forest Golf Club nextdoor and I don't fully understand how that's different.
Experience: Not being clubbed up I only got as far as the car park. This has everything a Essexy golfing type might need including buggy hire, a hand car wash, a tandoori shack, a diner, a smokehouse and an Italian restaurant called Linguine. Weekend sorted. Lesson learned: The little green robots that collect the balls at the driving range are quite mesmeric.
Thing 3 on Dog Kennel Hill: Five Oaks Lane
Background: A single lane of backwoods housing used to bear off the main road at the foot of the hill. About ten years ago most of the properties were bought by a developer who created a dense estate called Oaklands Hamlets, half a mile long but only 150m wide so not much room to play with. 425 homes were squeezed in. Any marketing collateral suggesting a) it was in Chigwell b) had "proximity to excellent transport connections" was plainly bolx.
Experience: It's very odd seeing an isolated stripe of modern homes on a hillside in the Green Belt. The only way in is via a long driveway into a thin labyrinth of cul-de-sacs and meandering spine road. It's all nicely done with plenty of intermediate greenspace, although large gardens clearly weren't a priority. The demographic's young and mixed, so quite a few Hallowe'en wreaths on doors but also the kind of playas who buy a Ford Mustang with UR55 LUV plates. At the very far end is a park with a small playground and two new ponds but you can only stare at the surrounding countryside, there are no footpaths out into it because that's living on a private development for you. Lesson learned 1: The free shuttle to Hainault station ceased in 2019 when the company providing it went bust but nobody's removed the special bus stop yet, so move to the middle of nowhere at your peril. Lesson learned 2: As a means of cramming houses into the countryside it shows just how much can be done with a small space, and could perhaps be replicated elsewhere without everyone throwing their hands up in the air and screaming.
Thing 4 on Dog Kennel Hill: Gardens of Peace
Background: Muslims need cemeteries too, especially in East London, hence the conversion of 160 acres of brownfield on the near outskirts. Five Oaks opened in 2017 and is already nearly full. Separate men's and women's prayer spaces are provided. No eating, immodest dress, wailing or photography is permitted in the cemetery, so all you can see here is the entrance.
Experience: It makes quite an impact, the sight of rows and rows of identical rounded mounds in all directions, all overlaid with turf. Memorials are small stone tiles laid flat on top. Flowers are not encouraged but that rule isn't strictly applied. The latest burials are in the far corner and have yet to receive their grass covering. Families and individual visitors come to remember, just as in any cemetery, and also to pray both indoors and out. I wasn't the only obvious non-Muslim present. Lesson learned: I wasn't expecting to see any of this yesterday, I just walked in and had my horizons broadened. There's a lot to be said for exploring two hills.
Four tube stations are named after country lanes, the longest of which is Rayners Lane in Harrow. What's more it still follows exactly the same meandering path across two miles of suburbia as it did when everything was fields. So I've walked it.
Everything out here was fields until the 1920s, eight square miles of entirely undeveloped agricultural land between Northolt and Ruislip where the only buildings were a few scattered farmsteads. One of the handful of country lanes threading through was an unhurried backwater running approximately north-south connecting Marsh Road in Pinner to Eastcote Lane in Roxeth (now better known as South Harrow). In the mid 19th century the fields alongside belonged to Daniel Hill, a farmer from Pinner, who built a single set of cottages midway where his labourers could live. George Rayner and his family moved into these buildings in 1841, and being the sole inhabitants hereabouts the lane became known as Rayner's Lane.
The Metropolitan Railway carved through in the early 1900s, initially without stopping, but in 1906 a lonely apostrophe-less halt was built on Rayners Lane. Hardly anyone used it, and when the District line extended from Ealing in 1910 it became known as Pneumonia Junction due to its windswept rural location. Only in the 1930s did Metro-land's developers finally invade with the building of their flagship project Harrow Garden Village, boasting "houses of different types by well-known builders at popular prices", balanced out to the south of the railway by the similarly vast Tudor estate. By the end of the decade passenger numbers had rocketed to four million annually and lowly Rayner's Lane was entirely unrecognisable, but still there.
Here's where it starts, at a mini-roundabout on the main-ish road out of Pinner, alongside an entrance to the very lovely Pinner Village Gardens. The flats on the corner aren't typical and soon make way for chains of broad semis with timbered gables and bay windows, adequate parking and perhaps a well-tended dash of shrubbery. But no single design predominates, true to the developers' original boast of "no stereo-typed layouts", even down to the very occasional interspersed detached. Small crescents of green have been retained as a nod to the rural past, generally encircled by roadways. Also the house numbers here are in the mid 600s, this an indication of quite how long Rayners Lane is going to be, passing into the 500s as the road crosses a low ridge and descends into a very obvious valley.
The river at the bottom of the slope is the Yeading Brook, a lengthy tributary of the Crane, which once lingered awhile in a small pool beside the lane but now passes through in a leafy channel more suitable for the reduction of flood risk. The linear woodland to either side is called Yeading Walk and is overseen by one of the lovely community groups which proliferate in this corner of Harrow. Bring your gloves and secateurs to the main wooden bridge every Saturday to help with horticultural maintenance or buy your £1 Super Draw tickets for a chance to win £25,000 and/or an iPhone. The lane climbs again beyond the sponsored roundabout, as Metro-Landy as ever, where special mention is due to the residents at number 526 who've surrounded their wheelie-bin store with a potted display of pink and white perennials.
This understated crossroads is where George Rayner's farm cottage once stood, roughly on the corner where the bungalows are. The sole clue to its existence is that the street off to the right is called Farm Avenue (and at a stretch, perhaps, that the school behind is called Longfield Primary). It would have taken extraordinary vision back then to picture the mud-splattered lane embellished with lampposts, belisha beacons, electricity substations, junction boxes, 'No Cold Calling' signs, 20mph speed limits and a tiny prep school across the hedge with red-capped boys spilling out into their parents' 4×4s before milking time. As for the presence of a significant shopping centre just to the south with his name attached, George's mind would have boggled.
