41% offBrunel Museum(£8.50 → £5) 27% offChelsea Stadium Tour(£30 → £22) 25% offTower Bridge(£13.40 → £10.10) 25% offDennis Severs House(£16 → £12) 20% offLondon Canal Museum(£7.50 → £6) 20% off Tower of London (£35.80 → £28.50) 20% off Hampton Court Palace (£28 → £22.50) 19% off Kensington Palace (£24.70 → £20) 18% off Foundling Museum (£12.75 → £10.50) 17% off Arsenal Stadium Tour (£30 → £25) 15% off (approx) English Heritage properties 14% off London Stadium Tour (£22 → £19) 11% off Sherlock Holmes Museum (£19 → £17) 10% off Westminster Abbey (£30 → £27) 10% off St Paul's Cathedral (£26 → £23.50) 10% off Churchill War Rooms (£33 → £29.70) 9% off Kew Gardens (£22 → £20) 7% off Leighton House Museum (£14 → £13) 6% off London Zoo (£33 → £31)
Shard, Madame Tussauds, London Eye, London Dungeon, Sea Life Centre, London Bridge Experience, Buckingham Palace, King's Gallery, Royal Mews, Cutty Sark, Royal Observatory, Up At The O2, tour of Parliament, National Trust properties, British Museum exhibitions, Tate exhibitions, Globe tours, HMS Belfast, Wembley Stadium Tour, Handel & Hendrix, Fashion & Textile Museum, Courtauld Galley, Dr Johnson's House, Chelsea Physic Garden, Postal Museum, Museum of Water & Steam, Crossness Engines (and the other London attractions I checked)
You can visit Columbia Road anytime but only on Sunday mornings does it become a mainstream magnet for millennials, the middle classes any anyone in need of maidenhair on their mantelpiece. It pays to arrive early because the action starts at eight, or even earlier if you've parked down a sidestreet to unload hundreds of potted plants and/or bunches of cut flowers. The north side of the street becomes lined with stalls, all the better for illumination by any morning sun, and the south side is left clear for circulation, cafe options and boutique browsing.
The stalls are attractively laid out and clearly labelled, safe in the knowledge that aspiration and value are twin bedfellows. Houseplants are more numerous than cut flowers, perhaps because they're easier to lug back next week if unsold or perhaps because it's March. Right now you can expect an abundance of tulips in all shades and colours, all temptingly priced the more bunches you buy, and with more round the back waiting to be whipped out once a gap appears. Now's also a great time to get your bedding plants, with tiny tubs of lupins, saxifrage and double geraniums for £2, all alas labelled as 'Perenials'. It's equally easy to grab a potted orchid, maybe a cheese plant, also a fair amount of lavender for those with tiny backyards or minimal balconies. Some of the smaller vendors plead cash only or cash preferred, while larger outfits are with the programme and list the cards they take, yes even American Express.
It's generally "all you can carry" so punters choose carefully, aware that a handful of daffs and a bag of succulents is going to be easier to get home than a rubber plant or bay tree. That said there's always someone lumbering away with the yucca their other half insisted upon, perhaps even the £350 yucca one stall claimed had a recommended retail price of £1200. It always feels like you're getting a bargain here, especially later in the day as the traders try to unload what they've got left, which may be why the bustle is thicker in the early afternoon than the really quite pleasurable browse I had at ten.
But if it's the flowers that lure people it's the wall of shops across the road that keeps them here. These small independent shops offer coffee and pastries, artisan gifts, amusing objets, antique bits, more coffee but with bagels, kiddy knitwear, quirky pottery, bubble tea and all kinds of other delectable browseables. The doorways with the longest queues are always those offering clutchable refreshment, perhaps a hot chocolate and a breakfast roll, then it's back into the fray to decide which bonsai would look best on your bathroom shelf. Come midweek and pretty much all these shops are closed, unfurling their shutters only for the guaranteed footfall a Sunday brings because, as generations of East End shoppers have discovered, a home really does look nicer with flowers in.
Petticoat Lane Market
This one's much more famous, at least beyond the boundaries of the capital, despite the fact no such street as Petticoat Lane exists. It did once, technically as Peticote Lane, which in the 17th century was part of a commercial district immediately outside the walls of the City. Since 1830 it's been Middlesex Street and every Sunday it's taken over by traders flogging clothes and other wearables, in effect a major overspill of the daily market in neighbouring Wentworth Street. In its day it was rammed, there not being much else doing locally on a Sunday morning and because it was a prime spot for lowly East Enders to find a proper bargain. The bargains are still there but the East Enders less so, the market now a shadow of its former self and attended by a clientele that barely overlaps with the smart souls up at Columbia Road. I blame the lack of adjacent coffee shops (I genuinely do).
Along the street are clothes rails hung with generic shirts and brand-fee blouses, and trestle tables covered with anonymous trainers and no-name dresses. Ladies on a mission can be seen rifling through piles of t-shirts for the right one in the right colour and the right size, or peering at a checked jacket and wondering if the label's genuine M&S. Fitted sheets are stacked in banana boxes, bland tracksuits can be assembled from unmatching halves and the saris under the awning are the brightest purchases of all. Everything comes out of a stuffed cardboard box, itself unpacked from a fleet of white vans, and is priced beneath a stock yellow sign or via something scribbled. Mixed in amongst all this are wheelie suitcases someone's trying to shift and the odd accessory the nearer you get to Bishopsgate, but generally if you can't wear it it isn't here, and if you don't mind what you wear Petticoat Lane's full of bargains. "£2 a polo shirt, have a look!"
