Often the best value travel comes from a rover ticket, and this is an absolute bargain.
The Senior Rover allows unlimited train travel on the c2c network beyond London, i.e. all the stations on this map, for the measly sum of £7. It can only be used after 9.30am on weekdays, not at weekends, and a £10 option also exists allowing travel into London too.
Full terms and conditions here.
The catch is you have to be over 65, which I'm not, OR you can be over 60 with a Senior Railcard, which I am. So I headed out to Upminster yesterday morning, bought myself a Senior Rover and went on a proper south Essex safari.
The man in the ticket office at Upminster didn't ask for proof I was eligible, merely glanced at a flash of railcard, maybe even didn't look at all.
I gave the ticket a really good bash by visiting all the stations around the central loop. That's Upminster down to Grays, then out to Pitsea, then back to Upminster... ten stations in total. And because the trains run every half hour I spent 30 minutes in each location, attempting to walk to somewhere interesting within half a mile of the station and then back again. Let's see how I did.
Ockendon → Little Belhus Country Park
Rather than walk towards the medieval church or the postwarestate I headed west, past the Next depot, toward the former landfill site. It's now Little Belhus Country Park, a half-open partly-decontaminated scrubland sprawling down to the M25. A few hardcore paths stretch off to a big loop round a reptile-friendly wetland area, although I didn't manage to get that far, only to the scattered logs, stacked tyres and fenced-off turbine. It's all a bit bleak frankly, also I'm a bit nervous of a park that says "keep to the designated path at all times", although it might be a decent dog-walking loop if you've already done all the nicer local circuits. If nothing else the daisies are great at the moment, there must be tens of thousands across the lumpy crust of hard-baked topsoil, and essentially there is nothing else.
My Senior Rover opened the ticket gates no problem.
Chafford Hundred → Thames View Hill
Almost every visitor to the station crosses the slalom overpass to enter Lakeside, the quintessential shopping mall. I aimed in the opposite direction instead, deep into the estate past whorls of 80s housing. Follow the correct arm off the roundabout and you reach the foot of a low sandy cliff, this because Chafford Hundred was built across a humpy landscape pitted with quarries. I only had time to climb Thames View Hill, a brief golden ridge on a thin tongue of woodland, estimated ascent 30 seconds. Here was the promised panorama, although the only sliver of Thames was a tiny patch of grey beneath the arc of the QE2 Bridge and everything else was concealed behind Barratt-style rooftops. Nice pylons though. And if you do ever fancy an unexpectedly weirdwalk round cliffs and gorges, give the mall a miss and spend a couple of hours exploring the real Chafford Hundred instead.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates. A member of gateline staff let me out, no questions asked, and someone in the ticket office pressed a button to let me back in.
Grays → Grays Beach Riverside Park
Again I walked in the less-travelled direction - across the level crossing, past the council offices and down towards the riverside. This being the Thames estuary there are huge floodgates designed to protect adjacent flats from flooding and these were closed, forcing a longer walk past bleak grey tower blocks and speculative newbuilds. Four can-clutching gentlemen lay sprawled at the far end of the car park, the local derelict-looking pub not yet being open. But eventually I reached the waterfront and the unexpectedly upbeat Thurrock Yacht Club, its sleek craft either stashed on the quayside or bobbing in the estuary opposite Broadness. The 'beach' in the Beach Park is an elliptical sandpit and has a better view of a renewable biomass power plant than of the Thames... and yet somehow I'd much rather live here than at our next stop.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates. The bloke on the gate said he'd never heard of it and was bemused it didn't show a destination, but I talked my way through (and back in again).
Tilbury → Civic Square
Normally I'd head past the port to the cruise terminal, Windrushjetty and Tilbury Fort but that was too far to hike in the time available. Instead I walked to the heart of the real Tilbury, the shops at Civic Square, at the centre of the lowly web of streets built for dockers and portworkers. I passed bleach-blonde mums with pushchairs, baked-bronze blokes in t-shirts, hopeful ladies standing in the doorways of their empty shops and vaping teens loitering outside shuttered takeaways. By contrast Civic Square looked well-scrubbed with recently-revamped parking spaces, bright paving and pedestrianisation continuing apace around the war memorial. It's all part of a £23m grant from the last government's Town Fund, not that it worked because they came third at the General Election behind Labour and Reform. To better understand downtrodden Britain, come to Tilbury.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates but another gate was open so I just walked out. By the time I got back the gateline was staffed again, and he knew exactly what I was clutching.
