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)
• ?
• ?
* 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.
London's Free Buses 847: Stratford to Here East Length of journey: 1 mile, 7 minutes
London has a handful of free bus routes if you know where to look. Possibly the busiest and most frequent of these is a shuttle bus that runs up and down the Olympic Park and has done since May 2017. It may therefore come as a surprise to hear that I've never previously ridden it, especially as it's very close to home, so I've been out to put that right.
During the Olympics the International Media Centre was located at the top end of the Park by the River Lea, almost in Hackney Wick, the intention being that afterwards it'd be transformed into a place of work. What moved in were innovators, creators and technologists, plus the London campus of Loughborough University, plus the footie-banterers of BT Sport, all under the umbrella name of Here East. But they were some distance from Stratford's transport nexus, as anyone who hiked to the hockey in 2012 will know, so a bespoke shuttle bus was funded to improve general accessibility. Best of all it was free to use*†‡ and ran twice as often as the usual TfL bus, so a bit of a winner all round.
* But was it really free for anyone to use? I always thought it was, having seen umpteen punters stepping on board without swiping, paying or showing anything. The website was always a bit vague. In one place it said "Our electric shuttle bus service is available for the Here East community and event attendees", which sounded like maybe No. Elsewhere it said "The service is available to anyone travelling to and from Here East", in which case hopefully Yes. Would I be called out as an impostor for boarding or were the drivers really willing to carry anyone up and down the park?
† Additional evidence for No came from a Digital Product Manager on a TfL tech forum. "The Here East Shuttle used to be included in our Journey Planner," he said. "However, we received complaints from users who were advised by Journey Planner to take the Shuttle, but were denied entry. I reached out to Here East and the company that operates the Shuttle on their behalf, who confirmed it is not for the general public. We therefore decided to remove the Shuttle from Journey Planner."
I shuffled up to the bus stop outside Stratford International station and chanced my luck. There's no timetable at the stop, only a single tile to confirm that the 847 service exists. That's a very unusual route number for London, and what's more it never appears anywhere on the bus, inside or out, instead it just says Here East on the front. At least the buses are all brightly coloured so you'd never mistake them for a normal red one. I didn't have to wait long. The 847 runs every 7/8 minutes between 7am and 9pm, and every 5 minutes during the peak, and one of the orange vehicles soon turned up. Fingers crossed.
...and it was all fine, the driver didn't even look up. It felt really odd walking straight past what looked like a functioning ticket terminal but I soon got over that and took my seat. It wasn't especially comfortable, my steed being a 15 year-old vehicle of the type that used to operate on route 108, whereas others in the fleet used to operate on routes 507 and 521 so are fully electric, boosting Here East's green credentials. The second stop on the loop is outside Stratford station on the Westfield side, and here three techy-looking passengers got off and six dead cert students got on. Then we headed off to the top of the park.
It's a bit of a cone-fest up Westfield Avenue at present with a long line of roadworks while a proper cycleway is added to a road that's barely 10 years old. Someone really messed up designing the original layout. There are also an excessive number of traffic lights, most of which halted us. Then blimey, another closed lane across the bridge where roadmaking materials were being stored, then blimey even more roadworks once inside the Park because that layout's turned out not to be right too. My fellow passengers stared at their phones and awaited deliverance.
You could if you like ride round the three-stop loop forever but disembarking at Here East seemed wise. The hoodies headed off to classes, a suited gent long past his student phase stepped aboard, and the driver headed off back to Stratford. I could have caught the normal 388 bus back, or I could have walked, but instead I plonked down in the bright orange shelter and waited for the next 847 to return. I'm still not sure I should have done but it's all no questions asked, indeed it was again, so if you fancy a freebie up the Olympic Park the Here East circular will do nicely.
‡ A reader has since provided very convincing evidence for No, which is that the Here East website has a page called Here East Shuttle App with the fairly uncompromising message that "Everyone will need the app to board the Here East shuttles." Signing up requires workplace/college email. Worse, the accompanying video says passengers are required to "activate your ticket before you travel", so it sounds like they've concocted a 'free' bus service that's frustratingly faffy to use. Didn't happen to me though, or anyone I travelled with.
The first full week of roadworks at the Bow Roundabout has seen lengthy queues and a bit more drilling. The queues were at their worst on Wednesday when an additional set of roadworks temporarily afflicted Tredegar Road, at one point stretching over three quarters of a mile along Bow Road. You did not want to be stuck in a bus near the back of that. I heard honking all evening.
The entire space under the eastern side of the flyover is now barriered off, bar a small gap to allow pedestrians through. Drilling is concentrated along one kerb beside Stratford High Street but also immediately above the River Lea which passes silently (and diagonally) underneath. Thus far three sides of the roundabout and three sliproads are entirely unaffected by the works so technically shouldn't have been coned off yet, but I guess there's a jolly good reason why they have to be, creating all these queues.
The biggest news this week, however, is that someone put in an FoI request to TfL and managed to get the overall plans for the works being undertaken. Scrutinising the twomaps suggests it's not going to be as radical as I feared.
• Only the Bow side of the roundabout is being widened from two lanes to three, two of which will be specifically for traffic turning right (which should put an end to the many near-collisions I've seen here over the years).
