I have been to all the stations in London.
All of them.
It's a lot of stations.
It's hard to be certain precisely how many stations but let's say 'just over 600'.
And I have been to all just over 600 of them.
As of yesterday.
I'm including tube, DLR, Overground, Crossrail and all National Rail services, even trams, and that's why it's quite so many stations. Also when I say 'been to' I mean properly used, not just passed through on a train. At each station I either touched in or touched out, sometimes both.
» What precisely counts as a station is a moot point. Is Canary Wharf one station or three? Is Marylebone one station or a rail terminus plus the tube? I got round this pedantry by going to both of them, just to be sure, also both halves of Shepherd's Bush, both sides of Mitcham Junction and the two Heathrow Terminal 5s. Don't nitpick, just do the lot.
» Also I'm only counting TfL and National Rail stations here, not Eurostar or independent ventures like the Ruislip Lido Railway. If my 60+ Oyster doesn't let me in it doesn't count.
It's not easy to visit all the stations in London, and also not easy to know you have. You need a list and you need excellent record keeping, also patience, drive and time. Are you absolutely certain you've been to Albany Park, Eden Park and Grange Park? Have you really been to West Drayton, Drayton Park and Drayton Green? I'm certain because I made a spreadsheet and ticked everywhere off. I wonder how many others can say the same.
What's more I've been to all the stations in London this year.
And it's only June.
I've been a busy boy.
I broke down the challenge into two halves.
First I visited all the stations in zones 1-3, then all the stations in zones 4-6. At the start of the year I had a z1-3 Travelcard so I used that, then in mid-March I got my 60+ Oyster card so I used that. I have visited all the z1-3 stations in a calendar year before, at least three times, but never gone on to tackle z4-6 because of the cost. The zone 1-6 daily cap is £16.30 which'd be a lot of money to waste just to visit, say, all the stations on the Chessington South branch.
All the stations in London
z1-3
trams
z4-6
about 350 stations
39 tram stops
about 230 stations
January
February
mid-March-mid-June
My very last London station was Sudbury & Harrow Road, the hardest station of all. It only gets eight trains a day, four into London in the morning and four out in the evening, weekdays only, which helps explain why it's London's least used station. Nobody else alighted from the same train as me, unsurprisingly. Nevertheless some workmen had been round giving the metalwork a touch-up, hence there are Wet Paint stickers everywhere to warn hardly any passengers not to brush against long-dried railings. That's London done, I thought, less than three months since my 60+ Oyster arrived.
It turns out visiting all the z4-6 stations is harder than visiting all the z1-3 stations, even though there are fewer of them. That's because they're spread across a much wider area, usually further apart and because train frequencies in outer London aren't so good. There are a lot of half hourly services in zones 4-6 so you can end up waiting for a while, also the next station may be too far to walk, also there may not be a decent bus service connecting the two. The optimum solution is often to bounce back and forth, first two stations forward then one back, but sometimes the timetable conspires not to make that work. Ticking off the ten stations in Bexley took over three hours, for example. Yes I do have a lot of time on my hands.
But I have now visited all the stations in London, including at least 50 I'd never used before. There was Birkbeck with its silly single platform not stolen by a tram, and Brentford which was always one stop beyond the validity of my Travelcard so I never went, and Clock House which has the most appalling non-existent signage in the ticket hall, and Malden Manor which is more monumental than the locality deserves, and Mill Hill Broadway which is proper grim, and Motspur Park with its brand new snazzy lifts, and Mottingham which several weeks later I can barely remember, and Plumstead which is the backwater Crossrail skips, and Selhurst which I was expecting to be Palace-ier, and South Merton which is basically outclassed by Morden on all levels, and St Margarets which is a whole new middle-class magnet I'd previously missed, and Sundridge Park where the lady in the ticket office was so underused she gave me a wave, and Welling which was pretty lacklustre, and that was just zone 4.
I was impressed by the community heritage on the Enfield Chase line where posters and artworks give the place a lift. I was surprised by the masses of nigh empty carriages rattling through the suburbs of Bexley and Bromley. I was amazed by the number of staffed ticket offices in backwaters with even fewer annual passengers than the lowliest tube station. I was mighty glad I don't live on the Hounslow Loop because that is one miserably infrequent service. I discovered that catching a bus is usually quicker than waiting for a train down some of the south Croydon valleys. I checked out the crumbling platforms at Berrylands, the nexus that is Bickley and the massive gap in the middle of Cheam. Basically I caught up on all the outer station knowledge I should have gained over the last quarter century but didn't because I had the wrong ticket.
And I've visited more than that.
I've visited every tube station since the start of the year including the 16 that are outside London. I finished off the tube by exiting Rickmansworth last week.
I've visited every Overground station since the start of the year including the 6 that are outside London. I finished off the Overground by entering Watford High Street last week.
I have in fact been visiting every station in zones 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, even the 41 that are outside London, because my 60+ Oyster card permits that too. Even Swanley and Dartford in Kent, even Elstree & Borehamwood in Herts, also the two Ewells in Surrey, I've done the lot. I didn't just whizz round the Banstead Loop for a laugh, I was station-ticking all the way.
I do in fact have just one zone 6 station left and I intend to put that right this morning. It's one stop beyond the Greater London boundary so I've been leaving it until I do the appropriate One Stop Beyond post and that day has come. I'll put a tick in this box once I've been (some time after ten o'clock) which will also mark the final completion of my Visit Every Station challenge.