That's George's cottage on the inn sign outside the Rayners Hotel, later The Rayners public house, a Truman hostelry opened in 1937. It no longer pulls pints having been bought out by Christ The Redeemer College, a place to study Ministry and/or IT and/or Business Studies, but they can't tweak the interior too much because it's listed. The retail mix along the main parade is typically Middlesex/South Asian, so Wetherspoons as well as Shambu's Juice Bar, Wenzels as well as Roti Hut and fried chicken as well as paneer and eggless cakes. A special mention to Harrow council who've already managed to attach a red poppy to every single lamppost hereabouts. An even more special mention to the tube station, one of Charles Holden's trademarkbrickcubes, its waffle-shaped reinforced concrete roof now only visible through pigeon netting. Most lovely.
Alexandra Avenue is the main road south, a key arterial in the developers' overall masterplan, but the original alignment of Rayners Lane still exists as the service road round the back. Turn off down the slope beside what used to be Tonino's diner and prepare to be underimpressed. Round the front is the utterly extraordinary Art Deco-ness of the former Grosvenor Cinema, now headquarters of the Zoroastrian Trust, but all you see back here is an all-brick rear entrance and a grubby car park with a £125 clamping penalty. Alternatively charge your e-moped at Ali Garage, purchase mystery fillets at Super Seller Fishmonger or sign up for cricket and darts behind the conifers at Harrow Town Sports Club (est 1934). It's nigh impossible to imagine this with haycarts and cows.
Now the residential zigzagging begins. The original Rayner's Lane made four right-angled turns to negotiate the edge of a field so today's Rayners Lane does that too, now lined by broad Tudorbethan semis with pronounced gables in vanilla shades. Front gardens are generally two-cars wide (and used for that purpose), but still with sufficient space for Harrow's three coloured bins. The H12 bus rumbles through every 10 minutes in case you live in Stanmore and want to rock down and see all this from a double decker. After the second bend the lane heads noticeably downhill and also forwards in time as the adjacent houses suddenly leap into the 21st century. This patch used to be a fairly miserable postwar council estate but was transferred to a housing association in 2002 who undertook an unusually successful round of 'decant and upgrade'. I still can't work out if the Costcuter supermarket is a spelling error or deliberate avoidance of trademark.
The sports ground on the last corner belongs to the Tithe Farm Social Club, established in 1933 and built on the site of a rifle range which once used to be the only other thing down Rayner's Lane. Today it's home to Rayners Lane FC and Broadfields United, two football teams whose home games alternate (and who yesterday managed a home win and an away draw respectively). If the facilities look relatively well off it's likely because they sold off their tennis courts for housing. Alongside is Newton Farm Ecology Park, a former council depot made good and the source of the little-known Roxbourne river. Their volunteer group meets every Saturday to tidy up and appears to have a particular litter-picking fixation. Much respect to Peter Davies who's filled a noticeboard with the results of his recent month-long beercan survey which revealed that Budweiser (219) was the most-chucked, closely followed by Carlsberg Special Brew (160) and Holsten Pils (129), although he only found a single Kopparberg strawberry and lime.
After all that newness it's time for the semis to return, not quite so appealingly but we're a long way from the station now. At number 44 a chunk of pebbledash has fallen off revealing a pitted blue plaster shell underneath. The main point of interest here is the Roxbourne Complex, a cluster of community health facilities including a GP practice, High Dependency Unit and mental health care centre. This was built on the site of Harrow Isolation Hospital which opened in 1896 for the "reception of cases of scarlet fever, diphtheria, enteric fever and Asiatic cholera", and was only the second building to appear on Rayner's Lane. This ends close by at another small roundabout where it leaks onto Eastcote Lane and Roxeth Green Avenue, the last of which was just a footpath when the hospital opened.
Having walked all two miles I'm still amazed I was precisely following a country lane that George Rayner would have known in the 1840s. I'm perhaps more amazed that an illiterate labourer who lived in poverty ended up giving his name to a road, then a station, then an entire suburb as if he were once a person of importance. There's fame and then there's having your name on every copy of the tube map.
Today I thought I'd dig into my inbox archive and bring you ten emails I was sent in October 2004. Twenty years ago was a different time.
From londonmobs(1/10/04)
The flashmob that was due to take place next week has been cancelled for security reasons. There will be no event taking place next week. Please cancel your plans and await for further details.
(and that was it, no further London flashmobs were organised)
cc-ed from my work address(5/10/04)
A new extractor fan was fitted in my kitchen by your electrician yesterday to meet the requirements of the landlord's annual gas safety certificate.
The extractor fan comes on when I turn my kitchen light on, but then remains on for 45 minutes after I turn my kitchen light off. Even if I just turn the light on for 5 seconds, the extractor fan stays on for 45 minutes before automatically switching off. I would expect an extractor fan to remain on for a few minutes after turning off a kitchen light, but 45 minutes does seem extreme. I know that my new extractor fan is an important safety feature, but I am concerned by the noise pollution and by the electricity costs of running such a fan at least 10 times longer than would appear to be necessary.
May I enquire if the 45 minute switch-off time is part of the specification of my new extractor fan, or whether perhaps the timer mechanism is malfunctioning?
(my extractor fan still stays on for 45 minutes, grrr)
Here are the top phrases searched:
2 for "beer bellies", 2 for "dfs music", 2 for "krays", 1 for "babes", 1 for "belle de jour", 1 for "blue room", 1 for "dfs advert", 1 for "flash mob", 1 for "geezer du jour", 1 for "grannys garden"
(these days the blog gets over 3000 Google searches every week, apparently)
From a reader(10/10/04)
Oh my gawd. How, erm, exciting.