Brick Lane Market
This one operates on Saturdays as well as Sundays, closing the upper end of Brick Lane to traffic so stalls can proliferate. But there aren't as many as I remember, and what there are don't exactly set the place alight, the main focus hereabouts having shifted off-road and indoors. I did however spot a stall selling slogan t-shirts, a stall selling mini wicker hampers and a stall selling 'wooden fridge magnets' (including several cringeworthy variations on 'Live Laugh Love'). One dealer had several boxes of vintage vinyl to rifle through, including a tub of jazz, a tub of blues and several tubs of 'as priced', while another trader had all the army surplus gear a provincial teenager or foreign tourist might think was kosher. In the general scheme of things the street market's more an add on than a must-see.
The big food draw at the top of the street is still Beigel Bake, the icon that's been dispensing hoopy carbs 24 hours a day since 1979. The queue remains out the door, and rightly so, especially when plain beigels still sell for as little as 45p and even adding a proper filling doesn't boost the price too much. The less iconic Beigel Shop, established 1855, is still trading from its orange-fronted hutch a couple of doors down. As for the street market its main food stalls can be found on the bridge above the railway lines out of Liverpool Street, a few mini-marquees primed to upsell grilled cheese, saucy ribs and berry crepes to folk who haven't yet stumbled upon anything better. I was pleased to see a Tower Hamlets market officer doing the rounds and chatting with stallholders, this in the spot where 15 years ago some dodgy soul might have been offloading stolen bikes.
For the widest food choice you want the Upmarket, an indoor food court in the corner of the Truman Brewery with all the ambience of a converted car park. Chefs fire up their grills from 10am on Sundays, or unscrew the Nutella, or lay out the giant strawberries they've painstaking piled into plastic beakers. The smells in this edible labyrinth are either spicily delicious or unduly pungent, depending on palate, and if you walk through when it's less busy expect calls from all sides to try a sample. At the very back, surrounded by nobody, I found a man in a beret standing proudly behind a table displaying five small piles of dipping biscuits he'd chalked up as Rain's Madeiran Treats. It turned out this was his first ever time at the market, at that point just half an hour in, and I'm so pleased to see on Instagram that he did finally sell some and will be back again soon because every very small business deserves a chance to succeed.
Borough Market
This isn't Sundays-only, more every-day-except-Monday, but Sunday is the day the world pours into Borough Market to grab comestibles and brunch under the railway viaduct. Nothing here quite feels amateur, nor necessarily cheap, just a deliberate attempt to focus artisan food where every hungry Londoner and tourist can find it. Cheese forms a strong part of the overall offering, with cheddarmongers ready to hand out tiny sample cores in the hope you'll walk off with a wheel. Pies and preserves are readily sourced, plus juices from some far-flung organic orchard, also stacks of flaky pastries nicer than Gail's does. The unit that always makes my eyes roll is The Tinned Fish Market who display their pilchards and mackerel in arty canisters primarily designed to look hip in your larder. Also the beigels here cost three times as much as in Brick Lane, although admittedly they don't have an Arbroath Trout and Tarragon Pate with a hint of English Mustard option.
Keep walking through the bustling market, past clumps of munchers wishing there were more places to sit down, and you might find yourself in the new Borough Yards development. This hospitality sink is what replaced the former Vinopolis attraction and includes all kinds of retail hideaways along faux historical arcades. It feels like not quite enough punters are permeating through, or else are unthrilled by the offerings in Dirty Lane and Soap Yard, and the bloke in the fancy cap shop appeared to have given up waiting for consumer interest, nipped out and locked up. It turns out Borough Market is the only necessary attraction hereabouts, its noodly trays and cooked meats enough to satisfy any Sunday morning appetite or supper shopping list, and back again same time next week?
I do like a Double Decker, the Cadbury chocolate bar with a stripe of nougat atop a crispy base. I've liked them ever since they were introduced in 1976, perhaps unsurprisingly given I was an 11 year-old boy who liked both chocolate and buses. If you're feeing nostalgic here's a 1970s advert, here's a 1980s advert, here's some old packaging and here's a double decker bus in Double Decker branding.
I don't buy Double Deckers in convenience shops because they're vastly overpriced, instead I buy them in multipacks from the supermarket. The best value is a 9-pack, a great long floppy thing with a recommended retail price of £3 (i.e. 33p each). I should say I can generally make one of these packs last two months because I have the self-control to ration myself to one bar a week, I'm not a craven sugar-seeker.
Obviously these multipack bars are a bit smaller than you get in corner shops, but that's more than cancelled out by the fact they're hugely cheaper.
Single Double Decker: 54.5g for 85p Multipack Double Decker: 37.3g for 33p
The normal sized bar has 50% more chocolate but costs two and a half times as much. To put it another way, one 10g bite costs 16p in the proper bar but only 9p in the smaller version. To put it another way, you get 112g of chocolate for £1 in a multipack but only 64g in the full-size version. Multipack bars wipe the floor with their shelf-stacked counterparts, which is why you should never buy one.
Anyway, when I went to the supermarket two weeks ago I noticed that 9-packs of Double Deckers were 'Reduced to clear'. In my experience this means one of two things, either the line's about to be discontinued or they're about to reintroduce it in a new size. I bought a couple of packs just in case, and because the price of a pack had been reduced to £2.55 they were an even better bargain than before.