East Tilbury → Bata Factory
East Tilbury is something else altogether, accessed across sweeping marshes stalked by lines of pylons and preparatory works for the Lower Thames Crossing. An outpost of Modernisthouses exists between Coalhouse Fort and Mucking Landfill, located here because in 1932 Czech shoe magnate Thomas Bata chose this site for his first British factory. Once 300 high streets had a Bata shoeshop but foreign imports inevitably led to the factory closing in 2006, and the landmark buildings are now marooned inside a private industrial park. I got inside in 2016 as part of the inaugural Essex Architecture Weekend, but on this occasion got no further than Thomas's statue on a parched lawn outside his main office and leather factory. If you do decide to follow in my footsteps read the council's Conservation Area plan first and enjoy exploring properly.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again and I was beginning to feel somewhat oppressed. Nevertheless the member of staff opened the adjacent gate and let me out without checking what I'd used.
Stanford-le-Hope → town centre loop
Finally somewhere I'd never been before, despite our housekeeper once living close by. This old estuary town boasts a medieval church atop a rare hill, also a knotweed-choked stream flowing out towards Mucking Flats. The town centre is formed by a triangle of streets, the High Street now trumped in importance by the curve of King Street. Here tattooed limbs are on display outside the coffee shop, the clock outside the former jewellers is stuck at noon, the butcher sells proper meat and the bakery doesn't need a name because everyone samples its loaves and iced buns anyway. The sandwich shop by the war memorial is new and does brisket-loaded nachos every Tuesday, this because we've nudged towards slightly more aspirational Essex. As for the weatherboarded pub on Church Hill, the semi-orange Rising Sun, the chalkboard outside ignores menus and ales, instead confirming "The colour is 'Salsa Mix' so please stop asking".
There are no gates on the eastbound platform, only pads, so my Senior Rover proved unnecessary.
Pitsea → Pitsea Mount
This is where I switched lines and turned back towards London so I didn't have 30 minutes to wait, I had either less or more. I chose less because I once went to the 24 hour Tesco beyond the flyover on a date and have no burning desire to return. I briefly climbed the scrubby hill overlooking the roundabout, the one place round here that's not going to flood one day, and looked out towards the row of giant cranes at London Gateway Port. If I'd had more time I'd have walked down to Wat Tyler Country Park, a recreational island amid the estuarine marshes, but maybe I'll do that next time I buy a Senior Rover because there's a very obvious follow-up to today's post ticking off all the stations from Pitsea out to Shoeburyness.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again. I pushed through the sidegate instead, and on the way back in the bloke in the ticket office gestured that I should push through the sidegate again so I did.
Basildon → Town Square
The new town of Basildon gained its station in 1974, conveniently located by the shops, so I got to do a full circuit of the town centre to see how much had changed since I was last here in 2018. The anchor department store is now a shell with DEBEN half-written on the roof. The whimsical mechanicalclock inside Eastgate is increasingly ignored. Freedom House has been demolished and replaced by a less thrilling modern development primed with restaurants and a cinema rather than shops. Brutalist Brooke House survives, its V-shaped supports overlooking a blanker East Square. The Market has been relocated to not many cabins in St Martin's Square. An entire block opposite Greggs has been flattened because housing will be more useful than retail. Effectively the town centre's still busy but the 20th century is inexorably being replaced by the 21st as regeneration funding allows. Oh and the WH Smith has unapologetically evolved into a TG Jones, this in the last few days, but I think that's happened everywhere.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again. On my way out of the station the bloke at the gateline insisted I inserted my ticket again before nodding and beckoning me through. On my way back in a different bloke looked at the ticket after he let me through and said "ah, zones 1 to 6, you want that platform up there", despite the text very clearly saying 'excl. Zones 1 to 6'. Staff training at c2c is clearly inadequate.
Laindon → Laindon Hills
Laindon predates Basildon and is much less interesting, sorry, especially close to the station. I crossed the railway to the former plotlands at Laindon Hills, looping round a most peculiar housing development at the foot of Marks Hill. Six rising walkways weave past what look like the front doors of tiny wooden shacks, but they're actually two-storey three-bed townhouses with more rooms, a small garden and parking downstairs, separately accessed. So unexpectedly spacious are they that one of the houses on Puckleside has been painted blue and named The Tardis, complete with blue plants beside its blue gate and a police box and lamp outside the front door. I would never ever have thought to walk this way had I not been on a ridiculous ten-stage Senior Rover challenge, so my apologies if the obscure blue front garden I've uploaded to Flickr is yours.
My Senior Rover failed to open the ticket gates again. I was waved through both times. The code which flashed up on the gate was '07', which I looked up later and it means "magnetic code unreadable", suggesting the stripe on the back failed in the five minutes between Ockendon and Chafford Hundred. I think this means my gateline travails were atypical and a Senior Rover should normally work seamlessly.
West Horndon →
By this point I was a bit tired so merely hopped out onto the platform and hopped back in before heading home. Don't worry, I'll be returning to West Horndon as part of my One Stop Beyond feature (assuming I can find anything here to write about).