I need you to promise me that you will never volunteer to be the first aid or fire warden at work.
(I have held to this advice to this day)
From United Mileage Plus(12/10/04)
Now is the time to secure your elite status for 2005. Or, if you are within reach of the next level, secure a higher elite status level in the Mileage Plus® programme next year. Enjoy all the privileges and benefits that come with elite status by earning double Elite Qualifying Miles and Segments (EQM/EQS)*.
(I had 40000 Redeemable Miles when they zeroed my total in 2008)
From Mum(20/10/04)
At the bottom of the item... hadn't 'been' possible anywhere else.
Enjoyed reading all this.
(I have just the one parental proof reader these days)
Attached please find details of the characters for next week's murder :)
I'll mail separately re which character you've been 'allocated to'.
We're going to aim to start the game at 7pm, but do turn up anytime after 3pm.
(I was particularly surprised when I turned out to be the murderer)
From another reader(27/10/04)
Hope you're well.
My house mate was watching the National TV Awards last night - obviously I wasn't watching it myself - and David Jason won an award for best actor or some such thing. He wasn't there to collect his award and the person who collected it on his behalf said that David Jason was off on a night shoot for a programme to be broadcast next year called "Diamond Geezer". It seems your reputation has spread. Have you been turned into a series?
(ITV broadcast Diamond Geezer five months later, and Google sent hundreds of viewers to my blog)
From Celebdaq(29/10/04)
Hi ... here's your weekly email update from Celebdaq, the celebrity stock exchange! Who are the top movers and the big losers in this week's market? Which of your shares paid out this week? It's all here...
4000 shares in Bono earned you £1917.24
80 shares in Britney Spears earned you £26.11
5000 shares in David Beckham earned you £18708.50
5000 shares in Matt Lucas earned you £0.00
5000 shares in Prince Charles earned you £43598.50
The second full week of roadworks at the Bow Roundabout has seen drilling continue on the Stratford side, both under and beside the flyover. A third lane is already substantially carved out at the end of Stratford High Street. Below we see a broad curve where grey concrete block paving used to be, but it's been drilled out because that's no longer going to be the edge of the roundabout.
• No works have yet taken place on the other arms, nor round any other part of the actual roundabout, but cones remain in place slimming traffic down from two lanes to one.
• Some buses completing journeys on route 205 are crossing the flyover and then (somehow) crossing back again to reach the bus stand at Bow Church, rather than what they normally do which is go round the roundabout.
• I'd say the traffic queues aren't quite so bad this week, but still definitely bad at times.
It's now two months since the Overground's six lines weren't renamed, and likely another month until the big switcheroo takes place. But every so often another new sign slips into view, its protective vinyl unaccountably removed, and this was the case at Stratford station a couple of weeks ago. A double-sided Mildmay line panel was revealed at one end of platforms 1 and 2 (click to embiggen), while a separate sign directed passengers up to the Mildmay line from the subway. These were all swiftly covered over so don't bother looking there now, but it's interesting to see how coloured tramlines will be used to depict the other Overground lines on interchange diagrams.
In further confirmation that the renaming is running late, all six of Tim Dunn's deep dives into the new line names are now available wherever you normally get your TfL podcasts, rounding off with a Huguenot-esque and moquette-tastic 'Weaver line' special.
Some bus-related QR codes are woefully inadequate
This poster on the platform at Queen's Park station looks promising. It's titled Scan for local bus information, and you might expect that if you scanned it you'd get local bus information. Not so.
The QR code instead takes you to a generic landing page, tfl.gov.uk/maps, from which you're expected to use the Search nearby feature and enter the name of the station. When you try that on a phone you get "We found several results for Queen's Park. Did you mean" and a choice of 11 options. Picking the tube station leads to a list of bus stops, each listed with route numbers, and it takes one more click to get live bus times and maybe a route if you use two fingers and scroll the map. This is a piss poor customer experience.
It wouldn't have taken much effort for the QR code to link directly to the webpage for Queen's Park station, but it seems the workshy sods in the poster production department have created a generic poster they can slap up anywhere, leaving us to do the extra work, rather than making bespoke posters for individual locations. If you're going to use QR codes for customer information, TfL, try linking to the actual information rather than to a lazy top level domain.
The Dangleway has a special Hallowe'en offer
Well of course it does, because upselling seasonal experiences has become part of the cablecar's ongoing raison d'être. This year's special event starts today and involves "a round trip whilst completing a spooky Scavenger Hunt sheet. Upon completion you will receive a Halloween Goodie Bag and the opportunity to decorate a Halloween mask in the Cable Car Experience." I like to think there's an employee somewhere in TfL's Dangleway department whose job it is to come up with the cheapest possible promotion, and who'll hopefully have been rewarded this year for what boils down to a sheet of paper, a bag of tat, a piece of card and some crayons.
Route 205 is up for an annoying change
Route 205 connects Bow Church to Paddington and has done since 2009, conveniently mirroring tube lines across the northern edge of central London. But a new consultation reveals TfL are up for fiddling with it at its western end, not because it needs changing but because another route needs chopping. The lynchpin of the plan is to curtail route 30 from Marble Arch to Euston, a two-mile cut, and then because passengers still want to go that way to divert route 205 to Marble Arch instead. Anyone who still wants a bus to Paddington can always catch a 27, they argue, although they'll need to change and probably wait longer too.