And hey presto when I went back to the supermarket last week a new multipack had appeared and it shocked me to the core.
The multipack still costs £3 but now you get only seven bars for your money. They're the same weight - I checked - but the thieving bastards at Cadbury have swiped two bars and are charging the same price.
That's a whopping 29% price increase disguised as a two bar cut. I'm OK for now because I have 18 bars stashed away in two original packs at a reduced price (an amazing 28p each). But when they run out in the summer I get to pay 29% more for all future Double Deckers or else I stop buying them in protest. Bloody shrinkflation, it's pernicious, it's everywhere and it locks in this expensive price hike forever.
Exactly the same thing happened this month with my preferred brand of Earl Grey teabags. Previously a box of 100 bags cost £2.75, then the dreaded "Reduced to clear" sign appeared, then on my next visit they were suddenly in boxes of 80 instead. The new price is £2.60 so it looks like a 15p cut, whereas if you do the maths it's the equivalent of a 50p rise. Again I stocked up so I won't be shafted immediately, but eventually I'll be paying 18% more for every cuppa (or else switching to something less expensively bergamotty).
Inflation may be bad but shrinkflation is far worse, upping the price of tea bags by 18% and chocolate bars by 29%, ideally without you even noticing.
Thank you for your comments yesterday. I hoped for 100 comments and you actually left 144! Perhaps more impressively the comments were left by 93 different people, which is quite frankly astonishing given a) it was the weekend b) I was writing about local stuff c) blogging is well past its peak. What's more most of the comments were interesting and perceptive rather than simply written for the sake of it. The 100th comment was left by gruntbuggly, just before noon, in the first comments box.
This post is another unfocused pot pourri of local stuff, but don't feel you need to respond this time.
These are new hoardings in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park not far from the stadium. 'Follow us on Social' they say, then show four logos of socials you might follow them on. What's interesting is that Twitter no longer appears, or X as we should now call it, only Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. A couple of years ago Twitter would have been a shoo-in, but since toxic Muskification it seems QEOP no longer feel the need to mention it. They do still tweet so they've not left the platform, and they do still link to X from their website, but these hoardings are up for the long term and clearly someone wasn't having it. The following data suggests that maybe Facebook was the one they should have missed out (and also that they're probably overdoing it on LinkedIn).
A new art trail in Leyton celebrates the area's connections to Leyton Orient Football Club. It's called Home Team and it's been curated by local visual artist (and former club steward) Jake Green. Several shops along the High Road are displaying his photographs, while Flying Carpets includes bespoke textile tapestries by Tamasyn Gambell and The Key Shop has a hand-painted mural of Omar Beckles. I stumbled upon the centrepiece photographs adorning the bandstand in the centre of Coronation Gardens, including two frisky mascots, a bescarfed supporter and a rather gorgeous sunlit image of the East Stand. An accompanying reminiscent 17 minute soundscape can be heard on the trail's website. Obviously it'll all mean more if the O's are engraved on your heart but the passion will resonate with any lower league supporter. Home Team runs from 1st March to 4th April, and remember not all of London's best art is in the middle.
Here's more art, rather nearer to the middle, at Gilbert and George's new-ishgallery in Spitalfields. The subject is the LONDON PICTURES, the largest group of pictures the artists ever created, as previously seen on a foreign tour in 2012. Each picture is based on a London newspaper headline, I suspect from the Evening Standard, then grouped by keyword to create a wall of Sex, a wall of Death, ditto Knife, Suicide, Shooting, Money etc. Apparently these panels offer "a directory of urban human behaviour and a moral portrait of our times", and were "created from the sorting and classification by subject of 3712 newspaper posters stolen by Gilbert & George over a number of years". It's a bit of a one-trick idea to be honest, but then G&G's work often is, and if nothing else it's fascinating to see how news has and hasn't changed. Until 29th March, and like the new Standard all for free.
March is usually the best month to see the flowers at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, one of London's 'Magnificent Seven', now evocatively preserved as a local nature reserve. It's particularly renowned for its spring bulbs, hence a map near the Mile End entrance shows what you might see and suggests the best route to spot them. You can't miss the daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops at present, not quite wherever you walk but widespread enough to gladden the soul throughout. I looked in vain for the Red Admiral butterfly the GentleAuthor first spotted in 2011, then again in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, then again last month, but its descendants must still be flying around somewhere. If you've never visited come soon, or try again in spring 2026.
Can we get 100 comments on today's post, which is full of burning issues from my immediate locality?
My local Dry Cleaners is closing on 1st April
That's Bow Dry Cleaners of 22 Stroudley Walk, a fine business which I started using in 2001 and who are still steaming away in a small unit beside the barbers. Alas a sign in the window says they're closing down from 1st April 2025, but doesn't say why and there was nobody inside to ask. The date strongly suggests end of lease, but it's also entirely possible that building work for Upper East (see Wednesday) has been the final nail in its coffin. Hoardings blocked Stroudley Walk to passers-by a few years ago, throttling footfall, and the latest stage of construction has seen the entire parade hidden behind a wall of gloomy hoardings. Ahmed's Bakers Delights has already succumbed, the cafe at Posted invariably looks empty, and when the main passing trade is men in hi-vis then dry cleaning is clearly not top of the agenda. It's a shame for the private tower's new residents who'll no longer have somewhere to spruce up their glad rags by the time they move in, as another proper East End business is sadly extinguished.
Have you recently lost a favourite shop?
Do you still use dry cleaners?