The opportunity has arisen to spaff your brand across the Waterloo & City line.
Bring your dosh, share your collateral, own the journey.
The Waterloo & City is by far the least used tube line, runs nigh empty for a lot of the day and closes at weekends. However it's also entirely self-contained and jam-packed with financial decision makers, so an elite captive audience will be forced to embrace your brand story on a daily basis. What's not to love?
To be clear you don't get to rename the line. TfL's commercial mavens would love to do that, prostituting their most iconic assets to the highest bidder, but instead killjoys embedded in reality always kick up a fuss at the thought of deliberately inconveniencing the travelling public.
Also the stations won't be changing their names because Waterloo and Bank are complex shared interchanges, so trains won't be running from Buxton Waterloo to Monzo Bank any time soon.
But substantial tangible assets remain for full-on brand takeover, from all the platforms and trains to all the experiential spaces (which is the posh name for every possible surface we can smother).
Imagine your company message on every wall and ceiling at Bank station, also scrolling across the electronic display, also embedded in every announcement, also emblazoned across incoming trains, perhaps also performed by singing dogs on digital screens if you choose the deluxe option. How much better it would be than the current fragmented mess where no cohesive narrative dominates and the most popular advert is for a Jeffrey Archer novel.
Please note that the Network South East branding on the edge of the platform will remain in place, so if you run a train company or if your corporate colours clash with blue and red this may not be the opportunity for you.
Please also note that the platforms are often much busier than this, indeed the majority of customer throughflow takes place at peak times in ridiculously cramped conditions, so any intricate subtle messaging may go entirely unnoticed.
A true prize in this takeover will be the opportunity to rebrand the interior of the trains. Passengers are often crammed in like cattle staring at the walls for six minutes at a time, so imagine the cut-through of your message on a twice-daily basis. Also don't underestimate the impact of reupholstering a bespoke moquette throughout the train. Nobody will see it during peak times because every patch of fabric will be arsed-over, but rest assured that influencers will descend en masse during quieter periods to share fawning reels of seating with a global audience.
One of the design assets up for grabs is the Waterloo & City line map itself. However don't get too excited - the line links just two stations so nobody ever bothers looking at it, thus any clever jiggerypokery your creative department comes up with will be entirely wasted. However slip us an extra £0.5m and we'll see if we can squeeze your company name onto the tube map, somewhere in the key, no questions asked.
Also this is nothing new. The travelator at Bank has long been a fully-stickered brand tunnel, replaced every few months by another financial company in need of wider visibility. Nobody who uses the line regularly will blink if another all-encompassing message appears instead, it's been their everyday experience for years.
Note that the current advertiser along the travelator is a spread-betting company, the vast majority of whose investors lose money, so hardly a force for good in the wider world. Meanwhile every panel inside the train carriages is presently monopolised by an app that leverages blockchain, so if you have an exploitative financial brand you might fit in perfectly as the new name here.
Also this is really nothing new. TfL rebranded an entire tube line last year as part of promotion for a new smartphone feature, earning £830,000 for a two week takeover. This limp splash has been the exemplar for tube line renaming in TfL's Commercial partnerships Opportunities catalogue since April 2024, so don't look all surprised when it's suddenly proposed to do this to the Waterloo & City.
Remember that every penny earned in sponsorship is ploughed back into London's transport system, which has often been used as a reason to do a lot more of this kind of thing. However it's worth remembering that a million quid is peanuts in the world of London transport, not even enough to keep the cheapest Superloop bus route on the road. Also a lot of the money effectively pays the salaries of TfL's commercial flunkeys who churn out brand-obsessedbolx and social media posts sprinkled with emojis, so is essentially wasted.
The partial rebranding of the Waterloo & City line could be an exciting and truly unique opportunity with the potential to blend synergies and supercharge brand awareness going forward. Alternatively it's a vulgar stain on what should be a passenger-focused public service, further damaging credibility and helping nobody except big business.
And if you do decide to go ahead with a bid, remember that smothering a few platforms with sloganed vinyl with isn't always the word of mouth success your planners hoped. Nobody recalls last year's rebrand of the Circle line, nor the underlying campaign, nor dashed out to buy a new phone as a result. Sponsor the Waterloo & City line and you may just end up pouring millions down the Drain.
They didn't have blogs or the internet forty years ago, indeed my Sinclair ZX81 wasn't capable of much, but here are 31 things I didn't digitally publish at the time. To help you get your bearings I was 20 and July was the start of the summer break between my second and third years at university. I apologise that I wasted the opportunity and did nothing of any interest whatsoever.