All the stations accessible with a 60+ Oyster card
z1-3
trams
z4-6
beyond z6
350 stations
39 stops
230 stations
41 stations
January
February
mid-March-mid-June
I've been to all the stations in London and the numbered zones beyond, basically for nothing, in 24 weeks flat.
Observation: The music played on Sounds of the 70s on Radio 2 isn't what it was when Johnnie Walker was in the chair.
Hunch: Bob Harris is playing older, guitarrier records.
Hypothesis: He plays more records from the first half of the 1970s than the second half.
Research: I went back to the oldest Sounds of the 70s still on BBC Sounds, listed all the records played and noted down their year of release. Songs included Metal Guru by T Rex (1972), Hotel California by The Eagles (1977) and Top Of The World by The Carpenters (1973).
Method: I looked up all the records in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles to see when they first charted. If they weren't hit singles I checked their release date using Google and Wikipedia.
Analysis: 20 records were played. 11 were from the first half of the 1970s. That's 55%, a slight majority.
Interpretation: Actually that's a lot of mid-70s. 16 of the 20 records were from 1972-1977, i.e. 80%. The start and finish of the decade barely got a look in.
Supposition: Bob Harris was the host of the Old Grey Whistle Test from 1972 to 1978. Maybe he's biased towards that period.
Further research: Obviously it makes sense to gather more data. Five shows are available on BBC Sounds. Best get data from all of them.
Overview: That might be more balanced. I should tally up all the years and draw a graph.
Insight: OK that's really quite well spread out. 102 songs were played so you'd expect ten songs from every year, and in fact every year falls within the range 10±2.
Verdict: There is no significant disparity in the years represented. It seems the producers of the show are trying to be pretty balanced.
BUT: What I did notice while compiling the data is that 41 of the songs played weren't in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. That's 40% of the total. That's a very high proportion not to have been UK hit singles.
Conclusion: Bob Harris is playing a lot of album tracks (and US hit singles). That'll be be why I'm enjoying the music less.
Only 29% of the records are from the first half of the 1960s.
71% of the records are from the second half of the 1960s.
Perhaps they should rename it Sounds Of The Late 60s.
Further observations:
» Half the records are from 1965, 1966 or 1967.
» 1962 barely gets a look in. On average you'd expect 16 records from that year but there were only three.
» They say English pop music only really sprang to life with the Beatles at the end of 1962. Five-sixths of the records played are from 1963 onwards. That's probably a good thing.
» Tony Blackburn played 164 records in a month compared to Bob Harris's 102. That's 16 records an hour rather than ten. It helps that 60s songs were shorter. It also suggests Tony talks less.
» About one in six of the records are soul/Motown because Tony loves that.
» These are properly old records. 1965 is now sixty years ago (tell me about it). They're still great records though.
» Obviously the records played included Flowers In The Rain and It's Not Unusual because they get played more regularly than anything else.
» In the last month Tony played more 1961 records than Bob played 1979 records.
» I wonder if Greg James will be hosting Sounds of the 10s in forty years time.
Datasets for future consideration
• The chronological spread of Radio 3's Composer of the Week
• The geographical spread of locations for a) Any Questions b) Gardener's Question Time
• The work schedules of the Radio 4 Today Programme presenters
• The balance of history to science and culture on In Our Time
• How often the same adverts come round on Greatest Hits Radio
• How long since Smooth Radio last played True by Spandau Ballet
• Locations for Radio 3's Choral Evensong
• The most played games on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
• The proportion of successful challenges that are hesitation, repetition and deviation.
• The average score on The Easiest Quiz On The Radio
• Frequency of Radcliffe & Maconie interstitials
Route 241: Royal Wharf to Hackney Wick (Here East) Location: London east, cross-Newham Length of bus journey: 8 miles, 50 minutes
Yesterday route 241 was extended from Stratford City into the Olympic Park. No fuss was made, no hordes descended. Buses which would normally have terminated outside Westfield instead continued via a wilfully tortuous route to the multi-storey at Here East, inevitably rammed with empty seats. The extension is designed to deliver a bus service to the East Bank, the cultural waterfront whose landmark buildings are currently half open. It also delivers a bus service to Sweetwater, one of the five post-Olympic neighbourhoods where currently nobody lives because not a single flat has been built. Arguably it's still too early for the extension to be useful and yet the change has been in the offing for well over a decade waiting for the right moment to launch.
I first blogged that route 241 might be extended across the Olympic Park way back in July 2010 when the idea appeared in planning documents for the Orbit. Instead when Westfield opened in 2011 the 241 was merely extended across the railway to Stratford City bus station, leaving the 388 to take responsibility for travel to the top of the park. A specific extension to Here East first appeared in a consultation in December 2012, at this stage an aspirational change waiting for the Olympic Media Centre to be reopened. A firmer proposition appeared in July 2017 as part of a wide-ranging review of routes connecting to Crossrail, but bosses ultimately decided not to proceed. The emergence of a free shuttle bus for Here East employees in May 2017 likely delayed things somewhat, and a proper 241 extension consultation only emerged in May 2024 when Carpenters Road reopened. And now finally here we are, 15 years on, mostly needlessly.
I rode the entire route, not just the extension, all the way from flat-stacked Royal Wharf. It wasn't terribly busy at that end either, this being another extension circa 2022 on a much-tweaked route. If the Thames-side incomers want to go to Stratford they take the DLR rather than slum it through Custom House and Plaistow, and only on reaching these parts do passenger numbers really start ramping up. I'm pleased to report that timetables at bus stops all appear to have been updated, or at least I never spotted one that hadn't. A yellow poster has also been added explaining the extension into the Olympic Park, not that I can imagine anyone in south Newham ever wanting to make use of it. Our accumulated load started disembarking at Stratford Broadway, poured off at the station and fully emptied out at Westfield, this being where the 241 formerly stopped. The twisty-turny extension starts here.