The Beehive pub in Empson Street doesn't allow fat dogs
You'll likely know The Beehive in Bromley-by-Bow as a salt-of-the-earth pub with an intimate, sweaty back-room for live music, the ideal place to enjoy bands like Clearfall, In God's Way, VULGÆR, Push, Idlechord, 𝕯𝖊𝖎𝖙𝖞 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕯𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖑𝖗𝖞, Chicanes, The Wednesday Incident and Flat Venus. But did you know they also place a weight restriction on canine patrons? A sign in the window now clearly states No Dogs Over 15KG Allowed!!!, and that's with three exclamation marks so it must be serious. But what if you don't have time to weigh your dog before attending, or if your mutt is unwilling to stay still on the scales for long enough for you to be able register a reading? Well never fear because I can bring you this handy guide to acceptable and unacceptable breeds of dog which should make your next trip to The Beehive as carefree as possible.
Acceptable: chihuahua, dachshund, French bulldog, pug, terrier, whippet Borderline: beagle, bull terrier, cocker spaniel, schnauzer, staffie Unacceptable: basset hound, collie, golden retriever, labrador, poodle Plainly too hefty: boxer, bull mastiff, German Shepherd, rottweiler
Could your dog visit The Beehive?
Do you have thoughts on dogs in pubs?
TfL can't be arsed to repair Bromley-by-Bow station
Five years ago, just as the pandemic kicked off, TfL completed works on a new ticket hall skylight at Bromley-by-Bow station. It looked splendid, featuring as it did a roundel in the centre of six glass panels. Unfortunately these have been seriously damaged since, likely by vandals who discovered how easy it was to chuck stuff from the pavement and smash the glass. Back in 2023 I reported that four of the six panels had been damaged, including half of the roundel, with a protective wooden hoarding installed to fill the gap. What's particularly poor is that this damage is still there, indeed more glass has been lost since, with absolutely no attempt made to repair or replace. It's hard to say if this plywood facade is the new status quo, there being no money to enact repairs, or whether new panels are on their way once TfL have worked out how to make them unbreakable. Typical though, and also damned ugly.
Have you seen any bad vandalism recently?
Do you have a chip on your shoulder about TfL and their woeful inadequacies and would you like to sound off here?
This sign points to a road that disappeared 25 years ago
The East Cross Route between Bow and Hackney Wick stopped being a motorway in 2000 after it was realised it would be inappropriate for the newly formed Transport for London to have control of a road of that designation. But a roadsign on St Leonard's Road
still points towards the A102(M) even though it's been the A12 for a quarter of a century, and a similar sign on neighbouring Zetland Street does the same. It's hard to credit that no road authority has noticed how anachronistic this sign is and removed it, nor that the typeface is wrong which is almost as offensive as the outdated information.
What's your favourite motorway?
Do any particular inappropriate signs niggle you?
Robin Hood Gardens, the classic Brutalist housing estate in Poplar, has finally been demolished. Its west flank was demolished in 2018 and has subsequently been replaced by vernacular flats, while the east flank has been similarly deconstructed over the last six months. Imagine a wrecking crew slicing sequentially through a huge concrete gateau, leaving streets in the sky severed and former living rooms open to the sky. This week the final stump was toppled, as you can see in these photos from Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday courtesy of Municipal Dreams on Bluesky and Glenkerry on Twitter. By the time I turned up yesterday just a tiny rump remained above the hoardings, being sprayed by water prior to final defenestration, and sorry it's so hard to see but that's how demolished everything is. The new flats will be nicer to live in and ultimately there'll be 1500 rather than the previous 214, but as architecture they can't hold a candle to what's just been lost.
What lost architecture do you most miss?
Do you have opinions on housing in London?
This 'Directory' at Balfron Tower made me very angry
Balfron Tower is the east London cousin of the more famous Trellick Tower, Ernő Goldfinger's masterpiece that's even more iconically Brutalist than Robin Hood Gardens. But decay meant all its tenants had to be decanted ten years ago, the repairs due to be funded by transforming many of the flats into private apartments. In the end not a single former resident returned and the entire block was handed over to posh moneyed incomers paying hand over fist for a tiny flat with a masturbatory view. I peered into the lobby for the first time yesterday and gasped at the entitlement of it all displayed in this 'Directory' beside the lift. Concierge on Ground, Cinema on 3, Parcel Room on 6, Workspace on 9, Yoga on 12, Gym on 15, Library on 18, Roof Garden Access on 24, and at the very top a Private Dining Room residents can hire to show off all this privilege to their braying mates. Imagine the size of the service charge! What hurts isn't the new tenants, it's the fact a building designed to uplift Poplar's poorest has been gifted to the rich in contravention of all Ernő's original ideals, indeed screw them, screw everyone, screw everything.
Do you live several floors up?
Are you irrationally angry about people living in nice flats?
Bow's finest square is a Georgian* masterpiece, a large quadrangle of unbroken terraces with a fine garden in the centre. You expect this kind of thing in Bloomsbury or Kensington but not tucked off the Mile End Road behind a wall of council flats.
* I can't find a precise date for the square being built but it doesn't appear on a map dated 1830 and does appear on a map dated 1831 so you can draw your own conclusions from that. I can however confirm it's definitely Georgian, even given George IV died midway in June 1830, because the subsequent reign of William IV is officially bolted into that architectural definition.