• The slip road from Stratford High Street is also being widened from two lanes to three, one to accommodate traffic from the contraflow which is being diverted under the flyover. This looks to be introducing two downsides - an extra set of traffic lights and also a low bridge restriction for traffic that can currently be of any height.
• The reason the workmen are currently drilling along the line of the Lea is because the expansion joint is being replaced from parapet to parapet.
• No cycle lanes are being additionally modified.
I still don't get how all of this can possibly be due to take four months, but that's why I'm not a civil engineer.
Some London boroughs like to have a web presence that draws tourists in, should anyone be interested, or highlights places of interest for the benefit of local residents. These websites attempt to reinforce the idea that a borough has history, or culture, or some sort of life, and is therefore a desirable place to be. Other boroughs have moved on. They see their websites solely as opportunities to feature council services and to engage with those who already live there. More and more council websites have been narrowing their focus in this way recently, cutting out the faff and concentrating on bin collections, housing benefit and council tax. This may be a better way of hitting key delivery targets and probably saves money, but it also makes these councils out to be dull joyless places inhabited by drones.
Eleven years ago, in a very subjective manner, I compiled a ranked list of London's borough tourism websites. The boroughs with the most visitor-friendly information on their website earned five stars and the boroughs who ignored visitors earned no stars. Here's 2013's list.
I should say that 11 years ago all of these boroughs had clickable hyperlinks but I've removed all those which no longer work. To be fair the majority of London council websites have utterly transformed over the last decade, often more than once, switching to new mobile-friendly slimmed-down templates. But the fact that only a third of the links still function (or successfully forward) should give an initial hint as to how the world of borough tourism websites has fared. Not well.
You could argue that no borough needs an online tourism portal these days because everything's elsewhere, splashed across social media and bespoke listing sites. Or you could argue that boroughs need an online tourist portal more than ever because although upcoming brunch pop-ups always get publicity, nobody's ever going to gush about a niche volunteer-run museum in zone 5.
So I've gone searching for the current tourist-focused offerings of all 33 boroughs, and here are the rankings I'd give them now, eleven years later.
It's all terribly subjective, but essentially it boils down to "If I wanted to find places and events of interest in your borough, would your website tell me?" Generally no, alas, is now the answer. In 2013 the most common score was ★★★ and now it's ★. To be more mathematical, in 2013 the average was about 2½ and now it's just under 2.
A special mention to the philistines at Brent, Camden, Hackney and Newham, all of whom have lost three stars. Someone must have pulled the plug on some pretty decent content to get those kinds of falls. As for improving boroughs, nobody's managed to add three stars but Greenwich, Hillingdon and Croydon have added two.
Bexley is a good example of how to be visitor-friendly with minimum effort, just a simple page with photos and links to seven external websites. Camden is a good example of how to appear visitor-friendly without actually being helpful, focusing more on council projects than places to go. Harrow is a good example of the drab functionality of many a borough website, fine if you want to book a tennis court or rent an allotment but failing to shout about its museum. And Westminster is a good example of a borough that's never tried in all the years I've been analysing borough websites, and likely doesn't care because tourists will always flock to Westminster anyway.
My runners-up awards go to Greenwich, Hillingdon and Hounslow, all of whom have created a bespoke website with tourists in mind. They'd genuinely like you to visit Well Hall Pleasaunce, Eastcote House Gardens or Bedfont Lakes, not just aim for the obvious observatory, airport or stately home. Webmasters at the one-star boroughs look and learn.
It's no surprise to find the City of London in pole position. They have bottomless pockets and a world class range of attractions, plus a keen desire to attract visitors at weekends when all the financial traders have gone home. Their portal thecityofldn.com was completely refreshed last year and matches the best tourist websites, both in content and presentation, should you ever be bored and in need of inspiration. It is perhaps a surprise also to find Richmond at the top, but my word Richmond take their tourism strategy really seriously.
This is the latest Visit Richmond Visitor Guide, a glossy 52-page full colour proposition. It includes a foreword from the leader of the council, a welcome in six languages and an invitation to request a Braille edition if required. It lists umpteen genuine attractions, waterside opportunities, cultural venues, regular markets and family-friendly options. It has a proper map. It has tempting shots of bars, restaurants and hotels at the back, all of whom I suspect have stumped up cash to appear. It even has a Ted Lasso walk you can follow if you want to see some key filming locations, though it won't take you long.
The guide is available to read online but you can also pick up a real copy at the Visitor Information Desk inside Richmond station. Admittedly this is run by friendly volunteers, not the council, but the selection of leaflets available is considerable and reminiscent of how things used to be before the smartphone era. It obviously helps if your borough includes attractions of the calibre of Hampton Court, Kew Gardens and Ham House, plus numerous other gleaming baubles Barking & Dagenham can only dream of. But there's a real feeling of "come on over, maybe stay and make a weekend of it". Flicking through the booklet and the monthly What's On supplement, maybe even a week.
It's easy to forget that the average London borough has a population of over a quarter of a million people, putting them on a par with our largest regional cities. But whereas the likes of Nottingham, Newcastle, Northampton and Norwich are still more than keen to bang the tourist drum, most of London's boroughs can't even bring themselves to consider that anyone could be tempted to visit. It'd be nice to see a few better attempts at outward-facing upbeat websites in a few years time. In the meantime if you're ever bored one weekend with no idea where to head, you could do a lot worse than Visit Richmond.