And it is ridiculously twisty, this the fault of the post-Olympic road network which never quite links up in an optimal way. Crossing from one side of the station to the other has already taken 7 minutes and now we face another loop to get from 'up here' to 'down there'. The first stop on the new extension is outside the Aquatics Centre, a stop in use since 2013 and now served by three different routes. It might feel like overkill to serve a swimming pool and a skatepark, but the opening of a whopping university campus alongside in 2022 means that 16 buses an hour is sometimes justified. OK, now the new bit.
Carpenters Road was once a grimy backroad lined by mucky businesses nowhere else wanted. Originally the 276 ran along it, mainly as a quick route to Hackney Wick, but was diverted through Bow instead in 2007 when all this was sealed off to build the Olympic Park. After the Games Carpenters Road reopened as little more than a service road, this time with the 339 wending its way through, this until December 2018 when the road closed again to enable the construction of the East Bank. Neither the 276 nor the 339 have ever returned and the backroad is now the province of the 241, whisking students and punters to all things cultural. A pair of brand new bus stops await.
The problem is that the bus has arrived at the tradesman's entrance and all the proper access is upstairs round the front. At Sadlers Wells all you see is the 'Stage Door' and a long steep outdoor staircase rising to piazza level. The BBC's new studios aren't open yet, indeed theirs is the building hard-hatted folk are still wandering out of. The London College of Fashion thankfully does have a lower-level entrance, even if it is very much the back way. The V&A proper also isn't opening until next year, so essentially the only people benefiting from all this at present are students. And because the Olympic Park is really busy up top I can imagine hundreds of parkgoers now opening their apps and being delivered a route involving the 241 back to Stratford whereas they'd be much better off not schlepping down dozens of steps for an occasional bus when it would in fact be quicker to walk. Onwards.
The second set of bus stops used exclusively by the 241 are further up the East Bank, way past the building site where 700 new homes haven't yet been started. The only buildings nearby are the Park's HQ where gardeners and security staff clock on and an electricity substation, so not much call for public transport. These stops have been mothballed since the last 339 passed through in 2018 and are finally seeing potential use again. What's more the northbound stop is still displaying a 2014 spider map, now even more horribly out of date than before, even though someone at TfL has been round recently and removed the out-of-date spider in the southbound shelter. Intriguingly neither of these stops appeared on the map in the recent consultation, only two more round the corner that don't yet exist.
This is the northeast corner of Sweetwater, or will be in maybe five years time, and the good news is that if anyone finally gets round to building a single block of flats then residents will at least have a bus service. The 241 nevertheless goes on a looping tour of the empty neighbourhood because that's the only way to get from down here to the flyover. Along the way it briefly overlaps route 339 but not anywhere with a bus stop, so the 339 remains the better option if you're heading canalside. And when the bus finally climbs up to Marshgate Lane the really stupid thing is that construction teams painted BUS STOP on the road back in 2021 in readiness for this weekend, but no bus stop has been added. They even added an annoying kink in the adjacent cycle lane in readiness for a shelter, squishing the pedestrian gap to a bare minimum, but it turns out they needn't have bothered.
The next stop is a longstanding one, immediately outside the Copper Box on the main drag of Westfield Avenue. This time there are flats nearby, also flats under construction, also regular sporting events, a large food court and a shortcut across the river to Hackney Wick station. The 388 stops here and what's more it takes the direct 4 minute route to and from Stratford, not the circuitous 8 minute safari we've just endured. There's then no further stop until the terminus at Here East, even though it might be useful to fill the 600m gap to serve for example the new V&A Storehouse and adjacent facilities. Instead it's all the way or nothing, turfed out kerbside between yet another university and a multi-storey car park. Was it really worth it?
It will be worth it one day, when the East Bank is finished and 1500 unstarted flats along the extension are complete. This is just TfL getting in early, while simultaneously getting in 13 years later than they first suggested. A fine balance needs to be struck, and somebody has judged that now is the time to push things further with three extra vehicles on the route, even if initially they carry mostly empty seats. In the meantime the 241 extension is a round-the houses route that doesn't yet go round any houses, thus generally unnecessary, and you're unlikely to be riding it any time soon.
Here's some news from Watford in insufficient detail, some of which I could have written more about, one of which I might return to and one of which I definitely will.
• Watford has a new website encouraging you to visit Watford, live in Watford and move your business to Watford. It's called Watford Actually. I only laughed occasionally. "Watford offers the perfect blend of vibrancy and comfort" was one such occasion. "A lively town brimming with attractions for every interest!" was another, especially because they had to admit the Harry Potter Studio Tour isn't (quite) in Watford.
• If you were planning to book tickets for the Harry Potter Studio Tour this month you can't, it's sold out. The next available date (at time of writing) is 31st July on the last tour of the day at 6.30pm. If you want a tour before 5pm the earliest date is 17th August. If you want a tour before 3pm try September after the schools go back. The cheapest no-frills tour is £56, since you ask. You should see the queue at the bus stop outside Watford Junction station.