200 years ago all this was fields under the ownership of Sir Charles Morgan, a Welsh baronet based near Newport whose sidehustle was being MP for Monmouth. In 1824 an Act of Parliament granted him "power to grant building leases of copyhold lands held of the manor of Stepney", i.e. permission to put up dwellings, and these spread inexorably back from the main road. As well as Tredegar Square you'll also find Aberavon Road, Rhondda Grove and Morgan Street in the vicinity, confirming the Welsh association, and they have some pretty stunning old houses too. Two pubs called The Lord Tredegar and the Morgan Arms are close by.
Three sides of Tredegar Square look like this, i.e. rather splendid. These are three-storey terraced houses built from plain stock brick, each with a basement, sash windows and a classical doorway accessed up a set of five steps. At least half are as yet undivided into flats, so really quite the family home, and with a price tag currently hovering around the £2m mark. On each side the four central houses are picked out in stucco and the middle two topped by a white gable, adding just a little variation to the frontage. As the heart of the local conservation area the council are fairly strict about what you can and can't add outside, although I see they've turned a blind eye to the large Save our NHS banner tied to the railings on the south side.
The northern side of Tredegar Square is different, more full-on mansions, this time all stucco and a bit more Belgravia in style. Number 26 is the finest of the lot, indeed Grade II* listed, not just for its "ionic columns in antis under deep cornice" but more specifically for the exceptionally rare painted decoration in its first floor front room, including acanthus motifs, gold stencil frames and floral swags. This particular house last sold for £3.9m, so your best chance of seeing the ornamental goldfish bowl design is to get invited to a party. I'm unconvinced the bins out front add to the general architectural ambience, but maybe that's because I made the mistake of turning up on collection day.
At the northwest corner of the square is a marvellous hexagonal pillar box, although alas it's only a replica rather than proper Victorian. Other peculiarities around the perimeter include classical lampposts, Shell-sponsored charging points and posters advertising 1 hour 1-to-1 boxing training sessions for £35. In the southeast corner is a cul-de-sac, also part of Tredegar Square, which used to continue onto the main Mile End Road before a block of postwar flats sealed it off. A tiny gate leads to 1a Tredegar Square, a screamingly modern house confected inside a former warehouse whose current owners appear to be selling up, enabling a tantalising glimpse inside (ketchup-toned fitted kitchen, distressed dining table, books arranged by colour).
But what you'll mostly notice if you visit Tredegar Square is the garden in the middle. For the first 100 years it was private but residents then came up against the egalitarian politics of the East End and lost. The opening ceremony on 25 April 1931 was performed by no less a figure than Clement Attlee, and the local newspaper's report of proceedings referred to the gardens as "London's little lungs". Within a decade the railings had been removed to fund the war effort, then after the war public toilets were added in one corner and a playground in the middle, also since erased. My hunch is that the last significant layout changes were in 1986 because that's the date on the litter bins.
You can't walk round the edge any more because the outer path has been usurped by a central spine and various ornamental dead-end twiddles. But it sure looks pretty, especially at this time of year with daffs, crocuses and hyacinths in bloom because Tower Hamlets' municipal gardeners are doing a fine job. That said one of the central trees is so large its roots are about to have the tarmac up and I'm not quite sure what the point of the central paved crescent is. Come summer the lawns will be a more attractive feature, but judging by the number of dogs being exercised here I'd check carefully under your picnic blanket before laying it down.
And all of this is still here because Stepney council chose to retain these old streets following wartime bombardment whereas Poplar council, two roads distant, plumped for full-on replacement by blocks of flats instead. Local residents and estate agents remain very grateful.
The Hopper fare was introduced in September 2016, allowing bus and tram passengers to take one extra journey for free within 60 minutes of tapping in. Two years later it was extended to allow unlimited journeys within an hour, saving Londoners even more money and enabling some pretty lengthy one-fare journeys. Over a billion Hopper journeys have been taken since...
...but never by me. I've always had a Travelcard and these let you ride buses for free, hence the delights of the Hopper have always been hidden and unnecessary. However I currently find myself in a nomansland between the expiry of my last Travelcard and the arrival of my 'free travel forever' 60+ card, a brief window when a Hopper might actually be useful. So I thought I'd use my ordinary Oyster and set myself two Hopper-based challenges - how far can I get and how many buses can I ride?
Hopper Challenge 1: Starting from Bus Stop M, escape London by bus for one fare of £1.75
Several TfL buses cross the Greater London boundary, so all I have to do is catch one before my 60 minutes from Bow elapses. So how to start? Of the buses that serve Bus Stop M the 488 is only going one more stop, the 108 terminates in Stratford and the 276 grinds to a halt around Newham Hospital, so not them. The only solution is to ride a 25 or 425 all the way to Ilford and then pick up a bus to the Home Counties there.
0h00m Board a 25 at Bus Stop M. £1.75 deducted. My hour long-countdown begins.
0h01m We sail through the Bow Roundabout now that the roadworks and lane closures are finished, hurrah.
0h03m We're neck and neck with a 425 along Stratford High Street. At some stops we get all the passengers and it overtakes, then at the next stop it gets all the passengers and we overtake.
0h08m Mass exodus at Stratford bus station. It'd be quicker to get the tube where I'm going, but not cheaper.
0h13m There are multiple sets of roadworks between here and Ilford, mostly related to the addition of segregated cycle lanes. We also have to duck out the way at one point to let an ambulance pass through. If we don't get to Ilford in time I can't use my Hopper and this challenge collapses, plus my journey will cost twice as much. These are not worries you have with a Travelcard.
0h20m We've reached Forest Gate, and so far the 425 driver has overtaken us three times.