REGENT STREET Colour group: green Purchase price: £300 Rent: £26 Length: 1300m Borough:Westminster Postcode: W1/SW1
Welcome the fourth and final side of the Monopoly board. Regent Street is one of the board's younger streets and a rarity for central London in that an architect drew a line across the existing streetscape and said "OK, let's build that". It's unusual in that almost all of it is owned by the King, it being a jewel in the Crown Estate. It's always been showy, much like the Prince Regent was, hence the cohesive facade of Portland stone as it sweeps along the divide between Mayfair and Soho. And these days it brims over with posh brands and flagship stores, proudly promoting itself as "London's distinctive home of fashion, dining, wellness and lifestyle", so it may be world class but it's also a tad insufferable.
Parliament approved the creation of what was then called New Street in 1813 in "An Act for making a more convenient Communication from Mary le Bone Park and the Northern Parts of the Metropolis to Charing Cross". The architect was John Nash and his vision was a broad straight boulevard to rival anything in Paris, ending at the Prince Regent's new London residence at Carlton House. The alignment of the new road approximated to the line of Swallow Street, thus almost entirely wiping it from the map, but then had to bend on the approach to Piccadilly to ensure it didn't extend into St James's Square. By the time the street was finished in 1825 it actually commemorated a King, and Carlton House was demolished only four years later, but Regent Street still carves its unusual hockeystick-shaped course to this day.
What a lot of people don't realise is that Regent Street doesn't start at Oxford Circus, it starts a few streets north. But not so far north that it reaches All Soul's Church and the BBC, that's Langham Place, the correct extremity being the junction with Mortimer Street. The first shop on the first corner is a Farmer J, the 'fieldtray' lunchtime takeaway chain I blogged about last week, followed swiftly by purveyors of coffee, pastries and a useful branch of Boots the Chemist. Somewhere under the scaffolding is the main campus of the University of Westminster, an esteemed establishment since 1838, but Regent Street's first 200 metres aren't the highbrow home of anything, not unless you want to visit "London's first build-your-own cheese box bar" in which case Brityard has you covered.
Oxford Circus is a Nash creation and was originally known as Regent Circus North. The four quadrant buildings which face it were all replaced after their original 99-year leases expired, as were most of the buildings along Regent Street, hence most of what we see today is closer to 100 than 200 years old. Crossing from one side of Regent Street to the other has got easier since the massive X-shaped pedestrian crossing was opened in 2009, although if you turn up early on a Sunday you can pretty much wander across anyway. The steps down to the tube are topped by digital name panels that say OXFORD CIRCUS STATION for four seconds and then CAUTION FLOOR AND STEPS MAY BE SLIPPERY WHEN WET for seven seconds, even on days when no rain is forecast, because TfL are risk-averse obsessives.
Now 'proper' Regent Street begins, and also fundamentally changes. We won't be seeing anything as lowly as a Pret again, or indeed any opportunity for budget refreshment, only prestige brands like Omega, Onitsuka, Lacoste, Kiko Milano and Canada Goose. When you're the Crown Estate with power over every lease, you can do this. Top of the pyramid at this end of the street is the Apple Store, Europe's first when it opened in 2004 and since spruced up with the addition of 12 fig trees and (for what's worth) the world's longest luminous ceiling panel. The splendid mosaic armorials out front are because 235 Regent Street was once the London salesroom of the Venice and Murano Glass and Mosaic Company.
Onwards down the Portland Stone canyon. It's often overflown by a squadron of flags for royal events, Pride or whatever, but I managed to slip in during a quiet phase before the Christmas angels are re-installed. The roadway's not as wide as it once was, now with one lane each way repurposed for cyclists, a parking/loading stripe and extended pavements. The edges are also now littered with jagged wooden planters, 325 of them in total, introduced post-pandemic as a part of a self-congratulatory greening project. As for the paved central reservation, it's not meant for walking along but it does offer a particularly fine perspective when traffic is light. Ooh look there's Hamleys.
Britain's best known toy store has its roots in 18th century Holborn, moving to Regent Street in 1881 and changing premises twice before eventually settling here in 1981. Soft toys still dominate on the ground floor, the home of many a tempting staff demo, with Peppa Pig on 1, Barbie on 2, Monopoly on 3, Pokémon on 4 and Lego on 5. As a sign that things have moved on since you were a child, the current window display promotes an interactive plush toy called Daisy the Yoga Goat.
The middle of the street is peak global brand, with Kate Spade/Hugo Boss/Levi's/Reiss/Calvin Klein consecutively on one side and Furla/Hobbs/Barker/Tumi/Camper/Kipling/Belstaff/Churches/Hackett/Lululemon/Bose on the other, almost as if only one-word brand names are permitted. Strange sights I was treated to here included a convoy of revving Lamborghinis, a group of black-clad youth gathering for a fashion pop-up, a window dresser in culottes giving a mannequin's beige dress a tweak and a wide-eyed child about to board their first ever double decker bus. One group of foreign tourists dressed head to toe in Burberry gazed longingly inside its flagship store, having turned up much too early to do some proper shopping, and it struck me that on a Sunday morning Regent Street serves very little purpose.
