Mon 1: "Oooh," I thought, "I bet that's the last London park in alphabetical order, I wonder what the first is." So if you see a post one day called The A-Z of London Parks, that's where the idea came from. Tue 2: Unblogged follow-up to my Free Parking post: I went back out to try to find the street closest to Trafalgar Square with free parking, which I believe is Stevenson Crescent in Bermondsey. It's a dense postwar cul-de-sac with private off-road parking but no on-street restrictions (which kick in as soon as you cross St James's Road). You might know it because Cycleway 10 passes through. It's just over a mile from Tower Bridge, should you ever be tempted.
Wed 3: Things you randomly stumble upon when taking a different-to-usual backroad in Ealing - a green plaque saying Kirsty MacColl "lived and recorded here 1985-2000". The plaque was unveiled by the Ealing Civic Society last November. Others similarly honoured locally include Dusty Springfield, Spencer Perceval, Michael Flanders, Waitrose and Winnie the Pooh. Thu 4: Polling stations I passed today - Bow Baptist Church, Hendon Leisure Centre, Chabad of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Only one of these served coffee. All delivered a Labour MP. Fri 5: When to sleep is a tough decision on election results morning. I plumped for 12.30-3am (so was awake to watch the despatch of Shapps, Mordaunt and Truss) and again from 1-3pm (except one of you rang my landline halfway through, grrr). Sat 6: Mark Goodier has taken over Pick of the Pops on Radio 2 and he's perfectly good at it, except his 'innovation' is getting people to message in and say why each particular year is special to them, and ffs every year is special to everyone, nobody cares about Maria from Redditch taking her A Levels or Gerry from Cleveleys buying a camper van. Sun 7: I made a map to show which party came second in London's Labour constituencies, which thus far only people on Twitter have seen, and what's striking is how the Greens are now the main challenger across inner NE/SE London.
Mon 8: I rode what's currently TfL's longest bus journey between stops, which is the 5 miles from Teddington to Hatton Cross, but may not be if an as-yet-unpublished consultation results in the SL7 also stopping at Feltham. (Men Who Hate Buses please note, I nearly wrote a whole post about this but thought of you and cut it down to 36 words here) Tue 9: Went for a walk along the lip of the largest of the Walthamstow Wetlands reservoirs, dodging the goose poo, and it's amazing how lowrise the Tottenham area is, barring the stadium squatting on the horizon like an alien spaceship. Wed 10: I've been keeping an eye on the new exit from Stratford station for several months, passing by every few days in case it had finally opened, and all that paid off when I accidentally turned up this lunchtime within minutes of the barriers being rolled back with a minimum of fanfare. I may never need to use it again. Thu 11: The magpie who likes drinking the water in the rim of a bowl on my balcony is now a family of magpies who like drinking the water in the rim of a bowl on my balcony. Fri 12: The new electric buses on route 276 are having terrible trouble with their digital front blinds where the display frequently judders, flickers, part-shifts or even disappears. You'll see buses heading to Newham Hosp or Stoke New, perhaps the number 276 half-vanishing off the top, sometimes bugger all. Affected vehicles now have a laminated sign in the front window and/or '276' blutacked to the windscreen in case of information blackout. In the old days they'd simply have replaced the blind but taking a glitchy bus out of service is much harder, so the embarrassment may continue for months yet.
Sat 13: One day they will write about that endlessly-repeated near-ear assassination attempt on Donald Trump in a book called Days That Shaped The 21st Century, and I fear not in a positive way. Sun 14: On the Thames Path in Battersea I watched a heron swoop down over the promenade and then release what looked like a display of pretty white streamers. It had instead emptied its bowels from a great height, as I swiftly realised, and several people ahead of me had a very lucky escape. Mon 15: Things my Dad doesn't normally buy from Morrisons in Diss: smoked cheese, Tunnocks teacakes, Walkers salt and vinegar crisps, jammy doughnuts. Tue 16: I'm a "main meal in the evening" person so when I stay with my Dad it's a bit of a culture shock to shift to "main meal at lunchtime". I'm not saying it's wrong, it just takes some adjusting to. Today I watched a demonstration of how to cook sausage and chips in an air fryer because my Dad is more innovative in the kitchen than I am. Wed 17: My brother recently took the opportunity to retire which is nice because I can now go round and stay midweek, and sit in the gazebo, and head out to a garden centre for a nice panini, and discuss wedding preparations, and watch quite a lot of golf.
Thu 18: If you're ever in Hunstanton in need of an ice cream, the Norfolk Apple Crumble from Ronaldo's by the bowling green is very nice, but step away from the town centre to the kiosk at Vegas Amusements on South Beach Road and the Lemon Crunch is 50p cheaper. Fri 19: I've spent the week in Norfolk having lengthy conversations with other human beings, in some cases quite deep, which isn't something I'm used to doing these days, certainly not in person, sometimes no more than a couple of hours a week, often not even that. It's fine but blimey, what a contrast. Sat 20: In response to the gentleman in Chiswick who asked me to blog about the disappearance of two late night journeys from Stratford on route 388, I think they've already sorted it. Sun 21: In good floral news the gladiolus on my balcony has bloomed on two stems this year (last year zero) without doing the usual thing of bowing under the weight and breaking off. In less good floral news only five gorgeous red blooms unfurled, whereas in most years each stem gifts seven. Mon 22:The Line, the 9-year-old near-meridian art project in the Lower Lea Valley, has added something new between Star Lane station and Cody Dock. It's called 'a cloud + a fence', a community collaboration it's claimed "animates the journey", although I walked it and it looked like a few small blue shapes attached to lampposts.
Tue 23:Katie at Secret London wrote an article called This Gothic Castle Hidden Away In A South East London Woodland Boasts Jaw-Dropping Panoramic Views Of London and used my photo of Severndroog, without asking, to illustrate the view from the top. I asked Secret London to remove it, which they swiftly and politely did, although I still don't think they've twigged that a Flickr photo with a Non-Commercial licence shouldn't be used on their platform. Also the view's changed a lot since 2014, but cutting edge on-the-spot journalism is not Secret London's forte. Wed 24: Tower Hamlets council are wheeling out 105 new compactor bins, two of which are outside Bow Road station, although rather than pull them open local drinkers are already content to stack their empties on the top. Thu 25: In shocking news for local walkers and cyclists, the Greenway near West Ham station will be closing on 19th August for 18 months! It's part of a £36m project to reline the key Victorian sewer where it passes across the railway at Manor Road, details of which are described by civil engineering company Barhale here. They have to keep the sewage flowing and the railway running so it's the permissive path on top that takes the brunt. A diversion via Abbey Road station is likely, which'll add almost half a mile to every journey. Newham Cyclists report there'll be a "drop-in session at Canning Road Bridge on 7th and 8th August 10am-6pm where you can raise your concerns".