0h27m Four times.
0h30m At Little Ilford Lane the traffic's looking really slow going the other way, but we're progressing fine.
0h32m Alight at Ilford Hill and walk round the corner to stop H outside Ilford Station (0h34m)
There are now three different bus routes I can catch to exit London, the 150 to Chigwell Row, the 167 to Loughton or the 462 to Limes Farm Estate. Grrr, all of these buses are at least 9 minutes away... but in good news that's well inside my time window so I should be fine. However it's worth pointing out that a Hopper connection can totally fail if the second bus doesn't turn up in time, so it's often a fare saving that requires a massive lump of luck on your side. OK, bus two...
0h46m Board a 462 outside Ilford station. £0.00 deducted. After nine years that's my very first Hopper, kerching!
0h56m We've reached the Gants Hill roundabout and are about to head off on a tour of the backstreets. The 462 is a proper twiddlybus, a guided tour of all sorts of Redbridge streets not normally seen.
1h00m As my hour expires I'm on Longwood Gardens near the shops. A magnolia is in full bloom in someone's front garden.
1h02m Technically a Hopper fare is valid for 62 minutes, not 60, in case the clocks on buses aren't quite accurate. But there are no other bus routes here I could switch to anyway.
1h05m Barkingside High Street is busy and takes away most of our passengers.
1h07m Now for a swoosh past Fairlop station and Fairlop Waters Country Park, a scenic diversion the 462's been taking since 2016.
1h14m After threading through Hainault we finally cross the Greater London boundary at the top of Manford Way. The first stop in Essex is just outside Grange Hill station, but I'm continuing to the terminus for extra value for money.
1h21m I've ridden alone with the driver round the loop road on the Limes Farm Estate. The last stop is at Amanda Close, technically only five metres outside the Greater London boundary but that totally counts. I have escaped London using the Hopper fare and spent only £1.75. I'm just 7 miles from home but it's been a 13 mile journey to get here, and I've paid only 14p a mile.
Limes Farm is a fascinating place, a large 1960s council estate built for Chigwell Urban District and accessed via a single road. It's both spacious and green but also well past its best, with oddly-shaped flats, one drab Londis and a few intervening attempts at regeneration. It deserves a full blogpost one day but not now, I have one more challenge to tackle on the way home.
Hopper Challenge 2: How many buses can I ride in an hour?
This is the fun one, a chance to make multiple hops on as many buses as possible, just because I can. I'm not expecting to beat the record, whatever that is, but I am hoping to reach double figures. Geoff Marshall managed 25 buses back in 2017 and a City Monitor reporter rode 28, but that was taking advantage of a longer grace period. Originally TfL allowed 70 minutes for one Hopper fare but during the pandemic they cut the buffer from ten minutes to a less generous two so I've only got 62 minutes to try to max out.
Obviously if you were trying to make a high-tap journey you wouldn't start here on the outskirts of London, you'd find somewhere bus-packed like Waterloo Bridge or the Walworth Road and shuttle back and forth. But Barkingside High Street is served by six different bus routes and the road south of Gants Hill by nine, so if I head back towards Ilford I reckon I have a very good chance of amassing a decent total. I'll start not far from where I alighted the 462, marginally back in London outside Hainault station.
0h00m Here we go, a 247 to Barkingside, start the clock. If I stay on to Barkingside High Street there should be lots of buses to switch to. Checks app... bugger, no buses for the next ten minutes. This may be a road served by six different routes but I have unintentionally launched into a bus desert. Well this is rubbish. And I can't go back and start again because my Hopper is valid for another 50 minutes.
0h17m OK, I'm going to catch a 167 in the opposite direction, one stop back north, just to fill the time.
0h24m Sigh, you wait all this time and then three southbound buses come at once. I'll pick the 128 and jump on that for one stop.
0h26m ...and then switch to the 150 that was coming up behind. I would switch again at the next stop but no further buses are due. Let's try again at the Gants Hill roundabout. Sigh, half time and I've only managed four buses so far.
0h37m It's still very gappy, even with eight routes to choose from. So gappy that I've had to catch the next 150 coming along behind.
0h43m Barely quarter of an hour left so I really need this 396. Don't look at me strange when I ding the bell after one stop.
0h44m This is more like it, straight onto the 128 behind.
0h46m And then a 462. Why wasn't I having this much luck earlier?
0h51m And for the last stop into Ilford here's a 179. That's nine buses so far, and four in the last ten minutes. I have time to catch one more and I need it to be a 25 or 425 that'll take me home.
0h55m Come on come on.
0h56m Please turn up before I hit the hour.
0h57m Eek this is getting close.
0h58m Oh thank goodness, a 25 and just in time. It means I managed 10 buses in the hour, which isn't bad after my disastrous opening 20 minutes.
1h01m It turns out I could have sneaked in an extra W19 just before my 62 minutes was up, but I wouldn't have known that for sure at the last stop so it wasn't worth the risk.
1h41m And I'm finally back at Bow Church where I can hop off for a cup of tea.
2h18m The 25 I was on finally pulls in at Holborn Viaduct. This means I could have enjoyed a 2¼hr journey all the way from the outskirts to the City for £1.75, confirming the Hopper's sometimes exceptional value. The Central line does this in 30% of the time but at twice the price.
In conclusion I have now used the Hopper and managed to get all the way from Bow to Essex on a single fare. I also used a Hopper to get home and rode ten buses in the process, which isn't a record but is still a very decent bit of card-bashing. If I'd done this seven years ago it would have been proper bloggage but instead it's old news, sorry. And never again.