The curved section is called The Quadrant and should be architect Norman Shaw's masterwork, except his monumental design ran into red tape, ownership issues and the fact that everyone loved his design except the shopkeepers needed to occupy it. After eight years he exasperatedly threw in the towel and Sir Reginald Blomfield took over, further delayed by WW1, and it was another 14 years before the full upscale arc was complete. The axial arcade is now "a world of wellness and self-care". The alleyway between Jo Malone and Hollister leads to all that's left of Swallow Street. Rough sleepers have bedded down in the empty doorway where Uniqlo used to be. A five course meal at Hotel Cafe Royal will set you back £195, plus drinks and tips, although you do get Kaluga Caviar and Brittany Pigeon for your money.
The brand sequence has descended to the levels of Nespresso and Whittards by the time we reach Regent Circus South, or Piccadilly Circus as it's now known. This is the third time the Monopoly board has brought us here, previously via the two yellows of Coventry Street and Piccadilly. Close by are the two oranges of Vine Street and Marlborough Street, one concealed behind the Quadrant, the other bearing off back at Liberty. Also aligned are the green of Oxford Street and then an entire edge of blue Mayfair, which perhaps makes Regent Street the Monopoly-iest property of all. If only it stretched south to pink Pall Mall it really would be full house but alas it stops 100m short.
Here's an oddity. Regent Street also extends three blocks south of Piccadilly Circus, or at least it did for a couple of centuries until 2014 when lower Regent Street was renamed. It's now officially Regent Street St James's, a tweak activated in the hope "that the renamed section of street will turn the area into a distinctive destination in its own right"... and the fact you've likely never heard of it suggests this didn't work. The Crown Estate would point at Osprey, Aspinal and Smeg as evidence of exclusivity, whereas I would point at Tesco Express, Ryman and a Post Office as evidence that perhaps it isn't. Perhaps it'll look nicer once a lot of the current scaffolding comes down. And perhaps best stick to the swish section between the Circuses.
I've been to see some art.
And, unexpectedly, an artist.
Tate Modern
★★★☆☆ Mire Lee: Open Wound (until 16 March)
Time was when a new Turbine Hall commission was big news, but this year's seems to have slipped out last week mostly unheralded. So what have we got? A giant metal motor hanging in mid-air, slowly turning, over which are draped strips of fabric soaked in some manky viscous liquid. This drips gradually into a metal tray underneath, turning a series of fabric skins a mucky shade of brown. These are then laid out to dry before being hung from the ceiling on chains, the idea being that the Turbine Hall gradually fills over the next five months. According to the artist it's an "industrial womb" and also symbolic of systematic decline, which feels particularly appropriate in the setting of a former power station. I like that there's actually something to watch this year, and indeed listen to as the water splashes down, though it won't detain you long. It may well be worth seeing early and then seeing again later once the number of grubby aerial skins has increased. In the 25 year span of Turbine Hall commissions this one's middling, which after a fewrecent duffers is a good thing.
White Cube, Bermondsey
★★★★☆ Tracey Emin: I followed you to the end (until 10 November)
Dame Tracey's latest exhibition is an especially raw outburst of recent work, reflecting emotional and medical trauma in bold impulsive brushstrokes, mostly red. Men have not been good to her, as you can tell from the heartfelt angry scrawl below some of the pieces, and her body has behaved arguably worse. Tracey's sprawled body appears in the majority of the works, usually in one of her trademark beds, generally unclad. Everything's rough enough that intimate body parts are generally only hinted at, that is unless you go into the video room for a 1-minute bleeding loop that bears witness to the aftermath of major surgery. The largest gallery also contains a huge humanoid bronze raised on pained haunches, which like the canvases exudes deep frustrated anguish. Once again Dame Tracey excels in revealing herself, if you're fortunate enough to look.
Serpentine North Gallery
★★★★☆ Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: The Call (until 2 February)
This is utterly refreshingly different - an exhibition of choral singing powered by AI. It's in three sections, all backed up with actual singing sessions recorded at 15 locations across the UK which were used to train the AI model. I'm still a bit mystified by what I heard in the first two chambers, and that's after reading the 24 page glossy booklet twice, but I don't think the AI does any of the singing, only maybe a lot of the composing. It still sounded magnificently cathedral-like echoing around the gallery. The real gamechanger is the third chamber where small groups (not exceeding four) approach a microphone, sing and the AI essentially joins in. It's been a while since I've sung in public so I started out tentatively, then extemporised more boldly, then threw in the Wombling Song to see how it coped. It was hard to hear fully because when I stopped it stopped, but I worry that one day these models won't require further human input and everyone'll love the output anyway. Expect queues at weekends.
Serpentine South Gallery
★★★☆☆ Lauren Halsey: emajendat (until 2 March)
The LA artist invites you to step round an immersive ‘Funk garden’ brimming with iconography you might see in a black urban neighbourhood. It's culturally dazzling, even underfoot, if a bit brief.
White Cube, Mason's Yard
★☆☆☆☆ Danh Vo (until 16 November)
I can't believe I made a special effort to see this. Some boxed statuary ("charged with restless histories"). Some plywood walls ("temporary spatial interventions to shape corridors of light and shadow"). A couple of open suitcases ("wry commentary on value paradigms"). Two floors of mostly empty space ("an exploration of power structures and their influence on both personal and collective identity"). Sometimes you should take the hint from the online spiel and not bother.