It's not the first time TfL have proposed a seemingly unnecessary change to route 205. During 2022's apocalyptic Central Bus Review they proposed diverting it to run from Mile End to Parliament Hill Fields to make up for the 214 being diverted to make up for the 88 being diverted to make up for the 24 being withdrawn, i.e. it was the last in a chain of consequential dominos. Thankfully they scrapped that idea and hopefully they'll scrap this too, because sometimes "ah but if we change that then we'll need to change that" goes too far.
Taxi fares might go up
TfL are currently running a consultation asking how much taxi fares should go up. They have seven options, each tweaking the minimum fare and four tariffs in different combinations. "Please let us know which option you would prefer by completing our survey", they say, but given one of the options is "no change/fares frozen" it's very hard to imagine anyone opting for anything else.
Another Superloop timetable is lying
I've discovered another pair of bus timetables with ridiculous sets of journey times, at least one of which must be fictional. These are the timetables for routes SL9 and 140 at Northolt Park heading towards Hayes. The SL9 is supposed to be the faster bus, and yet...
» The SL9 gets to Northolt in 4 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 3.
» The SL9 gets to Yeading White Hart Roundabout in 10 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 7.
» The SL9 gets to Yeading Lane in 14 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 11.
» The SL9 gets to The Grapes in 17 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 13.
» The SL9 gets to Hayes Town Centre in 24 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 18.
» The SL9 gets to Hayes & Harlington station in 26 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 19.
Be aware that timetables are often bolx.
Easter line closures announced
If you're planning ahead you'll be interested to know what line closures are proposed over the Easter weekend in April 2025. The following will be shut for all four days...
• DLR: Bank/Tower Gateway to Canary Wharf/Canning Town; Stratford to West India Quay
• Piccadilly: Acton Town to Uxbridge
• Windrush: Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction
• Crossrail: Trains will not call at Acton Main Line, Hanwell and West Ealing
...and this pair shut from Saturday to Easter Monday...
• Bakerloo: Stonebridge Park to Harrow & Wealdstone
• Lioness: Euston to Watford Junction
Walk-through metal detectors have been a fixture here for years, ditto a perfunctory bag check. This did tend to create queues but nothing ridiculous, and last time I visited back in May I was inside within five minutes. How much worse could it get with liquids banned? Spoilers - really very bad indeed.
n.b. while the Sainsbury Wing is closed the main entrance to the National Gallery is up the steps at the front.
I turned up on the north terrace of Trafalgar Square yesterday morning (midweek, mid-autumn, not yet half term, hardly peak period). Things were already looking grim with a queue all the way along the front of the building and around the corner, almost as far as the National Portrait Gallery's restaurant. On closer inspection this turned out to be three queues but that still wasn't particularly reassuring given that none of them appeared to be moving.
My first issue was to work out which queue to join given that they weren't clearly labelled. I hung around the back of all three and found zero information, just a lot of patient folk occasionally shuffling forwards. I hoped to get more information at the front, below the central staircase, but didn't see anything there either. I walked up to the only obvious member of staff nearby, a bouncer-looking type with a diamond earring, and asked which queue to join. "The Van Gogh's over there," he said, mis-guessing why I was here. I explained I just wanted to join the normal queue and he pointed to the left, which I was pleasantly surprised to see was the shortest of the three. I bet it moves really slowly, I thought.
It did. I joined the back of the queue, just beyond the bollards, just as a homeless chap walked over and quietly harangued us for cash. The sound of Hallelujah drifted over from a nearby busker, followed later by Hotel California, Get Lucky and something by Ed Sheeran. We moved forwards in spits and spurts, not very far, not very often. The family in front of me had a ticklist of places they planned to visit today, starting with Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, now stalling somewhat as they attempted to enter the National Gallery. The family behind me suddenly asked if this was the 1145 queue and I said I didn't know there was such a thing, so one of them walked off to look and it turned out there was, so they left and joined it. We moved no more quickly after that.
It turned out the three queues were as follows:
• General entry: left of steps, 60m
• Members & pre-booked: right of steps, 90m
• Van Gogh exhibition: via accessible entrance, 90m
It took a very tedious 35 minutes to reach the foot of the steps where two of the queues met. Here I finally found the sole signage explaining which queue was which, but on small pink boards displayed at shoulder height where they were easily blocked. At 10am no doubt they're very legible but once a queue develops people's bodies swiftly hide them from view. A single member of staff was checking punters on the pre-booked side, either QR codes displayed on phones or printouts proffered on sheets of paper. Unsurprisingly he was also having to deal with regular questions from members of the public baffled by which queue was which, and you could see them weighing up whether seeing the lovely art was worth the obvious wait. Two smart looking gentlemen, seemingly queuejumping, took some persuading that they couldn't simply walk in like it was last Wednesday or something.
Climbing the steps would normally have been a simple matter but in this case it took 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top. The pre-booked queue alongside was moving faster but not significantly faster, which must've been frustrating. Only when you reached the top was there a sign pointing out what couldn't be taken inside - knives, aerosols and fireworks, obviously, but also now liquids, placards and cut flowers. Four bins had been provided for chucking away undesirable objects and for pouring away that nice drink you didn't realise you shouldn't have been carrying. By the time I was finally allowed into the building I had been waiting FIFTY-FIVE minutes, which was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the queue then split into ← Bags and No bags →, each with its own detector arch, and because I didn't have a bag I didn't actually need to have waited all that time for a bag search anyway.
From my observations the pre-booked queue moved about twice as fast as the unbooked one but was also 50% longer, i.e. anyone waiting in that queue would have taken about 40-45 minutes to enter the building. That's also a miserable amount of time to be waiting, especially for those who've done as asked and pre-booked a slot. The National Gallery essentially isn't walk-up any more, it's a queueing marathon, and all because visitors can't be trusted not to sneak soup in and chuck it over an Old Master. I felt particularly bad for the Van Gogh queue, most of whom were cultured and elderly but still expected to queue for well over half an hour without anywhere to sit, all the time serenaded by X-Factor level bleating. Perhaps don't visit any time soon.