Fri 26: Well I enjoyed Paris's in-Seine Olympic opening ceremony, a most creative and cultural way to break up the usual tedium of the athlete's parade, even if it was miserably cursed by the rain gods throughout. Sat 27: Rail-related programmes I have enjoyed on BBC Sounds this month: series 2 of Punt and Dennis's on-board sitcom The Train at Platform 4, series 3 of Alexei Sayle's conversational Strangers on a Train, and the Food Programme's lengthy investigation into station catering. Sun 28: In shocking news Stratford Picturehouse has just closed, one of three Picturehouses in the capital to go dark this week after the company entered administration. I loved it, both for its full-on urban architecture and its cheap prices, but also more recently its nigh-empty seats and there lies the rub. We don't know what the future of the building will be, but 1997-2024 would be too brief a life for such a futuristictreasure. Mon 29: In my quest to spot all the numberplate letter pairs I've seen another two this month bringing my total to 515 out of 519. Last week I saw VJ in Walthamstow (and then again three days later in Hayes), and today I finally saw NR on a BMW in Beckton. FYI the pairs I've yet to see are UE/UT/UV and VH. Tue 30: Walking under trees in Highbury I felt a knock on the arm which I assumed was a premature tumbling autumn nut. Half an hour later I discovered a bird had scored a direct hit on my forearm, eeksheesh, although thankfully it was the warmest day of the year so I was in short sleeves and able to remove the huge dollop in a single wipe. Wed 31: This evening this blog is expected to receive its 13 millionth visitor. And just eleven months since the 12 millionth visitor, which'll be the fastest million yet, which is lovely. Thanks a million.
When tourists come to London for the first time they want to see the sights and for many that means taking an open-topped bus. Sightseeing tours are popular and big business, especially for those who find the capital's ordinary transport network complex, commentary-free and excessively roofed. Five main companies compete for custom, each with a subtly different offering on subtly different routes, and all at very different prices. But which tour is best, which is cheapest and are hundreds of thousands of sightseers simply throwing away their money? Spoiler: probably yes,
It's hard to get an objective opinion. If you head to the Visit London website it turns out they have an affiliate deal with Golden Tours and promote them heavily at the top of their list, with two other operators tucked a long way down and two others not mentioned at all. If instead you go to one of TfL's Visitor Centres they'll only tell you about Big Bus tours because, as I was told, "that's the one we do". It makes comparing the options very difficult.
I managed to get hold of all five operators' leaflets by standing at the sightseeing bus stop on the north side of London Bridge. They're glossy, full-colour fold-out leaflets because they have to be, partly for customers to clutch as route guides on the way round but also to sell the whole experience in the first place. Wow, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London all on one bus! But despite the apparent detail the one thing none of the leaflets mentions, not anywhere in any of them, is how much the various tour options cost. You are instead essentially at the mercy of the agents flogging tickets at the roadside, or in need of a thorough trawl of all their websites before paying up.
The following are the five main players, all of whom operate multiple buses on multiple routes with a hop-on hop-off offer and on-board commentary. Heritage buses, afternoon tea specials and bespoke themed tours are not included.
TopView are the new guys, the disruptors, although they launched with a tour guide on every top deck and have since removed them so the finances can't be easy. The other four operators are much longer-standing, even if originally under different names.
Every company has one proper sightseeing route up and down the riverbank and then some.
Most operators run three routes but sometimes these overlap a lot and sometimes they're a bit dull. An identical Waterloo → St Paul's → London Bridge → Tower Bridge → Embankment loop appears in all five itineraries. Three companies have a 'Green' shuttle which links hotels around King's Cross to their other routes at Waterloo Bridge, the only top sight being the British Museum, so these are nothing especially exciting. Big Bus and Tootbus both have a Blue route that's essentially their other route plus a loop around Hyde Park. City Sightseeing's Museum route is so short you could replace it with a walk across Hyde Park. All are just a little bit tortuous.
Golden Tours: 83 stops Big Bus: 51 stops Tootbus: 45 stops City Sightseeing: 39 stops TopView: 34 stops
Golden Tours has by far the widest coverage of central London, if that's what you're most interested in, with Big Bus in second place. TopView has the fewest stops but I'd say City Sightseeing's coverage is worse - one decent red circuit and a couple of brief antennae. Basically check the map carefully before you choose, especially if you're planning a multi-day pass, else your ticket might be quite restrictive and you'll end up paying ordinary TfL fares on top.
City Sightseeing: every 5-10 minutes from 8.30am-6pm Tootbus: every 15 minutes from 8am-7pm Big Bus: every 15 minutes from 8.30am-6pm TopView: every 15 minutes from 8.30am-6pm Golden Tours: every 20 minutes from 9am-5.30pm
When you buy a hop-on hop-off ticket you don't want to spend too much of your day waiting at bus stops so frequency is key. City Sightseeing wins this particular game by throwing vehicles at their routes, helping to ensure they'll likely be the bus turning up next. By contrast Golden Tours operate only every 20 minutes so you'll be hanging around more, plus they start later and finish earlier than all the operators. Tootbus is best for extended hours, but even then you'll be left to make your own way around in the evening.
OK here's the important one, the price of a one-day hop-on hop-off pass.
Golden Tours: £39 (£32 if bought online) Tootbus: £39 (£35.10 if bought online) City Sightseeing: £39 (whatever) Big Bus: £47 (£38 if bought online) TopView: £49 (£32 if bought online)
If you're a Londoner you might be screaming "how much!?!" at that list. £39 for a glorified bus ride is extortionate, even for an all day hopper with a commentary in your local language, and £49 is ridiculous. Most operators have rather cheaper prices if you book online, the heftiest discount (35%) being for over-pricy TopView. City Sightseeing is the only operator not to offer an online discount, so might look joint cheapest at first sight but is technically the most expensive. Big Bus is second dearest whichever way you pay, which sticks in the craw somewhat when you know it's the only one TfL recommends.