Barbican, The Curve
★★☆☆☆
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum: It Will End In Tears (until 5 January)
I love the idea, which is to present a walkthrough sequence of painted stills from a film noir about a femme fatale. Follow the ramps and walkways round the curve (she arrives!) stepping through various plywood film sets (a knife glints!) and it's up to you to determine what you reckon the plot might be (the jury decides!). I suspect I'd have got more out of it if I'd walked through again.
Nunnery Gallery, Bow Road
★★★★☆ In the footsteps of the East London Group (until 22 December)
The most successful exhibition my local gallery ever put on was a retrospective of works by the East London Group, a working class collective who met in the late 1920s at a Bethnal Green evening class. Now those beloved canvases are back but - here's the twist - accompanied by contemporary streetscapes in approximately parallel locations. A sepia wharf then, the Olympic Park now. A railway bridge then, a graffitied corner now. Some of the newbies like Doreen Fletcher take an appealingly traditional approach (her 2019 retrospective was another local favourite). Others have a penchant for council estates or are more geometrically suspect, but the contrast is always appealing. A particular favourite was Ferha Farooqui's Lost Highway, a depiction of Stratford High Street cleverly combining now and then, lifted from her Disappearing landmarks series. If you do come don't come this Saturday because it's closed for a symposium, but if you like non-faffy art do come.
Newport Street Gallery
★★☆☆☆ Wes Lang: The Black Paintings (until 9 March)
What's on at Damien Hirst's place is an exhibition devoted to the American artist Wes Lang, never previously displayed in this country. They're an acquired taste. The cast of characters is somewhat restrictive, mostly featuring a skeletal noble posing in front of a black background in some kind of fantastical setting, intermittently accompanied by a bluebird and/or bony acolytes. I was thinking voodoo heavy metal album covers but apparently it's more about Taoist positivity. If nothing else the image of a red devil flying off with a church under its wing will remain with me.
Tate Britain
★★☆☆☆ Alvaro Barrington: Grace (until 26 January)
This paean to the artist's Caribbean family lines the centre of the gallery, a little self-indulgently. I skated past the covered benches, took a little longer to wheel round the steel drums and ended up by the corrugated shed. Hang on, I thought, that person admiring the shed looks like Robert who does that art podcast with Russell. And then I clocked the person standing next to him and it was definitely Dame Tracey Emin. I felt somewhat unnerved because this was the very person whose intimate art had affected me a few hours earlier, and here she was admiring other people's work like a normal punter. Her real target was the Turner Prize exhibition nextdoor, an award her My Bed was nominated for 25 years ago, and I hope she and Robert enjoyed it. Once again Dame Tracey excels in revealing herself, if you're fortunate enough to look.
Journalists working at various media portals are under increasing pressure to churn out more and more stories because the more they write the more page views they get. Clickbait isn't going away any time soon. But a trope that's sadly gathering more prominence lately is a willingness to promote sponsored superlatives sent to them in a press release. Here's a sample headline from an article I won't be linking to.
It’s official: England’s best private school is in London
It's Westminster School, apparently. But if you read a bit further it says "the list is by Ivo Education, an education company focusing on tuition, and it ranks schools based not just on A-level results but GCSEs, too." In other words there's nothing official about this, it's just the way a marketing department has chosen to rank some data in the hope that their brand name will be prominently displayed. Reporters under pressure, alas, are often all too happy to oblige.
Here's a worse example.
London’s Most Haunted Borough Has Just Been Revealed – And It’s A Surprising One "The house insurance experts over at Alan Bogwell Group conducted a study to determine which borough is the most haunted. The research was based on paranormal encounter reports, the number of cemeteries and memorials, the amount of vacant properties, and how many houses built before 1918 are in each borough."
There's absolutely no reason why this combination of data should generate a definitive 'most haunted' borough, even if you reckon ghosts exist, and yet someone's crunched the numbers anyway and someone else has dutifully megaphoned this bolx to a wider audience. The top slot's taken by Kensington and Chelsea, if you were wondering.
Here are five more examples of the genre, all from the last month, all of which ridiculously claimed that London was the best at something. It may look like I'm including the name of the company whose tosh is being magnified, but I've changed one letter in every brand name so as not to enhance the SEO.
The world’s most ‘picturesque’ cities, ranked "Printfux, a print-on-demand platform, has conducted a study and crunched the numbers on which cities have garnered the most Instagram hashtags to create a ranking of the world’s most ‘picturesque’ cities. Claiming the top spot? It’s none other than London!"
London Has Been Named The Most Popular Christmas Destination In The World (According To Instagram) "Digital marketing agency Henmessy Digital are well-and-truly ready for Santa Claus to come to town, as they’ve just conducted an entire new study to find out where in the world is the most popular Christmas destination."
London Crowned The Best European City For Travelling On A Budget "The booking portal for holiday homes Holido have conducted a study that crowns London as the free attraction champion of Europe."
London Has Been Crowned The Best City In The World For An Autumn Escape "The travel gurus over at SkiParkSecure have crunched the numbers and found that the gorgeous brown leaves that cover the London parks at this time of year make it the place to be in the months of September – November."
London Has Been Crowned The Pizza Capital Of The UK – With 1,454 Hotspots To Choose From "The study was conducted by Gokney, a premium outdoor oven brand, who investigated the number of pizza joints in the most populated British cities, as well as the number of pizza places rated 4 stars or above, and the average yearly search volume for pizza-related terms."