Bromley-by-Bow has a new tower block and unusually it's not along the A12 or the River Lea, it's in the historic part. It replaces a drab council block which the local housing association was keen to wipe away, and rightly so, as part of a long-term project to replace Stroudley Walk with something better. I first blogged about those plans 11 years ago, that's how long-term it is.
They started demolishing Warren House in September 2021, which took an age, and building its 24 storey replacement seems to have taken even longer. But it now has almost all its cladding in place, the faux brick panels making it look like every other newbuild block, and the resultant tower looms unfamiliarly over medieval Bow in an architecturally vacuous way.
The underlying plan is that the rest of Stroudley Walk has been replaced by lower-rise blocks of affordable housing to help ease local pressures, while the new tower is being flogged off to well-off incomers to help pay for it. It's a shame the overall scheme only delivers 42% affordable housing but that's the modern reality, indeed it's a significantly better percentage than some.
What's new is that the marketing suite has just opened, and the fact it's open seven days a week confirms how much money there is to be made in property. Spiky plants and designer homewares have been brought in to decorate reception, all hoping to persuade potential customers that their dream home lies inside, although to get there you have to pass a mess of hoardings, a parade of halal-friendly shops and the space where our single market stall used to be until all this redevelopment forced it to shut down. All this pizazz is of course entirely normal for residential marketing, but it feels entirely alien to see it here.
The new development is called Upper East, which is a perfect example of a meaningless name which could have been pumped from a buzzword generator. The development's vision is even worse: "Celebrating yesterday, building community, defining tomorrow". Not only is it meaningless but it's also downright lying, there being bugger all "yesterday" being celebrated here whatsoever. Let's see what other bolx the brochure can offer...
• a dynamic new neighbourhood in the heart of East London (bolx)
• experience elevated living (bolx)
• exceptional development (bolx)
• designed for modern living (bolx)
• the perfect location for relaxation and socialising (bolx)
...and that's just on page 3.
Then we get into the section trying to persuade people who don't know the area that Bromley-by-Bow is better than it is.
• Perfectly positioned between Stratford, Canary Wharf and The City (bolx)
• With Hackney Wick, Shoreditch, and Brick Lane just moments away (utter bolx)
• Grove Hall Park, a serene greenspace with a playground and walled memorial garden, is perfect for a little walk on a lazy Sunday or a place to sit with friends in the summer months (haha lol bolx)
• Upper East offers exceptional convenience for professionals, with Canary Wharf and The City just a short commute away (yeah right, bankers welcome)
Peak bolx is probably the claim that "Living at Upper East puts you at the centre of Bow’s vibrant culinary scene." I do like the area but never in a million years would I describe its cafes and restaurants as "a diverse array of dining options that cater to every taste", indeed foodwise E3 bats well below the London average. I grant that shopping and culture are easily accessible, what with everything Westfield and the Olympic Park have to offer, and that transport connections are pretty decent. But a lot of the supposedly nearby treats aren't especially nearby or indeed treats, more a desperate selection compiled by an intern attempting to upsell a skyhutch to an ignoramus.
Where it gets depressing is the section titled University life which kicks off "London is a prime destination for students seeking top-tier education". The hope is that some rich parent will gift their foreign student a serviced bolthole during their studies, indeed I see sales for Upper East opened in Malaysia long before they opened here. In a capital city with a huge housing problem it seems criminal to be flogging flats abroad rather than targeting Britons, and an enormous and wasteful palaver to be creating stacks of luxury boltholes just to get 115 affordable flats added to our housing stock.
Upper East is nothingnew, merely new for round here. But it will stand prominently on Bow's skyline forever as a reminder that the high life is now only for those who can look down on the rest of us.
The major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout are complete and traffic is flowing freely again. Hoo-bloody-rah.
All the holes people were threading cables through were covered over. The last patches of tarmac that needed redoing were redone. The last overnight closure took place, ending on Saturday morning. Stacks of orange barriers were piled onto the backs of trucks and driven away. Most crucially the new traffic lights were finally switched on, and when everyone was happy they were working OK the spider's web of temporary traffic lights was removed. It's a relief not to have to step around the temporary traffic lights into the cycle lane any more, and this must be even better news if you're a cyclist.
It took longer than strictly necessary for all the cones to be removed. They lingered mysteriously on a couple of arms of the roundabout, so for example traffic on Bow Road was still being unnecessarily funnelled into one lane even when traffic arriving from the A12 had the full two lanes available. But with all the cones gone six months of disruption have finally ended, so if traffic snarls up now it's because of rush hours and normal congestion rather than anything self-imposed.
This was also the signal for buses to return to their normal line of route and stop swanning over the flyover. Bus Stop P finally reopened over the weekend having been closed since September 30th, even though quite frankly it could have reopened on Friday because all the cones had gone. That said I have since seen a bus on route 108 still using the flyover, which might be because the driver didn't get the message or because they weren't particularly interested in picking up passengers. By my calculations disruption to bus services as a result of these works lasted from 7th September to 9th March, i.e. almost exactly six months, with eastbound passengers particularly inconvenienced and westbound passengers perhaps now missing the aerial shortcut.