Alas nobody offers a simple 2 hour circular tour, only the more expensive bells and whistles networks, and that'll be the reason these prices are so high.
Here's another favourite offering, a 24 hour pass plus sightseeing river cruise (generally the London Eye to the Tower). All prices are online, the walk-up fare will be scarier.
Golden Tours: £37 TopView: £37 Tootbus: £41.40 Big Bus: £44 City Sightseeing: £45
TopView were bottom of the last list but are now joint top, such is the differential between online and walk-up pricing. Also note how the operators are only asking an extra £5 or £6 for your boat ride, making it a decent value add-on on top of an extortionate basic fare. For comparison the fare for a single Thames Clippers journey in the Central zone is £9 using contactless or £11.40 bought at the pier.
If you're planning a longer stay, a 48 hour pass with a river cruise generally costs about £55, but Golden Tours are much cheaper at £43.
Now might be a good time to compare sightseeing buses with the basic TfL offer in zone 1.
Bus ride with 1h Hopper: £1.75 Bus & tram cap: £5.25 Daily cap (tube & bus): £8.50 Day Travelcard: £15.90 Weekly cap (tube & bus): £42.70
Even the cheapest tour bus operator charges £32 to ride around on buses all day whereas TfL's cap is only £5.25, a full 85% less. For £8.50 you can throw tubes into the mix, and OK you can't do much sightseeing underground but it's still 75% less, or 50% less if you're contactless-averse and want a Travelcard. Looking more broadly TfL's weekly cap gives you seven day's travel whereas for that money on a sightseeing bus you'd only get two days. The on-board commentary, lack of roof and ease of use had better be important to you if you choose to go private.
Another important discriminator is the range of added extras your tour bus ticket gets you. These are for the "24h+boat" option.
Big Bus: four guided walking tours TopView: one guided walking tour Tootbus: three self-guided walking tours City Sightseeing: quiz booklet for children on the Blue Route Golden Tours: no extras
The walking tours are a bit of cheat because they only run once a day, so either you're at the Tower of London at 2pm for the Jack the Ripper tour or you miss out. As for Tootbus's self-guided tours offering, this comes across as miserly and cheap. All these walks are really doing is getting you off the company's sightseeing buses for a couple of hours so they're the winner here, not you.
And what if you fancy an evening ride to see the lights? Sorry that's extra.
These aren't hop-on hop-off, they're a single circuit. Usually there's a single departure so you can't just rock up wherever and whenever you like. Only Tootbus vary their departure across the year (currently 8.30pm), whereas City Sightseeing have fixed 5.45pm and 6.45pm departures which in high summer are never going to get dark. Golden Tours are the only operator with four departure times (6pm, 7pm, 8pm and 9pm) so you can choose for yourself, duskily.
What I didn't actually do, because it would have cost over £175, was board each bus and see what the on-board experience is like. Maybe they're so excellent that this cancels out the heft of the fare demanded. Here then are the Tripadvisor ratings of the five companies, five max. Sorry it's not more helpful.
While I was researching today's post I stood on London Bridge for half an hour watching the tour bus shtick in action. The keenest fellow was the City Sightseeing guy who regularly plugged his tours to passers-by and became particularly animated when a bus turned up, bounding over with a cry of "Anyone for City Sightseeing"? Such were his sales skills that he managed to sign up eight people in the gap between two buses, paused for a quick vape and then sank his teeth into another American family. The Tootbus guy was much quieter but still managed two sales whereas the TopView guy needn't have bothered turning up (and the other two operators hadn't). Played well, the sightseeing bus game is a proper cash cow.
But I did feel for the tourists rocking up and having to make a decision on the spot on absolutely minimal information, with no clue whatsoever as to the comparative deals on offer. A sightseeing pass might constitute a fairly significant proportion of their holiday spending and it was all being done on faith, I suspect frequently over-buying something they'd insufficiently use.
I should offer a conclusion as to which of the five sightseeing operators is the best, or at least the least worst, so I'll give that a go. It has to be either Golden Tours or TopView because they're the cheapest, assuming you think £32 a day is cheap. TopView then wins if your priority is frequency and operating hours, whereas Golden Tours wins out if your priority is geographical coverage (83 stops beats TopView's miserly 34). The operator to avoid is City Sightseeing as they're the most expensive with a fairly limited network. Only buy your tickets online, never from cheery uniformed staff on the street.
Obviously I'd suggest that tourists ought to plump for TfL services instead because they're massively cheaper, go everywhere and run all day, but I understand they can be confusing for newcomers and the routes aren't particularly optimised for a tourist experience. Instead TfL are happy to shunt visitors over to Big Bus if asked ("yeah, it's £48"), having concluded it's better to stay out of the game and collect a nice slice of commission instead.
Today is Buckinghamshire Day, a celebration of all things Northwest Home Counties, or at least it is if you're a flagpolefetishist or a features writer with a gap to fill. It might sound historic but was actually conjured up in 2015 for no better reason than that on 29th July 1948 a small wheelchair archery event took place at Stoke Mandeville hospital, a precursor to the Paralympic Games. I have nevertheless made a celebratory visit to the ceremonial county - not to the glories of Cliveden, the joys of Stowe, the heights of Ivinghoe, the depths of West Wycombe or the roundabouts of Milton Keynes but to a cluster of commuter villages by the M25 and a Bond-themed cul-de-sac.
The Ivers (which is the actual name of the parish council) covers a four mile semi-rural stripe just to the west of Greater London. The capital never extended this far partly thanks to the Green Belt but mainly halted by the River Colne, indeed very few roads cross Iver-ward between the M4 and the M40. The easiest way in is by train, that is assuming you manage to find a Crossrail service which stops at Iver, indeed this jumped-up accessible halt is comfortably the least used station on the entire Elizabeth line.
The thing about Iver station is that it's not actually in Iver, it's in Richings Park. This was originally the estate of a historic local mansion, purchased in 1922 by three brothers called Harry, Friend and Eric Sykes with the intention of transforming it into a garden village. They started by the railway building a swathe of 350 nice detacheds, but swiftly overreached themselves and went bust before expanding as planned in the direction of Colnbrook. That unbuilt area is currently a very large golf course, which I hope Rachel Reeves has her eye on, and the ex-mansion (which was the HQ of Bomber Command for the first six months of WW2) was located somewhere near the 10th hole.