The pizza one is particularly ridiculous. Whoever would have guessed that the location with the most pizza outlets would be the largest city in the UK? More to the point, which fool turned this obvious outcome into a news story?
Then there's the "something in London is officially excellent" sub-genre.
This London Airport Has Been Named As One Of The Most Instagrammable In The Whole World "Travel website Mrs Tourist have crunched the numbers to determine which airports are the ‘most instagrammable’ in the entire world, and an airport in London is right up there!"
(Heathrow is 3rd)
5 London universities are officially the best in the world for 2025 "Timez Higher Education has released its prestigious list of the best universities in the world for 2025. And it’s got us Londoners feeling pretty smug."
(Imperial College is 9th, UCL 22nd, King’s College 36th, LSE 50th and Queen Mary University 141st)
These Two London Trails Have Been Named Among The Most Scenic Running Routes In The Whole UK "Price-comparison site Ideado crunched the numbers in a new study. They gathered the number of TikTok and Instagram posts that used tags including #trailrunning to gather the most popular scenic running routes around the country."
(Epping Forest Main Path is 5th and the Thames Path 9th)
My very favourite ridiculous claim, from earlier this year, is that London was the 8th best UK city from which to see April's full moon.
"A recent study by Bókup, a travel booking management software provider, looked at the UK’s light pollution to find out which city would be the best place to see the moon in all its radiance. They also considered factors such as elevation (the closer you are, the better your view!), cloud cover, and visibility distance. According to this information, Coventry is the very best place to see the ‘Pink Moon’ in the UK. This is due to the second-best level of light pollution and a relatively high elevation compared to other cities."
Secret London merrily parroted this one, as of course did the Coventry Observer, without ever stopping to realise that the moon is visible from anywhere so nobody's going to travel to see it better. What they should really have done was check the weather forecast, not the light pollution, because that particular night in April was pretty much clouded out.
Another disappointing trend in recent output is the increasing misuse of the word 'soon'.
This iconic London stadium could soon get massively expanded
<click> it's the Emirates Stadium but "it’s very early days"
West London could soon get a massive new live music venue
<click> it's an empty site in Hammersmith without planning permission and "it could be up to a year before the plans become a reality"
Parliament Square could soon be completely pedestrianised
<click> the "bold plan" is "still in its ‘conceptual’ stage"
This abandoned London train line could soon be brought back to life
<click> it's the West London Orbital, and "services could start in the early 2030s"
The Elizabeth line could soon be extended to these two locations
<click> "We don’t know yet whether or when these line extensions will take place, but we’ll update you when we find out."
That's 'soon' meaning anything from 'many years away' to 'as yet unplanned' to 'nobody actually knows'. But seeing the word 'soon' makes everyone click and this delivers optimum shareholder value.
Rest assured all the typical clickbait is still there.
London train strikes October 2024: everything you need to know
<click> "No strikes have been officially called"
And finally, to save you a click, here's the latest festive teasing.
🎄 Oxford Street Have Announced The Dazzling Return Of Their Spectacular Christmas Lights <click> (November 5)
🎄 The switch-on date for Regent Street’s 2024 Christmas lights has been revealed <click> (November 7)
🎄 Here’s the exact date Carnaby Street’s Christmas lights will be turned on for 2024 <click> (November 7)
🎄 Here’s the exact date Covent Garden’s Christmas lights will be turned on for 2024 <click> (November 12)
🎄 Marylebone Village Has Just Announced When Its Dazzling Christmas Lights Will Be Switched On This Year <click> (November 13)
🎄 Leadenhall Market Has Already Announced The Switch-On Date For Its Gorgeous Christmas Lights For 2024 <click> (November 14)
I worry sometimes that my content isn't niche enough. Things to do in Wood End. Roadworks at the Bow Roundabout. A walk along the Burnt Oak Brook. So today I'm going all-out niche in an attempt to dampen interest even further. Welcome to Random Bexley Footpath.
All Outer London boroughs have a Definitive Statement of Public Rights of Way and a Definitive Map, ideally up-to-date and hopefully online. Bexley's offering is particularly straightforward to access, clearly defining the locations of footpaths 1 to 254, so I picked one entirely at random and then went and walked it.
Random Bexley Footpath #7: Byway from Abbey Road to St. Augustine's Road (half a mile from Abbey Wood towards Lower Belvedere)
Typical, all those numbers to choose from and the random number generator chooses 7. On the plus side we've got ourselves a Byway and they're rare in Bexley, even if it does mean watching out for traffic. Promisingly it runs along the edge of Lesnes Abbey Woods, kicking off by the recreation ground a tad beyond the abbey ruins. Aha, what we have here is essentially a service road that slinks round the backs of the gardens on Elstree Gardens for residents' vehicles only, which explains the pushbutton lock on the barrier at the Abbey Wood end. The backs of gardens are not pretty, the fences often shabby, occasionally tumbledown. Only one panel is actually missing, revealing piles of rubbish and a discarded trampoline. Not many properties have garages and even fewer look like they're ever used. It's a bit muddy underfoot but my trainers survive generally unscathed.