And yet obviously the art was a brilliant as ever, and with fewer people milling about even easier to admire. I can't normally get a shot of Bathers at Asnières without any people standing in front but yesterday I took one almost straight away. I loved the small room reminiscing about David Hockney's love for Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ and how he sneaked it into a couple of his paintings. On a larger scale the new Constable exhibition is stimulatingly excellent, focused around The Hay Wain (unglued version) but also featuring preparatory sketches and other similarly rural works. It's free to enter and open until 2nd February so you have plenty of time to get here, and also to hope they either scrap this infuriating liquids ban or find a much more efficient way of enforcing it. We shouldn't have to wait out in the cold for an hour while a paltry number of guards rummage around the deeper recesses of rucksacks and handbags looking for something that shouldn't be there.
For comparison I also went to five other museums and galleries to see how faffy their current entry procedures are.
Science Museum: The online pre-booking procedure for free admission tickets is still eight pages long, which the administrative curmudgeons try to insist you complete on your phone before entering. I ignored that and walked up to the queueless desk where there are now only three questions (Have you been here before? Name? Would you like to donate?) and was entering the museum with my paper ticket less than a minute later. Natural History Museum: I used the side entrance on Exhibition Road to skip the line out front and it paid dividends. "Is it OK if I hold you here, just to say you’ve queued?" asked the steward, somewhat suspiciously, and again I was barely there for a minute. Victoria & Albert Museum: no bag, no questions, straight in. National Portrait Gallery: no bag, no questions, straight in. British Museum: I went to the front where you normally enter, only to find a sign saying that's now for "pre-booked tickets only" and ticket-free visitors have to enter round the back on Montague Place. Grrr. It took me eight minutes to walk to the rear entrance, then just two to pass through the security cabin where my non-existent bag didn't have to be checked. Ten minutes total, so easily the faffiest of this fivesome but still nowhere near as miserable as the National Gallery suddenly is.
This year the Stirling Prize for architecture went to the Elizabeth line but five years ago it went to council housing in Norwich. They could have built flats but instead they packed 105 energy-efficient houses into a handful of dense terraced streets, aligned east-west to maximise solar gain. Extra-thick walls help to keep heating costs way down, and so net-zero-friendly was the project that it achieved full Passivhaus status. In 2019 RIBA's judges described Goldsmith Street as a "modest masterpiece", rating it above a Speyside distillery, a Leicestershire opera house and the new London Bridge station. I liked it too.
Despite being barely ten minutes from the city centre you wouldn't stumble upon these houses by accident, tucked as they are behind Victorian terraces and typically dull postwar flats. The light-coloured brick frontage shines out, highlighted at ground level by a sequence of brightly-coloured doors. Behind the two central streets is a shared alleyway with picnic tables, PIN-code protected, and round the front on the green a single ancient tree brings some welcome asymmetry. In a signature touch from Riches Hawley Mikhail the original 1840s street name Greyhound Opening is celebrated in the paving near a rumblestrip. But after five years this is no longer just an architect's drawing, it has a proper lived-in look as the stamp of reality has caught up with the project.
The first sign of assimilation is a St George's flag flapping limply from an upper balcony. Round the corner four chairs have been left out in case anyone wants to take them, and the parking bay is occasionally drenched by a householder washing her car with a hose (which I niftily dodged). One particular front garden has become a mess of plastic toys with three Nerf guns spilling out onto the street, because every estate has one family like that. And behind the scenes is the unpalatable truth that the first houses on Goldsmith Street are now eligible for sale under the Right to Buy scheme, potentially bleeding away this precious resource until Norwich council has nothing to show for it bar a nice prize. Social housing may be broken but it is sometimes brilliantly done.
✉ Radio Norfolk
The local BBC radio station has its studios inside The Forum, Norwich's great millennium project, most of which is library. Head up to the first floor balcony and you can stare in through the glass and see the programme makers at work, but don't come after 2pm because budget cuts mean the microphone is syndicated elsewhere. You get some sense of the BBC's regional austerity from the abandoned reception desk downstairs, the blandest possible counter bedecked only with a nigh-empty bottle of hand sanitiser, not a flurry of colourful images celebrating local talent. Also before anyone nips in and makes an Alan Partridge comment, this is Radio Norfolk but Alan was at Radio Norwich which doesn't exist but sounds like it does which is why Steve Coogan chose it.
✉ Wensum River Parkway
Norwich's medieval city centre was located strategically inside the last big bend on the river Wensum, just before it flows into the Yare, and a lot of it is walkable. Two miles of this urban meander has been designated the Riverside Walk or perhaps the Wensum River Parkway, it's hard to say given that the council appears to have given up on supporting all its previous rebrandings. But it's still a fine and proper walk through history, passing medieval city walls, timbered cottages, towered churches, industrial woollen mills, newbuild flats and England's last surviving swan pit. I started at the tidal limit and weaved round to the Championship football ground via 12 photogenic bridges. [12 photos]
(1) New Mills marks the head of navigation and supports a former water-powered air compressor station used for moving sewage. The only similar contraption in the UK is inside the Houses of Parliament. It's currently up for renovation/replacement so I got to admire it just in time. (2) Coslany Bridge started out wooden in the 12th century, was rebuilt in stone in 1521 and replaced by the current cast iron structure in 1804. The Anchor Brewery alongside is now heritage flats. (3) Duke's Palace Bridge is a dull but necessary 1970s road bridge, whose cast iron original has been cunningly relocated and repurposed above an entrance to the car park at the Castle Mall shopping centre. (4) St George's Bridge was designed by Sir John Soane and these days is pedestrians and bikes only. This is where the waterfront becomes inaccessible so the Riverside Walk briefly falls apart as a coherent concept. (5) Fye Bridge has a characterful pub-side setting and also the very best backdrop, a row of pastel cottages along the quayside with Norwich cathedral's spire launching high above the rooftops. (6) Whitefriars Bridge will be 100 years old next year but looks older because the council were careful when they widened the original. St James' Mill alongside was Norwich's first steam-powered factory, looks amazing and is suddenly in line to become an 88 bed hotel.