Also when I said the roadworks were complete I was lying, they're still working on the expansion joints. This is because the Bow Interchange isn't just a roundabout/flyover/underpass combo, it's also a bridge over the River Lea. The current bridge is now 55 years old so it made sense to use this opportunity to give the metal joints a good once-over, and for practical reasons most of that renovation is being done at the end of the works. A team from a company called BridgeCare turned up with two huge vehicles called Bridge Expansion Joint Units and used shovels, blowtorches and specialist equipment along the length of a curved groove, measuring out the gaps between the two joints with wooden blocks.
Further twiddling to the expansion joints is ongoing so there are still orange barriers under the flyover and cones along the edge of Stratford High Street, mainly to keep people out of the way. Most importantly this means the new contraflow lane hasn't been opened yet, not quite, and only when those barriers are whisked away will the remodelled junction finally be operating as planned. I'll thus save my final overall report on the final configuration until that's finally happened, and then we can finally put six months of reportage to bed, finally.
1) I received only 5 birthday cards this year, most of them from people who remember me being born in 1965 (dgD, dGA3, dgDBM). Pictured are some of the 43 cards I received when I was born, all of a very 1960s aesthetic.
Number of birthday cards received
1965 (age 0) - 43
1985 (age 20) - 23
2005 (age 40) - 16
2025 (age 60) - 5
2) I was hoping to catch a nice early train from Hackney Wick but there weren't any, indeed it turns out on Sundays there never are. The entire Mildmay line between Willesden Junction and Stratford is unserved before 9am on Sundays, with the first westbound train departing Stratford at 0900 and the first eastbound train departing Willesden Junction at 0902. The station with the slowest start is Camden Road whose first Sunday train arrives at 0922, and I wonder if that's the latest timetabled start on any day on any TfL line.
3) Sunday was an unseasonably springlike day for early March, at 18°C the warmest 9th March since 2014. The warmest 9th March on record was in 1948 with 23.9°C recorded at Wealdstone, that's 75°F. While I was researching this online I also found the weather forecast for the day I was born ("England and Wales will be sunny and rather warm this afternoon, but frost and some fog patches will return tonight in midland and eastern districts"). The temperature was -5°C at Kew when I was born, rising to 10°C in the afternoon, and my Dad would have cycled through fog to see me at the hospital. The Met Office has a nerdily detailed archive of weather forecasts and data records for the whole country here.
4) To enjoy the weather I walked the Croxley Boundary Walk, a 6.3 mile waymarked circuit around the village where I grew up. It's a fantastically varied walk for somewhere so close to London (canal towpath, country lane, fields, village green, river valley, chalk stream, woods, disused railway, moorland) and well signed throughout. On the way round I spotted several signs of spring (catkins, snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses, celandines, flowering cherries, budding trees, nest-building, butterflies, bees collecting blossom, emerging bluebell stalks), also a fox, several swans, a heron and a pair of red kites. I previously walked the Croxley Boundary Walk on 9th March 2014, and blogged about it then so I won't again, but do enjoy a few photos and yes I do recommend it.
5) On the way round the Croxley Boundary Walk there's a lovely path that climbs across a large field from the edge of Whippendell Woods. I was shocked to discover there's now aplan to turn this field into 600 houses, unexcitingly titled 'Land north of Little Green Lane', which would extend the village's built-up area by 5%. Thankfully the top end of the field would survive, reworked as Rousebarn Country Park, but the whole plan's brazenlyspeculative and very poorly connected to the rest of the village. Whatever the government's definition of 'grey belt' is, this definitely isn't it.
6) I've had plans for a while to see if I could get a mention on the radio on the occasion of my 60th birthday. In the event one of my target shows turned out to be pre-recorded, one was doing an International Women's Day special, one doesn't really do dedications any more, one I wasn't listening to at the crucial moment, one I forgot about until it was too late and the one email I did send made no ripples whatsoever. If anyone sent in a message on my behalf and I missed it do let me know, else I'll have to wait another ten years.
7) BestMate and BestMate'sOtherHalf took me out for a meal in the West End and we started off with cocktails. We thought we'd try the Cellar Door, the speakeasy bar squished into a former gents toilet off Aldwych, which Londonist described as "a mirrored microcosm", Time Out as "a tiny basement" and Secret London as "lav-ley". It seems it only picks up after 9pm, pre-cabaret, so it was pretty much dead. Also they were probably the slowest cocktails I've ever had, sluggishly confected, so the atmosphere really didn't match the setting.
8) For my birthday meal we went to London's oldest restaurant which is Rules in Covent Garden, established 1798. It's a classical warren adorned by Georgian portraits, seemingly with a regular clientele of ruddy couples, shire buddies and old money. The food's extremely traditional, all meat, game and oysters, although not so staid that they won't stick a candle in some ice cream and bring it to your table. For my main I was totally set on steak and kidney pudding until I saw they were doing a proper Sunday roast, then couldn't resist crumble and custard for dessert. BestMate has kindly shielded me from the overall bill. Also we had the table next to the really famous one, the one where M's seen dining in Spectre and which brings all the JamesBond fans to the pass.
9) While I was out, Radio 4 broadcast a half-hour documentary by a blogger who rides buses and writes about them, in this case the new V1 nightbus from Manchester to Leigh. It was dead thoughtful of them to schedule something so on point on the occasion of my birthday. Incidentally if you're waiting for me to report back on the number 60 bus route, I'm planning to make that the first trip I do with my 60+ Oyster card when it arrives, which it hasn't yet so you'll need to be patient.
10) I may have overdone it, I had to lie down at one point. But if what you want for a milestone birthday is a memorable day then Sunday certainly delivered.