• In exciting news Watford's big shopping centre is being renamed The Harlequin Centre. I thought it already had been but when I reread last month's news story it actually said the change would happen "in the summer". For now it's still atria Watford, a rubbish name based on the fact the roof has a lot of glass. Before 2021 it was intu Watford, the rubbish name of a company destined to go bust. But before 2013 it was always the Harlequin Centre, a name suggested in a newspaper competition in 1992 when the place opened, which everybody in Watford's always loved so they're delighted it's coming back.
n.b. The Harlequin name is believed to have been inspired by the Harlequin line, which in 1988 became the official nickname for the railway line serving Watford High Street station (this because it passed through Harlesden and Queen's Park).
• I saw these bins in Cassiobury Park Avenue and I worried Watford Council had changed their logo again to some awful sunshine thing. Then I checked and it turns out the awful sunshine thing was the town's logo between 1997 and 2003, at which point the new Liberal Democrat administration sighed deeply and restored the traditional coat of arms. Then in 2016 they tweaked the shield and dumbed down the town's motto from 'Audentior' ("with greater boldness") to 'Be Bold'. That means these three bins are in fact showing three Watford logos in chronological order, first sunburst (1997-2003), then Audentior (2003-2016), then Be Bold (2016-now). Design agency Fresh Lemon gave the Watford council brand a jazzy revamp earlier this year but mainly only changed the backgrounds.
• Watford has a new orbital path called the Watford Green Loop. It's 6½ miles long and designed to be walked or wheeled for a decent bit of exercise. The route crosses Cassiobury Park (pictured), then follows the River Gade and (cough) crosses an industrial estate to the Ebury Way, a longstanding cycle path along a former railway line, then ticks off Oxhey Park before (cough) crossing a retail park and following a bit of the River Colne, finally looping round the top of the town centre and back to Cassiobury Park. If you live in North Watford it's not exactly convenient but needs must. The Watford Green Loop won the 2025 Local Government Chronicle ‘Future Places’ award earlier this week and the council are well chuffed. I'm very tempted to do a circuit.
• Watford also has a newish Heritage Trail in the town centre, complete with downloadable leaflet and snazzy information boards. Essentially it's a walk from the Town Hall to the Hornet statue - nothing too taxing - via some properly old buildings round the back of the church. It's nice to see Watford Museum staff doing something visible while they wait to reopen inside the Town Hall in 2027.
• If you ever danced the night away in the nightclub by The Pond, it closed on New Year's Day 2024 and was put up for sale with a £6m price tag. In its final days it was Pryzm but before that the 2500-capacity venue's been known as Top Rank, Bailey's, Paradise Lost, Kudos, Destiny and Oceana. A plan to replace it with 147 flats failed so it's still on the market, now for £4m, which means you can enjoy a short fly-through video here and get all nostalgic.
• Watford's Art Deco Colosseum, formerly the Assembly Halls, is said to have some of the best acoustics in the country. The production of Captain Pugwash I enjoyed as a birthday treat in 1974 was certainly top notch. However the concert hall's been closed since 2020 for (very) significant refurbishment, and is finally due to reopen on 29th August. The first event, unexpectedly, is a gig by Ocean Colour Scene supported by PP Arnold (followed in September by Jake Bugg, David Essex and The Stranglers).
• Not Watford, but The Sportsman pub in Croxley Green sadly closed at the end of February. It's currently To Let, like anyone is going to want to reopen a pub in a village that still boasts four pubs and a Harvester, but was also designated an Asset of Community Value last month which might save it.
• Not Watford, but Scotsbridge House at the foot of Scots Hill has been completely demolished. I was totally taken aback. I remember it as a crowded cluster of old buildings, and the sign outside for the British Friesian Cattle Society always had me intrigued. Alas it seems the farming organisation couldn't financially justify 40 employees rattling around in lovely premises by the River Chess so sold the site in 2023 and scarpered to Telford, and now every last bit of it is rubble. Coming soon are 59 flats, which I see come with 160 parking spaces which tells you all you need to know about the intended residents. Thankfully Three Rivers Museum made a lovely 10 minute video about the place back in 2015 so we'll always have that.
• Not Watford, but the Croxley Revels are on 28th June this year, and haven't you always wanted to go ever since you saw John Betjeman gently mocking it in his Metro-land documentary?
I've been to see some art.
If you wait a few months and go again, everything changes.
Serpentine Galleries
★☆☆☆☆ Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots (until 7 September)
Six decades of works embracing the natural world are here condensed into not many artworks, indeed it's the first time I've stood in the central gallery and been more intrigued by the ceiling. Expect a few decent branchy sculptures, something ocular made from thorns and a couple of walls covered by green splotches via a process called 'leaf frottage'. I think I lost it when I realised one piece was just a pile of leaves that the artist had laid down on, "recording traces of his physical presence." [exhibition guide]
★★★★☆ Arpita Singh: Remembering (until 27 July)
This Indian retrospective opens a window into domestic life and the impact of external conflict, and compared to some of what I've seen in the North Gallery feels like a 'proper' art exhibition. I feel a bit guilty for preferring the two vibrant 1970s canvases before Arpita developed her trademark busy style in more muted tones. Also what's with the bossy pair asking every visitor when they walk in "Have you pre-booked?" then following up with "It doesn't matter", like some kind of unwelcoming committee. Maybe it matters at weekends, but mid-day mid-week perhaps lay off a bit.
★★★☆☆ Serpentine Pavilion 2025 by Marina Tabassum (until 26 September)
This year's pavilion resembles a medical capsule, much enlarged, chopped up into four ribbed slices. The chops help embrace the open air but also let the rain in, as I discovered when I dashed inside during a cloudburst and realised I was still getting wet. The interior feels a bit like a waiting room, all peripheral seating plus the obligatory hot drinks offering at the far end. Vision 1, Functionality 0.