(7) Jarrold Bridge is a low swooshing footbridge and is the first of the newbies, opened 12 years ago. It was instigated by the chairman of the local independent department store as a welcome shortcut to Mousehold Heath. (8) Bishop Bridge, in sharp contrast, is by far the oldest Wensum bridge and dates back to 1341. Local conservation groups stopped the council rebuilding this one in the 1920s and we thank them. (9) Foundry Bridge became more important when the railway station was built alongside. These days the riverside path passes through a pub terrace. It's the first road bridge in almost a mile. (10) Lady Julian Bridge commemorates England's first female author who lived in a secluded cell at a nearby church. This swing bridge is 600 years younger than her not-quite bestselling Revelations of Divine Love. (11) The Novi Sad Friendship Bridge, named after one of Norwich's twin towns, is another modern swing bridge designed to ensure that the lower Wensum remains navigable. (12) Carrow Bridge carries Carrow Road where Delia's football team play. It's a double bascule lifting bridge and the lowest road bridge on the Wensum, the lowest of all being the Trowse Swing Bridge which carries the mainline railway but you can't walk to that.
(I know some people hate it when I animate multiple photos so this time I've put a big version of each bridge on Flickr so you can take your time working though)
✉ M&M Convenience Store
I can never walk past a shopfront which sells paper goods but can't spell, so this is the front of an offending corner shop on St Martin's Road.
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, a bit of a stroll, gorgeous townscape, lush greensward, multiple refreshment opportunities, excellent shopping, as featured in a top soccer comedy-drama television series, won't take long. So here's a location-bashing circuit in the heart of Richmond as seen on Ted Lasso, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
n.b. I'm walking the route suggested on page 26 of the Visit Richmond Guide 2024/2025
Turn left out of the station and cross the road at the pedestrian lights. Go straight down Station Passage and turn left. Proceed along The Green and you'll see the pub 'The Prince's Head' at the end of Richmond Green.
I don't remember seeing the station in the series which must be why they don't mention it. I do remember seeing Richmond Theatre in series 1 episode 4 as the exterior of the charity auction, but they don't mention that here so I won't say more. That's 40% of the walk completed already. Ooh look, it's THE pub.
The pub is called 'The Crown and Anchor' in the television series.
Yes it is, it's where Mae pulls pints and the AFC Richmond fans watch all the matches live on TV, which is quite frankly the most unrealistic thing about the programme. Anyone can go inside for a beer (it's a Fuller's), plus maybe order cheeseburger and chips or venison faggots. Just be aware that the interior shots were filmed in a studio in Hayes, not here, so don't get too carried away.
Note the benches and telephone box used in the series.
To 95% of the population it's just a bench but to fans it's where Ted and Coach Beard often sit in the morning, drink coffee and talk in aphorisms. I'm guessing the man sitting on the bench in this photo is not a fan.
Go down Paved Court beside the pub and you'll see the street on which Ted has his house at No 11A.
This alleyway is the most evocative of all Richmond's locations, including the actual door to Ted's actual flat where he bakes his special biscuits. Nextdoor is an Italian restaurant which says 'Eat like Ted' in the window, although his go-to takeaway was the tasty-looking empanadas outlet three doors down.
A shop selling memorabilia is on the left.
So many Ted Lasso fans gather here that they really have opened an official souvenir shop. Obviously it has a giant yellow 'Believe' poster on the ceiling. Treats you can buy include mugs, caps, water bottles, blue and red scarves, Bantr-sponsored jerseys, Dani Rojas greetings cards (Futbol Is Life) and AFC Richmond shot glasses.
At the end of Paved Court turn left and go to the end of King Street to George Street, turn left and return to the station.
And we're done. Sorry there was nothing of interest on the return to the station, indeed the only properly Ted-dy bit was the 100 metres from the pub down Paved Court, but feel free to smile inanely anyway. Richmond til we die!
To celebrate/commemorate the 219th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, here are 40 Trafalgar-based lists.