I've skated over that somewhat but a resident has created a very detailed history of Richings Park on a non smartphone-friendly website, the content of which puts the heritage offering of many a London borough to shame.
The heart of Richings Park is a T-shaped rustic shopping parade, seemingly too large for the local population until you remember how much surplus dosh they must have. Pride of place on the corner goes to the locally-ubiquitous estate agent and a huggably non-twee cafe, with the inevitable interior designer, physiotherapist and wellness clinic further out. It must be disappointing only having a Costcutter for groceries, but Ocado delivers. A separate parade with slightly fewer dazzling hanging baskets provides somewhere for the vet and Indian restaurant to hang out, and what looks like a Tudor pub is actually a 1920s hotel/bar with an eye on the conference trade. And perhaps the intermediate avenues aren't lined by homes quite as upmarket as I might have suggested, but you only have to look at the spacious street pattern to see how large their gardens must be.
Annoyingly for residents of Iver their village is a mile to the north, and although there is technically a connecting bus route it only runs three times a day. The intervening walk follows a ratrun lane past the entrance to two business parks, an industrial estate and a water treatment works because rural Buckinghamshire isn't all green, especially the motorway-proximate part. At the halfway point the road crosses the Slough Arm of the Grand Union, a quiet straight-ish backwater which although navigable generally only ripples for ducks. On my visit a somewhat rough-looking family were unloading bikes and mopeds from a trailer so that two generations could career off down the steps and terrorise the towpath for an hour or two, so I'm glad I didn't need to go that way.
The village of Iver is the oldest in the area, located by a crossing of the Colne on the road between Uxbridge and Langley. It has a wiggly high street still lined by a handful of pre-Georgian buildings and a sturdy church that's structurally from the 15th century but is thought to have replaced a Saxon chapel. If you fancy a trip up the tower they're doing tours next Sunday afternoon (and also August 18th) with cream teas available after you descend. The oldest of Iver's pubs is the half-timbered Swan which has been serving beer since 1576 and was Sid James' local when he lived nearby while filming the Carry Ons. Alas The Bull across the road is empty and currently up for sale with "Full planning permission for 12 units", so expect that to vanish soon, while The Chequers has been refurbished into commercial premises and The Fox and Pheasant has been flats for over a decade.
Iver had a market charter in medieval times but you'd never guess from its drably postwar shopping parade, indeed even the period clocktower is a 1993 construction. Being not far from Slough there are quite a few Indian takeaways, the best-named being the marble-fronted Sheeshmahal. Other retail presences include Iver Curry, Iver Grill, Iver Inn and Iver Dry Cleaners, although sadly nobody's plumped for something full-on punny like Iver Bouquet, Iver Cavity or Iver Hangover. I always think you can tell a lot about a neighbourhood from the way the local newsagent arranges their papers, so here the top row features the Times, the Mail and the Sun while last place on the bottom row is taken by the Guardian. Also look out for the board outside the parish office which encourages you to try the 4½ mile Iver Circular Walk, an approximate triangle which includes a lot of river and canal (and a smidgeon of Hillingdon).
The remaining significantly-sized Iver is Iver Heath, a relatively late developer thrust into focus when the A412 extended from Denham. The Five Points junction became a roundabout, the wedge between two former lanes became a nest of well-to-do cul-de-sacs and most homes seem to be named after whatever trees they replaced. St Margaret's church emerged in 1861, somewhat prematurely, and is linked via pine-y paths to a more recent congregation. Useful services in Iver Heath include a central village hall, a peripheral Co-op and also a pie and mash truck outside the Stag and Hounds, but I suspect that's more to cater for through traffic heading to/from the M25. Non-car-owners are mostly stuffed but buses do run half-hourly to Slough, Iver and Uxbridge so escape is possible.
The most famous place hereabouts, indeed absolute cinematic royalty, can be found a mile from Five Points at the northern end of Pinewood Lane. Originally all that was up here were a few lodges and Heatherden Hall, an MP's country house hideaway, but in 1936 J Arthur Rank went into partnership with building tycoon Charles Boot and created a Hollywood-style film studio. The old entrance is still there with a gabled gateway and a bus shelter out front from which employees and official visitors can catch a regular shuttle to Slough, Uxbridge, West Ruislip or Gerrards Cross stations. But go a little further and a massive boxy vista opens up, a sprawl of grey sheds of many convenient sizes, and this is the multifunctional behemoth that Pinewood Studios has become.
There are stages named after Sean Connery and Richard Attenborough, and other buildings named after Moneypenny and Carrie Fisher. There are roads named after Broccoli and Goldfinger, and on the extension across the road Skywalker Avenue and (haha) Meryl Street. There's a 65000-gallon water tank from the early days that still floods actors as necessary, eminently visible from the street outside. Also clearly seen is the roof of the iconic 007 stage, the largest on the lot, although it's not the original it's a post-conflagration rebuild. I hadn't realised quite how utterly extensive all this is, having previously only walked along the rear fence in Black Park, and according to a planning notice on a lamppost Pinewood still has expansion plans on adjacent farmland comprising over 1½ million square feet of 'film production buildings'.
If you have the money you can live opposite in a small private cul-de-sac called Bond Close, built in 2004. It has twelve properties and I now regret not trespassing beyond the warning notices to see if the house between 6 and 8 is numbered 007. I think these are the most northerly houses in Iver, bar any fake ones on the filming lots, a full three miles north of the station of the same name. And OK you're not going to see much of the studios, nor is there anything majorly worth seeing inbetween, but I hope you now appreciate what's just over the Buckinghamshire border on Buckinghamshire Day. Iver been so you don't have to.