????? Play Pavilion (until 10 August)
I made the mistake of turning up to this Lego-sponsored orange rotunda while it was being officially opened, with a crowd of invited adults temporarily crammed inside what's due to be a space for children and families. "Open the package you've been given," said the host, "and you should find six Lego bricks. Now make a duck." Expect queues now it's opened properly and everyone gets a chance to be creative with interlocking plastic, and remember only one person at a time on the slide.
White Cube
★★★☆☆ Richard Hunt: Metamorphosis – A Retrospective (until 29 June)
To Bermondsey for a sparse selection of metal sculptures, sometimes one per room, from the recently deceased Chicago sculptor Richard Hunt. I really liked his late period plantlike spikes but could have done without the formative prequels. It's so purely presented that Richard and his oeuvre only really made sense once I'd watched the four minute looping video showing him hard at work in a cluttered industrial workshop.
National Gallery
★★★★☆ The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making (Room 1, until 6 July)
Two preparatory charcoal sketches for a cardinal's fresco, both huge and somehow not lost since the 16th century, revealing how they did classical cherubs in Rome back in the day. In out, two minutes.
(on a practical note the horrific queues that blighted the gallery last autumn have all died down - I waited no seconds whatsoever at the main entrance)
National Portrait Gallery
★★★★☆ Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits (until 13 July)
A rare outing for one of Poland's most cherished artists, mainly for his busty maternal portrait but Stanisław captured character far beyond that. Reading the blurb gets quite sad though... "died from typhus", "died from typhus", "died from syphilis".
★★★☆☆ Lines of Feeling (until 4 January)
In the room behind Dame Judi, a lively collection of pencil portraits and recent acquisitions, hastily sketched. Tracey Emin never looks anything other than emotional.
★★★★★ Photo Portrait Now (until 28 September)
Students from six universities were invited to submit contemporary portraits reflecting Britain today and the results are a joy. Their photos are of people who could be sitting beside you on the bus, a true cross-section, young and old, life-worn or battling on, every culture and hair-length, wide-eyed, proud. Select photos cover the wall but annoyingly 68 images are on carousel display and quite frankly who's going to hang around in the basement lobby outside the members room for long enough (nor are they available to enjoy online either sadly).
Newport Street Gallery
★★☆☆☆ Raging Planet (until 31 August)
Unusually there are two exhibitions at Damien Hirst's galley, one upstairs and this one down. It's mostly about texture which means large abstract canvases, also models encrusted with blue crystals, also it seems someone's made a living out of putting colourful lights inside wooden boxes. I was unintentionally more intrigued by the jungle of electric cables and expansion leads behind.
★★☆☆☆ The Power and the Glory (until 31 August)
Three galleries with odd rocks in the middle and old photos round the wall. All the photos are of US atomic tests and their aftermath, so a relentless sequence of mushroom clouds which can be quite overpowering. Ian Visits also visited recently and found it uncomfortable, not especially artistic and eminently skippable. I left reassured that all the photos were from before I was born so we've learned since, and unnerved that we might not have learned at all.
Tate Modern
★★★★★ UK AIDS Memorial Quilt (until 16 June)
The emotionally-shattering UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, created to commemorate lives lost in the 80s and 90s, is out of long-term storage and back on view for one weekend only. The Turbine Hall is the perfect place to lay out 42 colourful twelve foot panels remembering 384 people who died in the AIDS epidemic, commemorated here with love and creativity by their friends (and sometimes family). Some were well known names - Robert the photographer, Mark the activist, Michael from Blue Peter - others shone brightly in their own corner. Each panel is unique, from simple symbolism to complex reminiscence, with red ribbons, rainbows and teddy bears frequently seen. In most cases you can only guess at the backstory from pictorial clues. It's the dates that really hit home, so many born in the 50s and 60s cut down in their 30s and 40s, and a few babies lost at barely two months for added shock. Some who've come to Tate Modern to see the quilts plainly remember the struggle first time round, and in a sign of quite how far things have moved on I also saw a teacher leading her primary class round the fabric cemetery and pointing out names and memories. If you can't pay your respects in person several panels are explorable on the Memorial Quilt's website.
Bow Arts Gallery
★★☆☆☆ Bow Open: Connections (until 31 August)
My local gallery's been open 30 years and is celebrating with its usual summer selection, allegedly on the theme of Connections. It's very mixed from embroidery to animated string. Russell Davies (he who organises the Interesting conference) is well chuffed to have had his systematic imprint selected. The most fun work by far is Campbell McConnell's 90 second video of medieval actresses repeatedly overacting. The space out the back is totally wasted. Try not to tread on the fabric snake.
Halcyon Gallery - 146 New Bond Street
★★★☆☆ Point Blank by Bob Dylan (until 6 July)
The master of art plagiarism is back again with a slew of attractive canvases he may or may not have painted himself. This time they're really varied in scope from portraits to landscapes, even a hand pouring a tin of beans into a pan. Musicians feature a lot although they never look quite right, - it seems Bob really can't do noses. I checked all the frames on both floors to make sure he hadn't used another of my photographs as direct inspiration, and confirmed no not this time. But down in the basement I did find the hardback catalogue for his 2016 collection The Beaten Path, which was also exhibited here, and there was his reinterpretation of my snap of Blackpool Pier on page 228... and 229... and 231. You have to smile, and I did just that all the way back out onto the Mayfair streets.