Places called Trafalgar: cape in Spain, hamlet in Cornwall, town in Indiana, community in Nova Scotia, town in Victoria, waterfall in Dominica, village in South Africa, subzone in Singapore, ward in Madrid
UK/French battles in the War of the Third Coalition (1805): Suriname, Diamond Rock, Blanc-Nez and Gris-Nez, Cape Finisterre, Trafalgar, Cape Ortegal, Blaauwberg, Maida Tube stations indirectly named after UK/French battles in the War of the Third Coalition: Trafalgar Square, Maida Vale
French ships sunk at the Battle of Trafalgar: Fougueux, Redoubtable, Intrépide French ships captured at the Battle of Trafalgar: Aigle, Algésiras, Berwick, Bucentaure, Fougueux, Intrépide, Redoutable, Swiftsure
Bas reliefs at the foot of Nelson Column: The Battle of the Nile, The Bombardment of Copenhagen, The Battle of Cape St Vincent, The Battle of Trafalgar/The Death of Nelson
Lighthouses in Cádiz: Barbate, Camarinal, Cape Roche, Cape Trafalgar, Cornonera, Chipiona, Punta Carnero, Rota, San Sebastian, Sancti Petri, Tarifa Limits of the Strait of Gibraltar: West - Cape Trafalgar to Cape Spartel, East - Europa Point to the Peninsula of Almina
Nelson Monuments: Trafalgar Square, Great Yarmouth, Edinburgh, Portsmouth, Portsdown Hill, Liverpool, Hereford, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Swarland, Birchen Edge
UK towns and cities with a Trafalgar Square: Ashton-Under-Lyne, Darley, Fowey, Gosport, Great Yarmouth, London, Long Eaton, Long Sutton, Scarborough, Sunderland
Acts prohibited within Trafalgar Square: any act which is likely to pollute water in any fountain; placing any canoe, boat or inflatable object in any fountain or fountain bowl; using any kite, model aircraft, boat or mechanically propelled or operated model; washing or drying any piece of clothing or fabric; lighting a fire or barbeque; placing, throwing or dropping a lighted match or any other thing likely to cause a fire
Switch-on dates for the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree lights: 5/12/19, 3/12/20, 2/12/21, 1/12/22, 7/12/23, 5/12/24
Names of Trafalgar Square's pigeon-scaring hawks: Liam, Jack, Squirt, Lemmy
Fourth Plinth artworks: Alison Lapper Pregnant, Hotel for the Birds, One & Other, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, Hahn/Cock, Gift Horse, Really Good, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, The End, Antelope, 850 Improntas, (Lady In Blue)
Tube stations which opened on the same day as Trafalgar Square: Regents Park, Piccadilly Circus, Waterloo, Lambeth North
London streets called Trafalgar Something: Trafalgar Avenue, Trafalgar Close, Trafalgar Gardens, Trafalgar Grove, Trafalgar Place, Trafalgar Street, Trafalgar Road, Trafalgar Terrace, Trafalgar Way London's Trafalgar pubs:The Trafalgar (Merton), Trafalgar Arms(Tooting), Trafalgar Tavern (Greenwich)
Royal Navy ships named HMS Trafalgar: 106-gun first rate (1820-1825), 120-gun Caledonia-class first rate (1841-1873), Trafalgar-class battleship (1887-1911), Battle-class destroyer (1944-1970), Trafalgar-class submarine (1981-2009) Trafalgar class submarines: Trafalgar, Turbulent, Tireless, Torbay, Trenchant, Talent, Triumph* (*still in active service) Renamed 3031 Class steam locomotives: Nelson, Racer, Bellerophon, Emlyn, Prometheus, Trafalgar, Timour, Tartar, Ulysses
The last four shows at the Trafalgar Theatre: A Taste of Honey, Jersey Boys, A Mirror, The 39 Steps The next four shows at the Trafalgar Theatre: The Duchess, Charlie Cook's Favourite Book, The Merchant of Venice 1936, Clueless The Musical
Years a Trafalgar Day bank holiday was seriously proposed:1993, 2011, 2020
Anagrams of Trafalgar: Rat Lag Far, Fart La Rag, Flag Art RA, Alar Graft
Tracks on the Bee Gees 1971 album Trafalgar: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, Israel, The Greatest Man in the World, It's Just the Way, Remembering, Somebody Stop the Music / Trafalgar, Don't Wanna Live Inside Myself, When Do I, Dearest, Lion in Winter, Walking Back to Waterloo
The reds in UK Monopoly: Strand, Fleet Street, Trafalgar Square The reds in US Monopoly: Kentucky Avenue, Indiana Avenue, Illinois Avenue The reds in French Monopoly: Avenue Matignon Chance, Boulevard Malesherbes, Avenue Henri-Martin The reds in German Monopoly: Theaterstraße, Museumstraße, Opernplatz The reds in Icelandic Monopoly: Ármúli, Síðumúli, Suðurlandsbraut The reds in Greek Monopoly: Οδός Πραξιτέλους, Οδός Κοραή, Πλατεία Ομόνοιας The reds in Indian Monopoly: Lucknow, Chandigargh, Jaipur The reds in Venezuelan Monopoly: Nuevo Circo, El Velódromo, El Teleferico The reds in Sesame Street Monopoly: The Count's Castle, Bert's Rooftop Pidgeon Coop, Ernie's Bathtub The reds in New Zealand Monopoly: High Street, Market Street, Trafalgar Street
London has a handful of free bus routes if you know where to look. Possibly the most peripheral are these two regular shuttles which service an isolated business estate at the lakier end of Bedfont, just south of Heathrow. One collects staff from the Piccadilly line, the other National Rail at Feltham, and the fare is officially zero.
It's a strange place, a 1990s commercial development built across former gravel pits, originally with IBM as the lead tenant. It's a bit like Stockley Park in that it's surrounded by landscaped grassland and water but this is much more regimented, a giant rectangle surrounded by chunky three-storey office buildings. The largest tenant is currently Cisco, the software infrastructure people, bringing a futuristic dash of Silicon Valley to outer Hounslow. Wherever you walk security will be watching. And although it used to be known as Bedfont Lakes it's recently been bought out and rebranded Bloom Heathrow, so that's the guff plastered across the outside of the buses.
BL1 runs every 12 minutes during the peaks, i.e. when most staff are commuting, widening to hourly over lunch. It's a quick there-and-back to Feltham, no stopping inbetween. BL2 serves Heathrow Terminal 4 as well as Hatton Cross and runs half-hourly at best, again hourly in the middle of the day. Until last year the service was run by London United but the new operator is Diamond Bus, which I thought was fabulously appropriate, so I attempted to go for a ride.
Again it's not 100% obvious online if anyone can ride the BL1 and BL2 or only staff, so I took no chances and turned up with a briefcase. I let a proper worker board first and she appeared to flash something at the driver which got me worried, although I'm not entirely sure what it was. I gave it my best shot and asked "Is this the bus for Cisco?" I was nodded aboard, either deception achieved or because everyone's allowed to do that. And then I endured a jaunt down the A30 between runways and grazing horses, perched on leatherette, alighting when the other worker did because I wasn't sure if the bus carried on all the way into Bloom itself. Just the once, I think.