Team GB
• Teary bronze in women's synchronised 3m springboard
• Gutsy silver in women's time trial cycling
• Men's freestyle relay a 'missed opportunity'
• Whitlock and Peaty through to finals
• Josh Tarling suffers early puncture
• Tom Daley seen knitting again
Rest of the world
• It finally stops raining in Paris
• Street skateboarding final postponed
• Snoop Dogg attends the aquatics centre
• Shinnosuke Oka's cardboard bed warps
• Estonia misses out in women's épée
• France takes the rugby sevens
• 185 countries still have no medals
Medal table 1) Australia 🟡🟡🟡⚪⚪ 2) China 🟡🟡🟤 3) United States 🟡⚪⚪🟤🟤 4) France 🟡⚪⚪🟤 11) Great Britain ⚪🟤
Hampstead
• Peaked at 24.0°C at 15:57
• Max wind gust 16.6 mph at 14:12
• 10 hours of sunshine
• No rain
Global heatwatch
• hottest ever night in Penang
• hottest ever July night in Osaka
• hottest ever July night in Grenada
• 46.1°C at 1200m elevation in Iran
• 32% of buildings in Jasper destroyed by fire
Hoxton station has a new platform, a new online platform that is, a prototype accessibility portal with key information accessed on your smartphone. I haven't seen a press release about it but I have seen a poster in the ticket hall while passing through the station.
It's only accessible via QR code so it's not that accessible, but I clicked through and discovered the URL is vin.cloud.gomedia.io/HOXTON so you can check it out too. The homescreen is a list of the next three departures and their expected departure times, with a link (top right) to an animated gentleman announcing the next departure in British Sign Language! Clever, thoughtful and potentially so useful. One more click takes you to a list of calling points or a list of All Departures over the next three hours (Hi People Running The Trial, it'd be more customer friendly to delete the railway suffixes, we don't need to know it's "Highbury And Islington Ell", "Whitechapel LT" or "Clapham Junction Plats 0-2"). Another click leads to a comprehensive simple list of Station facilities.
Another accessibility tab designed to be of particular use to the hard of hearing is a list of all the station announcements at Hoxton over the last hour. And that's a lot of announcements - I counted 70 in an hour last night - including next trains, approaching trains, cancelled trains and safety messages. If you've ever wondered how often they play that bloody See It Say It Sorted message, at Hoxton it appears to be about every 10 minutes. I've not seen this trial advertised at any other Overground stations BUT by tweaking the URL I've discovered they're doing something similar at Wapping and Anerley, (but not at Haggerston, Rotherhithe or Brockley). It may be worth keeping an eye on because, hey, we can never have too many accessibility tools.
Update: full details of the 'Luna' BSL project here. Also at Hackney Central, Hackney Downs, Upper Holloway and Willesden Junction.
More Overground news
As the renaming of the Overground lines approaches, TfL are running a creative competition whereby your work could appear at Overground stations later in the year. You have to write a poem or produce a poster based on "how the new line names inspire you", and how old you are decides which line you have to tackle. The under 7s get to do the Lioness, 10-13 years olds are Windrushing and 18-21 year olds are tasked with Weaver. For most of my readership, being over 21, it's Mildmay or bust. Full details here.
On the same day TfL launched a second series of their Mind The Gap podcast, again Overground-naming-fixated. It's a six-parter introduced by Tim Dunn, although so far they've only released the Mildmay episode. You can find it where you normally find your podcasts (or if that means nothing to you, here). I'm intrigued that TfL announced both of these on a Tuesday in July, as if part of a planned pre-launch publicity programme, so my hunch is that these mark the Two Months To Go touchpoint in which case you can expect to see six new line names on Monday 16th September.
Electric rail news
GWR are testing a battery-operated electric train on the Greenford branch line - former District line D Stock over-optimistically upgraded by now-defunct Vivarail. One dark-hued Class 230 train is shuttling back and forth occasionally to check it could operate successfully between chargings, but not with passengers on board, only GWR staff and gizmo-twiddling engineers. I think these trials started back in March so this isn't exactly news but it's the first time I've seen it operating (at West Ealing, slotted halfway between the usual scheduled diesel services) and woohoo I even shot a brief video.
TfL news
Often when people go on holiday they take a thick blockbuster to read, maybe a Jilly Cooper, maybe a James Patterson. But if you're of a transport bent why not grab a digital copy of the papers for the latest TfL board meeting and stash those on your tablet instead? It's 620 pages long, and OK a lot of that is tedious financial stuff but it includes a 32 page Commissioner's report, 100 pages of TfL's Annual report, 60 pages of Health and Safety review and a 128 page Transport Strategy, and by the time you've read that you'll know everything about what TfL did last year and what they intend to do in the future.
Dangleway news
The cablecar is being circus-themed over the school summer holidays with acrobats and jugglers occasionally present to entertain passengers while they wait. My condolences to TfL's press officers who lovingly crafted a press release entitled A summer at the circus is underway at the IFS Cloud Cable Car and which so far has only been publicised by First Group plc and a tiny independent radio station based in Shooters Hill. Sorry guys, nobody's interested any more.
Brandfroth news
TfL have done that station renaming thing again because a multi-national company promised to give them lots of money and they couldn't say no. It's only for a few days and although it's in zone 1 it's not in proper central London so you're unlikely to have seen it. As usual the sponsor looked for a station where one word was similar to their brand name and then unwisely ran with it. This included changing the name out front, filling ad frames around the station with a rebranded roundel, slapping vinyls on the stair treads, sticking a special cover on the day's edition of Metro, dishing out product-shaped leaflets, commandeering all the local billboards and commissioning four works of art. It was all a bit much really, and I suspect the sponsor got rather less publicity than they hoped for. I'm not going to help them, sorry.
The brand ambassadors standing beside three of the works of art looked pretty bored, given nobody was stopping. The fourth work was placed half a mile away where nobody would find it, apart from the press photographers who ensured it appeared in all the newspapers rather than the renamed station. The sponsors had also roped in eight local businesses across the local area in a kind of treasure hunt but nobody seemed particularly interested in those either. The response on social media was angry rather than celebratory ("Cringe" "Please stop this nonsense" "Did you learn NOTHING from Burberry Street?!") although those moaning that the station would be unidentifiable to tourists plainly hadn't been on the platform where it remained very obvious.
I fear TfL's Brand Froth team will be only too keen to do this again sometime somewhere else, but I love that the sponsorship tide has turned and the public basically isn't interested any more.