If you ever fancy a cheap excursion into Surrey by train, all without travelling beyond zone 6, try the Banstead Loop.
It's not technically a loop, you have to get off and walk in the middle, also that's not an official name (it just passes through what used to be Banstead Urban District). But the Banstead Loop does spin by the finest racecourse near London, also it only takes an hour and ten minutes from Purley to Sutton, like so.
Purley: This zone 6 metropolis needs no further introduction. Reedham: One of London's 10 least used stations (being quite near Purley). Coulsdon Town: Used to be called Smitham prior to 2011. Even fewer passengers than Reedham. Woodmansterne: Still in London, just, by 500m. Not in the village of Woodmansterne, more Coulsdon West. I blogged about the station and its hinterland in some depth in 2018.
Chipstead: Full bloggage two months ago. In short, the railway arrived in 1897 and a commuter village grew up in the valley. It's just the right side of posh, thus sadly no chip shop. Its finest feature is Banstead Woods, an expansive ancient woodland on the chalk escarpment. If you have the time it's probably the nicest place on the loop to stop off, but best carry on.
Before long the housing stops and the Green Belt kicks in, which means a lot of trees. You might see dog walkers crossing sloping fields below the upper fringe of Banstead Woods, and lower down you might see fields of sheep as you hurtle above the wilds of Chipstead Bottom. It's all very green and pleasant but also fairly brief as the trees crowd in again, and much of the remainder of the line is then either in deep cutting or skirts large back gardens. Which brings us to...
Kingswood
Like Chipstead, Kingswood is a sprawling non-nucleated village of ancient origin which was transformed by the railway. It's also almost relentlessly posh, with swirls of arcadian housing on large plots behind mighty hedges. The man who sold the local manorial estate to the housing developers was Cosmo Bonsor, a brewery manager turned Conservative MP who moved fast. He bought Kingston Warren in 1885, joined the South Eastern Railway Board in 1894, encouraged the development of a railway to Kingswood (arriving 1897) and then disposed of 640 acres of land in 1906. The turreted manor house was eventually bought by the BBC to house its Research & Design department, making Kingswood Warren the birthplace of stereo radio and Ceefax, but they evacuated in 2010 and the big house now does luxury nuptials full time. You'll see none of this from the station.
What you will see is a tall rustic building on the up platform, ostentatiously multi-chimneyed, which still houses a part-time ticket office on the lower floor. Immediately outside is an impressively large 'kiss and ride' loop, a turnaround where cars can drop off stockbrokers on the way to the office, or wait to pick them up again on the way back. For a village where most houses own multiple vehicles there's no decent-sized car park, only a recognition that nobody wants to walk home if they can possibly avoid it. The sole watering hole hereabouts is The Kingswood Arms, another sturdy Tudorbethan mock-up, and beyond that a short parade where hair and beauty solutions proliferate. Until 2017 the biggest local employer by far was Legal and General, a short hike up Furze Hill, but their building's currently being turned into "a vibrant later living community with 270 specialist age-appropriate apartments", or old-people's home in the old vernacular. Money talks in Kingswood, always has.
Tadworth
Next stop is Tadworth, once a hamlet on the Reigate Road, now a substantial suburban village for all the usual railway-related reasons. It's also the furthest you can live outside London and still travel in from zone 6, at least south of the river, such are the historic vagaries of the fare system. It feels like a proper community as soon as you step outside the station, or at least after you've schlepped up the ramp, with a couple of short shopping parades to either side of the cutting. The smallest outlet does repairs and alterations in a delightfully retro cubbyhole, and the largest is an actual travel agent with two staff ready at their desks to coax pension overspill into funding a short hop to the Channel Islands or the safari of a lifetime. Most notably the old station building has been taken over in its entirety by a meze bar called The Bridge, this being its location, with live crooning from Martin on offer every Friday night. We still have one more stop to go.
Tattenham Corner
At the end of the 19th century two separate Acts of Parliament sought to build a railway to serve Epsom racecourse, of which the Chipstead Valley line got closest. Its terminus is at Tattenham Corner, less than 200m from the grass that horses thunder round, where once seven platforms were needed to cope with passenger traffic on race days. Today there are only three, much of the surplus having been replaced by a long cul-de-sac called Emily Davison Drive, she being the Suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse at the adjacent bend. The austere terminus would have been rammed last Saturday for the Derby but is otherwise anything but, so heaven knows how the member of staff in the modern ticket office fills their time from (gosh) before 6am to (blimey) after 10pm.
Just outside the station the main road actually crosses the racecourse, or at least the starting spur for the five furlong dash. It's amazing to stand there looking down across the entire course, the grandstand and the Mole Valley beyond, plus all the downland in the centre has public access should you fancy a wander. A huge pub called Tattenham Corner is elevated alongside, a true moneyspinner last week and with plenty of room on the front terrace otherwise. If you've ever been to the races here you'll know how glorious the location is, and if not be reassured you don't need a top hat or fascinator to soak in this scenic corner of the North Downs.
Now for the walk between the two termini. It's about a mile due north and the way the timetables pan out you have half an hour to do it, or that's how it fell for me. A broad footpath tracks the edge of a golf course, also a semi-main road, so it's hard to get lost until you reach the roundabout midway and then it's quite easy. You're essentially walking the dividing line between suburbia and the Downs, which is also the boundary between Epsom & Ewell and Reigate & Banstead, the two local local authorities. I imagine it's less fun in high heels if you bought a train ticket from Epsom Downs rather than Tattenham Corner.