And all this time what's been lurking to the right of the byway is Lesnes Abbey Woods. It's right there behind a line of low metal railings, a glorious deciduous wanderland brimming with wildlife and interest. Close by is a parallel path along which dogwalkers and merry families stroll, scrunching underfoot, beneath an intermittently yellowing canopy. But that path's not an official public right of way because the entire wood is roamable, so here I am trapped on the dull side with the backs of sheds and fences that haven't been Cuprinoled recently. A squirrel hops up onto the railings with a stray sweet chestnut between its paws, then hops off into the woods as if to taunt me. The mud eases on the final approach to St Augustine's Road, where the shortcut through the car park is no longer accessible because the pub's been demolished.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #162: 115m from Frognal Avenue to Sidcup Bypass Road A20
On the very southern edge of the borough, this one's a shortcut across paddocks round the back of Queen Mary's Hospital. Except I couldn't find it. I walked the stretch of Frognal Avenue where it ought to start, not far from mental health and the lung clinic, but all I found was unbroken hedgerow. I did find a stile a little further up the lane, at the gates where the owner drives in to feed the horses, but the pole beside it didn't have a footpath sign on top even though it looks like it once did. I then walked the long way round to the dual carriageway on the bypass where the path is supposed to emerge but it didn't - the embankment is too high and the fence unbroken. I was thus unwilling to climb over that stile and wander around a paddock in search of an exit that isn't there, so Footpath 162 went unwalked.
I've since checked a Victorian Ordnance Survey map and it turns out there was originally a very sensible footpath here crossing Scadbury Park towards Chislehurst. But that was cut in 1926 when the Sidcup Bypass opened, and properly severed in 1987 when the nearby roundabout was underpassed, so the runty Bexley end no longer makes any sense. It's not officially 'extinguished' but you can't walk it, and what I think my random number generator has uncovered is a footpath anomaly that's past its use-by date.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #210: 70m from Maylands Drive to Cleve Road
Welcome to Albany Park, the interwar suburb served by a lowly station midway between Sidcup and Bexley. Maylands Drive is on the slopes leading down to Footscray Meadows and part of the Royal Park council estate. Footpath 210 begins beside a house which I suspect keeps a 'Lest we forget' poster in the window all year round. It's a cut-through between back gardens. It's fully paved. It slopes downhill. It has two lampposts. The fence is partly overspilled with ivy. Halfway down is the Maylands Avenue electricity sub-station. Someone's left their brown bin out. Also littering the path are a cardboard box that once held ice cubes, some dog food packaging and a tequila beer wrapper. Number 28's hedge is well looked after. Cycling is not permitted but this is only signed at the Cleve Road end. It only takes a minute to walk it. The nearby church looks like an example of copper-based origami, but this is not on Footpath 210 so I shouldn't mention it.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #155: 275m from York Avenue to Old Farm Avenue
Back to Sidcup again but this time west of the station, which will soon prove important. The first stretch off York Avenue is a gravel track with a separate pavement, right up to a barrier liftable by emergency vehicles only. The big building on the left is a care home with a penchant for advertising itself on multiple adjacent fences. The large greenspace on the right is Sidcup's King George V Playing Field, one of 471 nationwide, and much loved by Bexley young'uns who like an organised kickabout. And then the footpath does something annoyingly interesting, it launches across the railway inside a narrow cage-like footbridge. Crossing from one side to the other feels a bit like walking through an aviary at a poorly maintained zoo.
And when you finally twist down on the far side the houses ahead look like nothing else in the immediate neighbourhood. This is Old Farm Place, the first completed project of BexleyCo, the council's new in-house property development arm, and contains 58 new homes squeezed into a linear site. Normally this might be laudable but in this case they built the houses across half a park, the argument essentially being "well we've got to build some somewhere". This annoyed locals mightily, even after the remaining half of the park was majorly spruced-up. All the new homes have parking spaces, less than half are affordable, and this being Bexley all were marketed as having "access to three motorways". Footpath 155 ends shortly afterwards on an avenue with more traditional, less dense semis.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #93: 200m from Parkhill Road to Hurst Road
Hello Old Bexley. Footpath 93 runs just west of St John the Evangelist Church. It starts beside the driveway to the vicarage. Cycling is permitted. The path is initially broad and meandering. Fences outnumber walls. One house's back gate opens onto the path but otherwise there are no intermediate access points. You can see the church but you can't get to it. An electricity substation is located about halfway down. Beyond the substation the path narrows and gets straighter. It emerges between 633 and 635 Hurst Road. 633 has a lot of flint in its walls. Rest assured Footpaths 92 and 94 would have been duller.
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Burnt Oak Brook Mill Hill → Burnt Oak (2 miles)
[Burnt Oak Brook → Silk Stream → Brent → Thames]
London's bountiful supply of unlost rivers continues to provide opportunities for waterside walking if you know where to look. This one flows not far from Edgware and is yet another tributary of the Silk Stream, which is yet another tributary of the Brent. What's unusual about this one is that it spends most of its upper course in pipes and most of its lower course out in the open, which does at least mean proper running water later on. Along the way I can promise you suburban furrows, fancy pastries, municipal daylighting and a direct hit on two stations, one of which is celebrating its centenary later this month.
The Burnt Oak Brook starts on the southern flank of Holcombe Hill, one of the lumpier bits of Mill Hill. Precisely where it starts is a good question, there being at least two feeder streams on the upper slopes, but the first sighting on the ground is a pond in a park called The Mill Field. As recreational spaces go it's quite precipitous so nowhere you'd play football, but the benches along the top path have a decent view across the M1 corridor. The pond is concealed by brambly woodland lower down and isn't currently full enough to spill out along the initial channel, but a thick coil of blue plastic pipe suggests drainage is sometimes a significant issue.