10th October 1964:Tokyo
I hadn't yet been born but I was present on the planet embryonically so arguably this was my first Summer Olympics. I know my parents enjoyed it because they bought the music used for the BBC Olympics presentation - Tokyo Melody by Helmut Zacharias - and helped propel it to number 9 in the singles chart. As one of a limited number of 7-inches in our record box while I was growing up it got a lot of plays, and I still subliminally love it.
12th October 1968:Mexico City
I remember nothing of this but I probably saw some on the TV. The Opening Ceremony started at ten to six so I had every chance of seeing it before I went to bed, but would never have been allowed to stay up afterwards to watch Dixon of Dock Green and Val Doonican.
26th August 1972:Munich
This started in the summer holidays between infant school and junior school - golden years - and unless we'd gone away for the bank holiday weekend I'm sure we'd have been watching the start on telly. The Opening Ceremony slotted into Saturday's Grandstand between racing from Goodwood and cricket from Lord's.
17th July 1976:Montreal
This is the first time I was in the right country on the day of the opening ceremony, because amazingly my family had flown to Canada three days earlier to stay with my Mum's ex-schoolmate/penpal. Perversely this was the day we set off on a week-long circuit of Lake Ontario in a motorhome, so as the Games began we were crossing the St Lawrence into the USA and never saw any of what was going on 150 miles downriver. While the world continued to watch the athletics I was climbing mountains in Vermont, nipping into the ice rink where the 1932 Winter Olympics figure skating had taken place, standing behind the torrent of Niagara Falls and collecting Olympic gamecards from participating McDonald's restaurants. Our family still owns a souvenir glass tumbler with the Games logo on it, which somehow my brother and I have never smashed over the intervening 48 years.
19th July 1980:Moscow
We missed the opening ceremony because we'd gone for a drive in the Chilterns, indeed we were possibly underground in West Wycombe Caves when the flag was raised. But we watched quite a lot of the rest of the coverage because it was one way of occupying Pascal, my French Exchange partner, and stopped him trying to empty the contents of my bedroom drawers onto the floor.
28th July 1984:Los Angeles
Time zones made this harder to watch, but it was the university holidays and I had no obligations so stayed up until four in the morning to watch the opening ceremony on my black and white portable TV. I enjoyed the rocketmen, the airships and the fluffed oath, but was less impressed when my Mum plonked a cup of tea beside my bed four hours later. Total sports-TV overkill ensued, not helped by test cricket filling the daytime hours. The best thing about the first week turned out to be ITV's late night alternative, the reptilian sci-fi drama V, and Diana's jaw haunts me to this day.
17th September 1988:Seoul
I'd started work so it was no longer the holidays, also this Olympics took place mostly while Britain was asleep so proved much easier to miss. I did watch the repeated opening ceremony over breakfast, aided by usually-screamy toddler Charlotte being out with her parents at the annual Eton College Jumble Sale, but switched off as soon as the proper sport started.
25th July 1992:Barcelona
I've blogged about 25th July 1992 in considerable detail before because coincidentally it was my 10,000th day on Earth. As you'll remember I'd taken the train to Luton to take part in Steve's amateur pop quiz and we watched the opening ceremony while we waited for the other contestants to arrive. It was a ridiculously atypical day, and I was having far too much fun to be particularly bothered with how the rest of the Games played out.
19th July 1996:Atlanta
Opening ceremonies now lasted four hours, but because this one happened overnight I watched the BBC's morning repeat and thankfully they'd cut it down to two. Then I took the train to Luton again, and let's just say it wasn't as eventful as last time. My diary describes the subsequent Olympic coverage as "lots of obscure sports in five minute segments just because there's a Brit involved".
15th September 2000:Sydney
My diary has nothing to say about the Australian opening ceremony because it took place while I was at work, and because I was much more interested in who'd win the first series of Big Brother that evening, which turned out to be Craig.
13th August 2004:Athens
I was now living in London, an Olympic Candidate City, but had spent the day at Ashridge on a work jolly our boss had somehow wangled out of the departmental budget. I spent Friday evening watching on the TV and texting BestMateFromWork who was out on the town with a date who turned out to be a jerk. As I blogged at the time, "I'd forgotten how mind-bogglingly tedious an Olympic Opening Ceremony is. It's basically a one hour art&history lesson followed by a two hour geography lesson."
8th August 2008:Beijing
Ah yes, the Games that started at 8.08 on 8.8.08 for Chinese reasons. I remember watching the opening ceremony on the TV in the canteen at work, being dazzled by the massed drumming out of the corner of my eye while a colleague droned on about his intention to sue for underpaid gym membership. I caught up on the 'printing presses' and 'Sarah Brightman' sequences later.
27th July 2012:London
A localevent which I attended on multiple occasions.
5th August 2016:Rio de Janeiro
Technically the opening ceremony started at midnight the following day UK time, so I decided to stay up and watch the low key presentation, the parkour, the giant microbes and the parade (as far as Great Britain) before turning in. After a decent amount of sleep I skedaddled to the seaside and quite frankly that was a lot more entertaining.
23rd July 2021:Tokyo
The first repeat on my list with the Games back in the Japanese capital. The pandemic meant there'd been a five year gap since last time, and the events themselves were seriously muted by an absence of cheering crowds. My favourite bits of the opening ceremony were the clever pictograms, but I was also secretly pleased nothing had topped the first 20 minutes of London's Industrial Revolution mega-tableau. Maybe never will.
26th July 2024:Paris
And so the Games have come round again, in this case after the shortest ever gap (2 years, 11 months and 18 days). I hope they'll be excellent and I hope the innovative Seine-based opening ceremony is a blast. It unnerves me slightly that this is still only the 15th Summer Olympics of my lifetime and I'm unlikely to see more than 20, so I intend to make the most of it and raise a glass to excellence from the comfort of my sofa. Vive les jeux olympiques, and here's to many more.
Engineering consultants Buro Happold, in association with social enterprise Footways, have just launched a new circular walking route linking 10 central London rail termini. It's not meant for speedy connections, more for recreational wandering, and ticks off "a range of features linked to London’s engineering history" along the way. Further 'Great British Engineering Adventures' are promised later but the Rail & Heritage Loop is blazing a trail. It isn't waymarked but it does have a very precise online map with pop-up pins so I thought I'd follow the loop to see if it was any good. If nothing else, I might now prevent you from trying similar.