Epsom Downs
Trains reached this station 30 years before the other, this being as close as the authorities initially permitted, and a phenomenal nine-platform terminus was needed to meet peak demand. Even the opening of Tattenham Corner didn't initially lead to a slimming down, and only in 1969 did British Rail finally cut the number of platforms to two, then in 1989 to one. What exists today is a runty platform with minimal facilities, the 1980s station building having since been converted to a kindergarten. What's more the last 400m of track has been converted into a redbrick cul-de-sac of about 80 homes called Bunbury Way. As a cunning way of alleviating housing pressure it's brilliant and as an additional labyrinth which passengers now have to negotiate before catching sight of a train it's pure masochism, indeed I only reached my departing train with two minutes to spare. Much more about the Epsom Downs branch here.
Banstead: A single-platform halt beside a timber yard, accessed down glum stairs, not close enough to the centre of Banstead to be properly useful. Very nearly in London but not quite. I'm due to write about it as part of my 'One Stop Beyond' series so I won't say more now, not that there is much. Belmont: A single-platform halt with no redeeming features, essentially austerity writ large, just over the Greater London boundary. Sutton: This zone 5 metropolis needs no further introduction.
It's not "the most scenic railway lines you can enjoy with an Oyster card" as MyLondon once dubiously attested. But it has its moments, the Banstead Loop, and you may never have been to any of it.
Local news is in trouble because there's not much money in it, hence big companies have swallowed up many previous outlets with an eye on the bottom line rather than proper reporting. So independent voices are ever more important, not just to keep councils in check but to highlight what's actually going on, not just flimsy clickbait.
The Public Interest News Foundation have thus launched an awareness-raising/crowdfunding campaign for independent news - slogan No News Is Bad News - and 30 local outlets have signed up. Maybe one of them's near you, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to divide up their list by region to help you click through.
Had you been at Goldsmiths on Monday night you could have joined a Q&A featuring Jim Waterson (London Centric), Azeez Anasudhin (London Daily Digital), Dorothy Stein (Salamander News), Marco Marcelline (Waltham Forest Echo), Tabitha Stapely (Tower Hamlets Slice), so be aware severalmore events are planned in London, across the country and online. And remember to support independent local news because you'll miss it when it's gone, as in many parts of the country it already has.
45 Squared 21) NORTHAMPTON SQUARE, EC1
Borough of Islington, 70m×60m
Here's a semi-elegant square at the quieter end of Clerkenwell, half of it old and half new, and all a bit on the wonk. It's tucked away in the slice of streets between St John's Road and Goswell Road, somewhere between Angel and Barbican stations but not especially near either, which can make it a bit of a walk to lectures.
Named after the Marquess of Northampton, the local landowner, Northampton Square was laid out in 1803 on peripheral fields near New River Head. It was was aligned on the skew so fits awkwardly into the grid that followed, with roads radiating out from the corners and the middle of two sides. A rim of fine Georgian terraces followed, each house tall and thin with arched sash windows and an entirely ornamental balcony. Some were shops, one irregular wedge became a pub and several were occupied by craftsmen working on clocks, watches and jewellery. Such was the concentration of clock- and watchmakers that the British Horological Institute made its headquarters in the southwest corner, their new redbrick building opened by Sir Edmund Beckett, the grumpy sod who designed the clock mechanism that triggers Big Ben. The BHI finally moved out in 1978 and number 35 is now occupied by the National Centre for Social Research, home of the British Social Attitudes survey.
In the centre of the square is an oval garden, heavily railinged, designed by Fanny Wilkinson of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It includes a Victorian bandstand, a feature more usually found in a park, with a rustic tiled roof and a dance-friendly wooden floor. I was intrigued by a council notice that says "We have been informed that groups have been falsely claiming that they have hired the bandstand and telling people they must leave". Users are reassured that "if anyone not in possession of a valid permit asks you to leave the bandstand, then you are able to refuse to do so", and I can only imagine the backstory there. Fanny also built a gardener's shed which has since been repurposed as a tiny cafe, its stated preoccupation being that external tables and chairs are for customers only and must not be moved. If you've brought a refillable cup you might have more luck with the 1885 drinking fountain and its very-much-not-1885 metal tap.
What very much jars is the lack of lovely Georgian terraces across the northern half of the square. Instead hulking institutional buildings proliferate, a warren of learning stacked on many levels, this being the Clerkenwell campus of a major university. It started out as the NorthamptonInstitute in 1894, a body dedicated to promoting industrial skills including engineering, artistic crafts and (inevitably) horology. The first building occupied one of the six wedges round the square and as time's gone by two more have fully succumbed including the snuffing out of two entire streets. The demolition of multiple terraces was rubberstamped in 1962 by the LCC's Historic Buildings SubCommittee who concluded that Northampton Square had always been geometrically unsatisfactory, its six side-streets making 'the proportion of void to solid excessive'. Hence the flood of students.
Today it's the hub of City University, or rather City St George's, University of London as it now styles itself having swallowed up St George's medical school last summer. The institution has a long habit of swallowing vocational minnows, having previously absorbed St Bartholomew School of Nursing & Midwifery (1995), Charterhouse College of Radiography (1995) and the Inns of Court School of Law (2001). This latter acquisition allows City to claim four former Prime Ministers as alumni - Asquith and Attlee direct, and Thatcher and Blair as former lawyers. Perhaps my favourite Northampton Institute fact is that it's an official Olympic venue having hosted the boxing in 1908, a suspiciously partisan tournament in which Great Britain took 14 of the 15 medals. It's also where George Baxter pioneered the world's first commercially viable colour printing process, although the site of his Victorian workshop is now the student cafe if the location of his blue plaque is anything to go by.
