Last month I got the number of 'only by train' squares down to zero.
This month I got the number of unvisited squares down to zero.
And by widespread slogging I also managed to get my total of trodden squares up to 99.9%.
Which left just two squares I didn't think I'd been to on foot...
...for the very good reason that they're annoyingly off limits.
Of the 1463 1km×1km grid squares within Greater London several are hard to reach, some contain just one minor country lane, one is accessible only by public footpath and one is almost entirely within a private trading estate. But only two are entirely inaccessible to the casual traveller because they're entirely on private land, and these are the last two I've yet to tick off on my untrodden map.
They are, as you might have deduced, both within the confines of Heathrow Airport. If you think of Heathrow as a 5km×2km rectangle, the A4 marginally takes care of everything on the top row, Heathrow Terminal 5 is bottom left and Hatton Cross is bottom right. You can't walk to the centre of the airport but you can get a train or bus there so that square's easily acquired. Which leaves TQ0675 and TQ0875 to either side which you can't set foot in unless you work at Heathrow or you've got a plane ticket, because both are 'airside' and consist mostly of apron and runway. Bugger.
I'm not keen to splash out on a flight for something as ultimately trivial as visiting a grid square, particularly when it might not be despatched from the right gate in the right terminal. So instead I've looked back through all my previous flights from Heathrow to see if they might count and then I can claim historical visiting rights anyway. I started with a list of all the flights I've ever taken (which I blogged about in 2019) and discarded all the Gatwicks, Stansteds and Citys. And then I smiled because I've written a diary for 45 years and because I'm invariably nerdy enough to have made a note of the terminal and gate number we flew from, and that should give me a definitive answer.
My last three flights out of Heathrow were all out of Terminal 5 and all left from gates in the main building, so no luck there. My flight back from Rome in 2015 docked at satellite terminal 5B, but that's no use because only planes docking along one side of terminal 5C might claim to be in TQ0675. Before that I have to go back to four flights I took to the USA between 2002 and 2006, all of which were with United and all of which left from Terminal 3 Gate 16. And the good news is that Gate 16 is down the L-shaped pier sticking out from Terminal 3 so lies comfortably within grid square TQ0675 so I have indeed been there. Hurrah. One down.
But TQ0875 is a more challenging prospect. The only buildings it contains are satellite terminal 2B which is used by international carriers and the British Airways Technical Block near Hatton Cross. I obviously can't get access to the latter, and I know I've never used terminal 2B because it opened in 2014 and I've only made European flights since then. Dammit.
There is hope because before Terminal 2 was rebuilt a satellite pier extended out into TQ0875. I believe it was used for international flights so that rules out my two trips to Guernsey in the early 1970s. Which means all my hopes of standing in TQ0875 rest on a flight I took to Toronto in 1976, back when taking international flights was a proper rarity. I still have my boarding pass (flight BA619, seat 7E), my baggage labels (B460514) and a copy of the menu (smoked Scotch salmon, braised Angus steak in red wine sauce, fruit salad with cream), and don't say you're surprised. But nowhere is the gate number recorded, and I hadn't started writing a diary back then, and oh hang on...
I was 11 at the time, and someone thought it'd be a good idea if I took an exercise book with me to record what happened on the Canada trip. I soon lost interest, there wasn't time, but I see I recorded day 1 in bumclenching detail and hey presto there's the one piece of data I need all these years later. Thank you little swot.
Alas Terminal 3 is not the answer I wanted, because this means I have never set foot in TQ0875. I've ridden the Piccadilly line underneath it and I've sat in planes landing or taking off through it, with seatbelt securely fastened, so I've definitely been. But I know I've never stood in any building or patch of land anywhere within it, so I can't flip the colour of the square from green to yellow.
I went back at the weekend to see how close to TQ0875 I could get.
Terminal 2 is the closest terminal to my target square, but public access is only to the western end where all the check-ins are so there was no hope in getting anywhere near the eastern end.
Instead I headed to the southern side of the airport where the A30 dual carriageway hugs the perimeter of the airport and tried walking from Heathrow Terminal 4 to Hatton Cross. Initially there was a pavement to serve local hotels, then a bus stop, then a car park and finally an electricity substation, but then it faded away. Instead I got to follow a verge alongside a metal fence, indeed a double fence because a separate barrier is required to ensure a three metre strip remains free of vehicles and equipment. Absolutely nobody is getting the other side of this metal defence unless they work here, thanks to Section 11A of the Aviation Security Act 1982 as amended by the Aviation and Maritime Act 1990.
I whipped out my Ordnance Survey app to display the six figure grid references I passed through as I walked along the roadside... [TQ089749] [TQ090749] [TQ091749] [TQ091750] ...but never the target of TQ089750. By my calculations I managed to stand within 60 metres of TQ0875, which is the closest I've ever been on foot, but only managed to stand in TQ0874. TQ0974 and TQ0975.
Through the fence I could see the outlying parts of Terminal 2, well over half a mile away, and aircraft from Malaysia and Portugal taxiing to take off. The very start of Runway 09R/27L lies barely 200m away, and in front of that an expanse of grassy apron subject to regular jetblastery. I've flown in over that grass several times, and indeed popped a barley sugar into my mouth and headed off to foreign climes via TQ0875, but getting my feet on the ground is not an option.
So yes I can claim to have visited every 1km×1km grid square within Greater London, but I cannot claim to have stood in every 1km×1km grid square within Greater London because one at Heathrow Airport
remains out of reach. Never say never, a flight with Icelandair or a jaunt to New Zealand might sort it. But in the short term, I've fallen one short.
I still reckon my accomplishment of 'setting foot in every Greater London grid square bar one' is a unique achievement. Nobody accidentally visits TQ0984, TQ2861, TQ4560 AND TQ5986, let alone the other 1458, it can only be a deliberate act. And the more I think about it the more pleased I am I haven't quite achieved a full house of London grid squares. When a blogger has completed London, he has completed blogging.