Euston → King’s Cross → Farringdon → Liverpool Street → Fenchurch Street/Cannon Street → London Bridge → Waterloo → Victoria → Paddington → Euston
The first problem is it's 18 miles long, far too far to walk comfortably in one go. London's rail termini are impractically spread out, which is essentially why the Circle line exists and that's much too long to walk too. Euston/St Pancras/King's Cross might be really close, ditto Charing Cross/Waterloo, but Paddington and Liverpool Street are over four miles apart and that's only if you go in a straight line which this walk very much doesn't. I therefore decided to skip Paddington, a boss move which knocked eight miles off the walk all in one go, and just did the eastern half from Euston round to Victoria.
The second problem is navigating via the Footways map, which looks easy on a laptop screen but became less practical on a smartphone in the field. To follow the red line I had to keep zooming in and zooming in to discover what the street name was, just to be sure I was on the right route, which soon grew tiring. Also some of the backstreet routes are dead wiggly so you have to keep checking the map a lot, and I didn't and soon went off track. Also if you don't check frequently the map zooms out and you have to pinch and scroll back in again, and on a really long walk this soon gets frustratingly tedious. It turns out I went wrong twice in the first 20 minutes, and I supposedly know London like the back of my hand, so I swiftly decided to ditch the designated meanders and follow my own route instead.
But I did get round eight of the stations, and what's more some highly unusual things happened at some of them, so rather than blabbing about the walk I'm just going to blog about the stations. Sorry Buro Happold.
Euston
They've moved the taxi rank again. It originally shifted out front onto former grass to make way for HS2, and now they're clearing that away because a new taxi rank has opened out front on former grass on the other side. The new taxi rank is less convenient to get to and more likely to involve steps if you go the wrong way, but also considerably prettier with a multi-coloured timber walkway down the centre. I liked it so much I took this photo...
...and was very surprised when a security guard walked over and asked me to delete it. It turned out not to be a security thing, he just didn't like people taking photos of him which apparently "they're always doing". I told him this was strange behaviour in a public place and also that he might want to get a less conspicuous job, but being an obliging soul I duly deleted it and took another without him in it. Only after I'd left did I realise I'd actually taken two photos of him so still had one left, and what's more he was 100% perfectly obscured behind a post so not even his mother with a magnifying glass would have recognised him. How quickly we assume the worst, even when luck is on our side.
St Pancras
People are taking escalator safety really really seriously these days.
This sign leading down to the tube station is titled An Escalator - Seriously Not A Shoeshine, and goes on to warn No Feet Under The Bristles unless you want to lose your toes. I do wonder how many people using that escalator know what a shoeshine actually is, or want to be reminded about digital severance as they step on. Also at the foot of the poster it says Tell Others Too Please so I'm doing as instructed and telling all of you, although what I'd really like to do is sack the copywriter because I am absolutely bloody tired of being endlessly patronised about escalator safety everywhere I go.
King's Cross
On the concourse I had to manoeuvre past a big red box with a model train running round the top, which it turned out was the LNER Carbon Saving Departures Board.
It has a flappy display which is supposed to compare the carbon emissions of trains to planes and other activities, although it appeared to be malfunctioning because five of the letters were missing so it wasn't getting its point across. Anyway because I took an interest a lady from LNER handed me a couple of freebies, one of which was a packet of flower seeds and the other was a rectangle of card telling me that LNER believe in making the environment better. In that case, LNER, why have you printed a load of pointless self-congratulatory flyers which are simply going to get thrown away, and why are you handing out seeds in July which the packet says need to be planted between March and May? No Carbon is being saved by the Carbon Saving Departures Board, indeed quite the opposite.
Farringdon
I've always wondered why the departure boards in the ticket hall at Farringdon don't show actual departures, only an A-Z list of destinations and next trains, so yesterday I walked over to the barrier staff and asked.
They insisted the A-Z list showed departures and was easy to use, and I said there ought to be a simpler list as well. They said the A-Z list was quick to use, and I said it wasn't as quick as a simple list of departures. They said they couldn't see why that was necessary, and I said the Crossrail platforms have a list so why not the mainline trains. They said it might be because this is a new station, and I said those two boards at the end are always empty so could easily display a chronological list. They said maybe it's because this is a special station, and I said sure but no other station relies on just an A-Z list. Eventually (after much polite interaction) they said the boards were like that because "this is what they gave us", and I said that was likely the best answer and thanked them for their time.
Moorgate
This isn't on Buro Happold's list of stations but it is en route so I dropped by. Out front I was approached by a charity worker in a blue tabard, and normally I'd walk on by but this time I thought I'd pause for blogging purposes and see what he had to say.
"Could you take a group photo?" he asked. I was somewhat taken aback, but once we'd established the group didn't include me I agreed to take it. He handed me his phone, then he and his three Orbis colleagues stood beside their Orbis rostrum and held up their Orbis leaflets and smiled. Apparently they had to send the photo to their supervisor to prove they'd turned up, and wow the lack of trust in the zero hours economy is depressing.
Liverpool Street: The interesting anecdotes dried up at this point, but Ian Visits has the story of how they're replacing the food outlets by the gateline into 24 more ticket gates. Cannon St/Fenchurch St: The Rail & Heritage Loop splits across the City, forcing you to choose one station or the other, but I looked at both routes and thought "sheesh that's annoyingly indirect" and gave up and caught the bus instead. London Bridge: I failed to spot the just-unveiled 57m-long mosaic outside the station, despite ending up in the bus station where it actually is, but here's Londonist's gorgeously-colourful report which confirms "You won't miss it". Waterloo: I couldn't face this walk either because I've done the entire South Bank many times before, so hopped on a train to Waterloo East instead. Charing Cross: This isn't on the official list of stations either but the walk grazes it, so I went anyway but nothing interesting cropped up. Victoria: This was quite dull too, unless you wanted to stand around gormlessly watching a Despicable Me trailer on the concourse. It's also where I gave up because I was skipping the final eight remaining miles via Paddington, remember, and you might want to skip a lot more than that.
The Museum of the Home in Hoxton has evolved again. It used to be the Geffrye Museum, a linear celebration of historic middle-class interiors. In 1998 it extended beyond the almshouses into a loopy extension with cafe and gift shop. In 2021 they added a thematic basement, shifted the cafe and renamed themselves. And yesterday they opened seven new Rooms Through Time covering the period 1878-2049, simultaneously more of the same and even less of a celebration of historic middle-class interiors.