Northampton Square is thus a peculiar hybrid of elegance and utility, one side a screen of privacy and the other a magnet for backpacks, lanyards and scurrying labgoers. Look one way and it could still be a tradesmen's terrace, look the other and the skills we need for the future are being honed in countless classrooms, because Northampton Square has always been technically-minded.
In April 2024 Sadiq Khan proposed introducing an express 'Bakerloop' bus route in lieu of a Bakerloo line extension. It was part of a proposed doubling of the Superloop network.
BL1: Waterloo → Elephant & Castle → Burgess Park → Old Kent Road → New Cross Gate → Lewisham
In January 2025 TfL launched a consultation for the Bakerloop route and also covered a double decker with brown vinyl to promote the occasion.
Yesterday TfL revealed the consultation results and confirmed that the BL1 will start in the autumn.
There are only two tweaks.
• The northbound stop outside Lewisham station has been removed to help speed up the route. This leaves three stops in central Lewisham, one at Loampit Vale which is 150m away from Lewisham station, so it's no great loss.
• Route 453, which shadows the BL1 between Elephant & Castle and New Cross, will have its frequency reduced. We don't know by how much. It currently runs 8 times an hour for most of the day.
The press release doesn't mention a start date, only "the autumn", but it's almost certainly going to be Saturday 27th September because a separate announcement yesterday confirmed that's the day the contract to operate the BL1 begins.
Much more interesting, for those of us who like to look ahead, is that the press release confirmed TfL's intention to extend the Superloop brand into the teens.
This is the map of 'Superloop 2' that the Mayor tweeted in April last year as part of his election campaign, but I've recoloured it.
In grey are the ten existing Superloop routes, SL1-SL10.
In brown is the new Bakerloop route, BL1.
(I've had to extend it to Waterloo because that wasn't the original plan)
In blue are the five proposed Superloop routes that now have a number, SL11-SL15.
SL11: North Greenwich → Woolwich → Thamesmead → Abbey Wood
The eleventh Superloop route will be an express version of route 472. It will in fact replace route 472 but only stop in select locations, with other routes picking up the slack at unserved stops inbetween. Introducing it will actually save TfL some money. The consultation for the SL11 closed in April.
SL12: Gants Hill → Romford → Elm Park → Rainham
The twelfth Superloop route is out east because Sadiq's keen to finally gift a bauble to the borough of Havering. Its western end looks like an express version of route 66, which from experience is already pretty speedy as it hurtles along the A12. The eastern end will be a very welcome north-south link in a borough whose railways run west-east and where existing bus routes have a tendency to meander rather than run direct. Most innovatively the Rainham terminus will be at the remote estuarine Ferry Lane industrial estate. The consultation for the SL12 closed in May.
SL13: Ealing Broadway → Hanger Lane → Brent Cross → Hendon
This is new Superloop territory. All we know for definite are the two endpoints, Ealing Broadway and Hendon. However last year's map indicated this route would also stop at Hanger Lane and Brent Cross, which strongly suggests the SL13 is going to be zipping along the North Circular. Most likely it's an express 112, and quite what it means for the frequency of that route remains to be seen.
SL14: Stratford → Walthamstow → Chingford Hatch
Stratford to Walthamstow definitely merits an express route, given potential passenger numbers and the lack of a direct train. But the eventual alignment is a proper mystery, there being so many possible routes a Stratford-Chingford route could take. Unexpectedly yesterday's press release specified Chingford Hatch rather than Chingford Mount or Chingford station, both of which I'd have said were more likely termini. My hunch is that the SL14 will follow the 69/97 corridor out of Stratford and then entirely replace the 357, but only the consultation will tell us that.
SL15: Clapham Junction → Eltham
And this is another quandary. On the Mayor's map last year the route was Streatham → Tulse Hill → Lee → Eltham but the start point is now Clapham Junction which is a couple of miles further on. The SL15 looks like it'll be the South Circular bus, just as the SL13 will join the SL1 and SL2 on the North Circular. But whereas the North Circular is a speedy arterial, the South Circular is alas anything but, so let's see how this inner orbital turns out.
I see we've abandoned all pretence that Superloop routes are numbered in a logical way. The first ten were supposedly numbered clockwise starting in the north, whereas these five are numbered all over the place in order of introduction.
That leaves five yellow routes, notionally SL16-SL20, which could/should follow on later.
• Harrow to Barnet (via Edgware): There are many possible routes from Harrow to Edgware so the chosen path is hard to call but I suspect it'll follow the 186, then the 384 from Edgware to Barnet.
• Barnet to Chingford (via Enfield): This outer orbital will probably shadow the 307 to Enfield, then 313 to Chingford, maybe.
• Richmond to Wimbledon (via Roehampton): This'll head round the east side of Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common, most likely shadowing the 493 and then the 93.
• Ealing Broadway to Kingston (via Richmond): This is plainly an express 65, a busy frequent route on roads often clogged and slow, so it's not clear how it'd be much faster.
• Hounslow to Hammersmith (via Great West Road): The clue here is 'via Great West Road' which strongly suggests an express H91, potentially also using the A4 to skip the traffic in Chiswick.
Currently ten, eventually fifteen, maybe twenty, and even less of a Loop than it ever was.
Observation: The music played on Sounds of the 70s on Radio 2 isn't what it was when Johnnie Walker was in the chair.