Below the lower field the channel becomes an artificial drain which diverts around the edge of the Chalet Estate, then skirts the grounds of St Joseph's College, a former Roman Catholic seminary. The trainee priests moved out in 2008 and their Gothic pile was used for filming early series of Call The Midwife - the original Nonnatus House! - but it's all luxury retirement flats now. The Middlesex topographer Nick Papadimitriou has christened this particular rill the Mill Stream and has a couple of fine photos of a narrow trickle awash with spring celandine on his website, but it's not so nice in October. Alas I checked on a 150 year-old map and this fork's not on it, only a much straighter stream starting near The Old Forge and running through the fields parallel to Lawrence Street, and this has all the classic hidden river tropes.
At the bottom of The Reddings is a widening stripe of grass called Lawrence Green with an utterly distinct furrow running down the middle. Sit on Joseph Swallow's bench and you can see it really clearly. It's dry these days but a drain cover at the far end, by the dogbins, strongly hints at the continuing passage of underground water.
The next street down is Sunnyfield, a hairpin crescent with an extremely pronounced dip where the Burnt Oak Brook once barrelled through. According to Nick a 14-inch culvert runs between the houses in the bottom's deepest point, so a resident told him, but I only met a Waitrose delivery driver and the postie so was unable to confirm this. By the next street the dented contours remain evident but are less defined, which seems somewhat ironic given this is Uphill Drive but it was actually named after Uphill Farm which once cultivated these brooky slopes.
The first proper view of the Burnt Oak Brook comes at Simmonds Mead Open Space as it spills gently out of a small pipe into an ornamental garden. It then meanders artificially through a wiggly narrow channel and is generally step-across-able, but four teensy footbridges have been provided at strategic locations to make recreational strolling more pleasant. Only one of these currently needs urgent repair. We have the Mill Hill Preservation Society to thank for elevating all this to Village Green status in 2007, and I suspect the special trees commemorating Dennis, Brian, Eileen and Leonard are their doing as well. Then it's all too swiftly back into a pipe because the A1 needs to power through.
We've reached Mill Hill Broadway, the main shopping street, where the Burnt Oak Brook once hugged the southern side. Here today we find a trio of churches, only one of which has been rebuilt to look more like a community centre, and a lot of shops catering for refreshment and grooming needs. Quite the worst name of any business is Joice, where "where joy is a choice", the kind of cafe where if you want hash browns with your cooked breakfast it'll knock the price over £16. From various maps it seems likely that the brook's culvert passes beneath Pizza Express, a frozen yoghurt joint ("where indulgence meets wellness") and the inevitable Gail's bakery before bearing off towards the railway.
Mill Hill Broadway ranks highly in the list of London's fugliest stations, its entrance having been demoted underneath the M1 motorway in the 1960s, and the bus station beneath the carriageways is a proper gloomy turnaround. I stood at the top of the steps and tried to picture the Burnt Oak Brook trickling through, long before the concrete thudded down, but the guy from synagogue security was eyeing me suspiciously so I thought it best to move on. Langley Park, on the other side of the railway, is the last suburban street where the absent stream's indentation can still be seen. But if you make your way across Lyndhurst Park to the dip in the far corner it finally emerges properly from a large pipe, now one metre across, and stays above ground as it wends its way across Burnt Oak.
This is The Meads, a fine example of how interwar planners cleverly incorporated an urban river into a council estate. Two lines of concatenated houses face off across a broad meadow, regularly mown, with the stream in a seemingly natural channel to one side. The banks are deep with greenery, and alas a sprinkling of himalayan balsam, while crabapples bob downstream until trapped by a stray branch or pebbled ripple. Occasionally a road intervenes, then it's back to brambly overhang, reddening shrubbery and even a zigzag meander at one point which I think is a leftover from an old farm pond. Shame about the discarded microwave.
For a couple of hundred metres the Burnt Oak Brook becomes the sole preserve of the Abbotts Road Allotments, a lovingly tended enclave watched over by various flags and two fake flamingos. And then it bursts out into Watling Park, the chief recreational space hereabouts, where it tracks the western edge in an attractive if not overly visible manner. There are thus £1½m-worth of plans to re-align the river, strip back surrounding vegetation, add meanders and bring it further into the park, thereby reducing the flood risk to neighbouring properties.
The largest intervention is the creation of a central wetland area along the alignment of an existing pipe, this currently at the "freshly-dug pools overseen by pristine lifebelts" stage. The fairly grim pergola above the southern outfall is also going, along with umpteen other changes you can read about in detail here, and all should all be finished by the spring.
After that last hurrah the Burnt Oak Brook plunges into one last pipe to duck beneath the lowest point of the shopping parade on Watling Avenue. If you stand at the southeastern tip of the platforms at Burnt Oak tube station (opened 27th October 1924), the Burnt Oak Brook is sluicing under your feet. To see it emerge head behind the shops to Market Lane, where the car repair gangs work, and follow the alleyway at the end to a little-trodden footbridge - voila! The stream's final ten metres pass quietly between trees and a graffitied fence before entering its fluvial parent, the Silk Stream, for a livelier journey down to the Welsh Harp Reservoir.