The rooms look fairly bare by modern standards with limited furniture and none of the clutter that the industrial revolution kickstarted. They continue to be representative of better-off homes, focusing on those with servants rather than the servants themselves, and also reflective of white English society as was the case in rural Hackney in those days. The seven updated rooms are very much a cultural counterbalance.
(cross the entrance foyer, pass the gift shop, enter the extension, maybe sit down and sit on some pebbly things and watch a throbbing cyclorama, maybe not)
» A Townhouse in 1878 An Ayah, Bunoo, is packing up her things in this terraced house on Oakfield Street in Chelsea.
You can sense the leap already. We're specifically in Chelsea, no longer Hackney, and the focus of the scene is an Indian nanny charged with accompanying the family's three children on a voyage home from India. You discern none of this if you just walk up and look at the room, it still looks properly chintzy peak Victorian with its gaslamps, embroidery and floral patterns, indeed very similar to how it looked previously. But look closer and there are pashminas in a small travelling case, toys scattered on the floor... and yes, this is the most understated of the themed rooms. Boxes ticked: ✅ Indian, ✅ Empire, ✅ children
» A Tenement Flat in 1913 On Friday nights the Delinsky family welcome in Shabbos marking the Jewish day of rest, which begins at sundown in a few hours’ time.
Now we're changing rooms. Previously this space housed a smart Arts & Crafts living room with highback chairs and emerald fireplace tiles. Now it's a rather more austere interior representative of a flat on the Rothschild Estate, enough to benefit from a newfangled inside loo but little decorative to shout about. It's only obviously Jewish if you check out the slate shopping list on the kitchen table, scrutinise the ornamentation or read the information panel out front. And here's the real innovation... you can now walk into the room itself and explore it properly, taking on board the iron bedstead and family photos up close, and that's excellent. Boxes ticked: ✅ Jewish, ✅ council housing
» A Room Upstairs in 1956 Newlyweds Kathleen and Jack are getting ready for a big night out at the Galtymore dancehall in Cricklewood.
This too is neverbeforeseen, a bedsit in a postwar newbuild with a cheap wardrobe, one-bar electric fire and woodchip walls. Because the setting is prior to a night out there's perfume on the dressing table and a pair of trousers on the ironing board, and because the young couple are Irish there's a fiddle on the table and a crucifix above the mirror. In common with the other spaces this was curated with the aid of experts, in this case the London Irish Centre, so don't assume anyone's being deliberately stereotypical. I like the really little touches, like the chunky Monopoly box on the upper shelf and the "oooh my nan had one of those" bedside clock, and even better the complete bathroom they've added alongside with its copy of Picture Post and a working radio set. Boxes ticked: ✅ Irish, ✅ white
» A Terraced House in 1978 The family have all gathered around the television for the premiere of Empire Road.
This is another recycled room, previously A Front Room in 1976 but nudged forward a couple of years to coincide with a ground-breaking drama series. Look, BBC2 is playing on the telly. The designers have toned down the wallpaper considerably, which seems a shame, but the carpet and rugs still blaze tropically orange and the iconic Caribbean pineapple is still in pride of place on the drinks trolley. Non-specific period touches include a paraffin heater, a transistor radio and GPO rotary dial telephone, and I see they've removed one of the sofas to enable visitors to walk a little further in. Of all the extension rooms, this unarguably has the most character. Boxes ticked: ✅ Afro-Caribbean, ✅ migrants
» A High-rise Flat in 2005 Nadia, Ashley and Alex have grabbed a paintbrush and are personalising their shared home.
This time we're talking flatshare, a modular space partitioned off into two small bedrooms, shower room and toilet. We're also talking LBGTQI+, although the three lesbians would never have called themselves that back in the day because the curators are framing two decades ago through the lens of the present. The decor is spot on, from queer art on the walls to a glitterball in the toilet, plus a Diva magazine open at the sex toys page and a couple of Greggs pasties on the bed. Other incredibly-of-their-time artefacts include a well-thumbed A-Z, a Pure Evoke digital radio, trailing cables and CDs everywhere, a tower PC running Windows XP and an actual NE London bus map blutacked to the wall. Who knew that 21st century living could be so nostalgic? Boxes ticked: ✅ LBGTQI+, ✅ women
» A Terraced House in 2024 It is Sunday afternoon and the Nguyễn family are spending quality time together, having lunch and singing karaoke.
A 2024 room is technically the easiest to fill and also the most unnecessary, so the big question is how have they chosen to fill it? The answer is with a Vietnamese family and a typically crowded housing association flat, which helps explain the Quang Dũng song playing on the karaoke (but not the Daniel O'Donnell teapot on the crockery shelf). The kitchen at the rear is fantastically done - fully stocked with a colander of noodles on the hob, beansprouts on the chopping board and a half-empty bottle of Tesco washing-up liquid by the sink. As with a lot of the rooms the aim is no longer to resonate with your experience but to encourage you to compare and contrast the way that others live, and I'd say this is an inspired choice. Boxes ticked: ✅ Asian, ✅ family
» A Converted Flat in 2049 The Innovo Room of the Future explores home amid technological and societal changes.
All you can say about this last space is that it's going to be wrong, but it is at least an intriguing glimpse into a potential future. A minimalist room suggests most 'stuff' has gone digital. A set of sparse plates suggests food is very-differently sourced. A wall of fungal insulation suggests the climate is not what it was. And if you look out of the 'window' you'll see automated vehicles in the street, highrise farms, a mini nuclear power plant down the road and a pelican perching on the derelict gasometer, suggesting someone's had a lot of fun devising this. I looked in the backstory book on the dining table and apparently the main family here is a thrupple, because never assume. I suspect a lot of museum visitors will shrug off all of this as fanciful, but who's to say where another 25 years of domestic inequality will take us. Boxes ticked: ✅ climate change, ✅ innovation
It's very apparent that Rooms Through Time now has fewer sampling points, or at least wider gaps as it skates between the selected years. But it'll still fascinate the next time you visit, and because it's more diverse will fascinate a much wider spectrum of visitors than before. I look forward to seeing how they'll dress it up for Christmas.
Summer Olympics of my lifetime