More of London's Free* Buses
• H30 Heathrow T4 - Heathrow T5 [every 20 minutes] (and all the way round to T2/T3 overnight after the tube stops running)
• 849 Putney - Roehampton University [every 20 minutes] (for students and staff but also the general public)
• KU1/KU2/KU3 Kingston University [every 20 minutes] (for students and anyone else)
• ?
* n.b. must be free to all, must be a regular service (no one-offs for special events)
London's Free Buses RP1: Richmond Park circular Length of journey: 12 miles, 90 minutes
London has a handful of free bus routes if you know where to look. Possibly the longest and least frequent of these is the RP1, a minibus service organised by the Royal Parks to provide accessible transport through and around Richmond Park. Just because you can't get around easily any more, why should you miss out on enjoying London's finest park? But it's not specifically operated as a mobility bus, anyone can use it, perhaps even go for the full 12 mile sightseeing circuit... and all for free.
When? Originally it only ran on Wednesdays so I'd often find myself in Richmond Park on not-Wednesday and think "ah, missed it again". Then last year it was extended to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, offering a much wider window to ride, and I got lucky. It's also not a year-round bus, this year only operational from 29th March to 27th November, so you still have a month to get in a leaf-fall ride.
Route? All over the park and then some, ensuring everywhere gets a chance. First stop is always the end of the Roehampton estate in Danebury Avenue, then it's a clockwise circuit ticking off six of the Gates and three of the main sights - Pen Ponds, the Isabella Plantation and Pembroke Lodge. It's hard to get the measure of the route from the timetable so thankfully a map exists showing stops 1 to 12, and if you treat it as a dot to dot you'll see how wilfully meandering the RP1 is.
Timetable? See here. The first bus is around half nine and the last at half four, which might sound like ages but is in fact only time for the bus to make four journeys. Two are in the morning, then the driver goes on a lunchbreak so important it has its own column in the timetable, then two are in the afternoon. If you want to make a full circuit, best rock up before eleven or after one.
Vehicle? It's not a looker, it's a 16 seater Mercedes which the rest of the week is used by Richmond and Kingston Accessible Transport for work in the community. Wheelchairs are patently catered for. A sign on board demands that everyone wears their seatbelt but that wasn't enforced on my journey.
Fare? As previously mentioned it's free. Originally the funding came from a Lottery grant but when that ran out two mystery local benefactors stepped up, and I guess they've stepped up some more now the RP1's gone three days a week.
I thought I'd pick up the RP1 from the bus stop by the Isabella Plantation where I'd been admiring the coppery shades. Proper bus stops have been placed all around the park, even chunky wooden benches to wait on because this particular enterprise is being taken very seriously indeed. The bus was alas late, which can be awkward when you can't check online but in this case I'd seen the minibus trundling by earlier so I knew it was coming. And so it did, first picking up a passenger standing nowhere near the bus stop, then performing an awkward reversing manoeuvre in the disabled car park to pick up me. "How's everyone doing for temperature?" asked the driver, as well as welcoming me aboard, then drove for about ten metres and stopped.
It very soon became apparent that this was going to be a sightseeing tour as well as a point to point journey. The driver pointed out an impressively antlered stag eyeing up the females in the nearby bracken, also the younger stags on the opposite side who'd already been cast out by their parents to avoid "deer incest". You don't get this kind of thing on a Golden Tours double decker rounding Hyde Park Corner. I should point out I wasn't the only audience, there was also a lady with a walking stick and three young tourists from Saudi Arabia who'd curiously come here immediately before heading off to ride the London Eye.
A 'Road Closed' sign on the road to Ham Gate explained why the bus had been late, this due to ongoing repairs by Thames Water, and made me glad I hadn't chosen to wait for the bus in Ham. As we headed north our driver launched into the story about the protected view of St Paul's from King Henry's Mound and also enthused about the multiplicity of facilities available at Pembroke Lodge. He then alighted to make use of those facilities because a driver's got to take his relief where he can, and unexpectedly this break in service lasted almost ten minutes. The lady with the stick struck up a conversation and told me she's a regular on the route, often popping over from Wandsworth, and with the splendid autumnal views across the park it was easy to see why.
I thought I'd alight at the Richmond Gate - I could see the stop by the mini-roundabout - but in the absence of a bell I wasn't quite sure how to alert the driver. I decided to stand up and move towards the front of the bus but the driver didn't notice and drove straight past, launching into his next anecdote about David Attenborough's very favourite very old tree. Never mind, I thought, I'll get off at the next stop, but the next stop turned out to be a mile and a half away at the Sheen Gate. On the plus side it meant I heard a somewhat dubious story about the Queen's birth certificate, but on the downside the Sheen Gate turned out to be a very long walk from any other transport option. The Saudi trio, it turned out, were going to hail an Uber.
What the RP1 bus does here in the name of accessibility is quite frankly ridiculous. First the driver hops out to unlock the gate that bars all other traffic, then drives through, then walks back to lock it again. Then he drives to Mortlake station, specifically the bus stop that's only used by mobility route 969, an interchange that only works once a week on a Friday. Then he performs an awkward reversing manoeuvre in a council car park and returns to the Sheen Gate, performing the entire unlocking ritual in reverse, all before crossing the park for a mere five minutes before breaking for his lunch. I should have asked to get back on board - the driver was lovely enough he wouldn't have blinked - but instead waved him off and thought "well at least I'll know what I'm doing next time". Even if mobility issues strike me down I needn't miss out on the glories of Richmond Park.