Mon 1: I'd arrived home from university yesterday so today I walked into Watford and signed on. I also dropped off one of Mum's films at Boots for developing, and dripped an ice lolly down my t-shirt on the walk home. Tue 2: Dad brought a copy of New Scientist home from work, also a copy of Time Out. New Scientist contained details of yesterday's leap second, while Time Out had some really intriguing small ads at the back. Wed 3: Walked down the road to see my grandmother. She showed me the scar on her leg and I made her some tea and watered the plants. As a reward she gave me £5 which I promptly spent on the new Scritti Politti album, Cupid & Psyche 85. Thu 4: My brother finished his A levels. I walked down to the butchers and we had mince for tea. The Liberals won the Brecon and Radnor byelection.
Fri 5: Took my Scritti Politti cassette back to Our Price because it had chewed up during the first play. The replacement cassette chewed up even worse. Sat 6: Scored 94 in Scrabble by playing EQUALITY. Sun 7: Mum and Dad went to Uncle Sid's Golden Wedding anniversary party, leaving my brother and I to attempt to cook lunch. The Yorkshire puddings were more successful than the lumpy gravy. Mon 8: Had to go into Watford twice, first to sign on, then six hours later to go to the dentist. I got £28.50 per week. No fillings. Tue 9: The new series of V wasn't as good as the first, especially now the aliens ate tarantulas rather than hamsters. Wed 10: My new Girobank cheque guarantee card had a hologram on it. Thu 11: Bought six Berol pens in Tames the stationers in Rickmansworth. Bumped into my old headmistress in Budgens (not in Bejam, I don't think she'd have lowered herself to shop there).
Fri 12: Today's TV included a) Television Scrabble on Channel 4 [Richard Stilgoe continued his winning streak] b) Swank on Channel 4 [a fashion show presented by Dawn French] c) Live Aid Preview on BBC2 [Noel Edmonds looked forward to tomorrow's concert] d) An Audience With Dame Edna Everage on ITV [she savaged David Steel, but nicely]. Sat 13: Watched Live Aid from Status Quo at noon to Paul McCartney at ten. Took advantage of the stereo headphones option. My college flatmates actually had tickets - I'd said no thanks. The Beach Boys looked very old. My diary says "Queen did a fab little set". Once the Philadelphia-only section started I gave up and switched over to watch The Stepford Wives instead, then set my alarm for the USA For Africa finale. Sun 14: My Dad and brother went to the athletics at Crystal Palace as guests of Kodak, so I was left with Mum to go round to my grandmother's for a non-roast chicken lunch. Mon 15: Watched our tortoise eat a heck of a lot of cucumber (40 years on, nothing's changed).
Tue 16: Dad rang from West Berlin where he'd flown for a conference. I'd given him 4 marks I had going spare before he caught the 724 this morning. Wed 17: Bobby Ewing died in a car crash in tonight's episode of Dallas, a death which would later prove to have been a dream when he walked out of the shower at the end of the next series. Thu 18: Tried loading up my Sinclair ZX81 with a game off cassette but it wouldn't work, so I typed in a worm-wriggling program instead. Fri 19: Watched the birds eating some stale chocolate sponge on the lawn. Dad was back from West Berlin with tales of life inside the wall. Sat 20: My brother went to see the Royal Tournament with a group from Youth Club, then came home in time to watch the Royal Tournament on BBC1. Sun 21: It being July, preparations for Sunday lunch always involved shucking the peas.
Mon 22: A young yellow-beaked bird smashed into my bedroom window and slumped dazed on the sill before flying off. Later we found it hopping around the lawn with its mother, learning how to be a proper bird. Tue 23: ITV were rerunning Fireball XL5 as one of their summer holiday morning shows and I was hooked. On Brookside it was the day of the incredibly unlikely nurses siege. Wed 24: Took my grandmother a loaf of bread and we sat in the garden while she told me stories of her time working in a glove factory. Thu 25: The latest unemployment figures were 3,235,036, and would have been one lower without me. Fri 26: My friend from Cheshire rang unexpectedly from Euston at 8am, could she come round? She'd been on a science course in London and was being spontaneous. If she was hoping for an exciting visit, what she got was a trip to the allotment, a roast pork dinner and a lot of watching TV.
Sat 27: Between us we were planning a 'Snowdonia spectacular' walking holiday in September so we used my typewriter to write up some notes. We needed an Ordnance Survey map of North Wales so drove to WH Smiths in Rickmansworth (no luck), but they did have the second Adrian Mole book so I bought that. Found the map in Watford instead. Sun 28: Finished the Adrian Mole book at 2am, lying on a mattress on the front room floor. My friend finally set off home from Watford Junction at 5pm and I got a peck on the cheek. I bet my parents got their hopes up there. Mon 29: Back to normal. Coco Pops for breakfast. Wrote up some lecture notes. It rained a lot. Tue 30: Mum had bought me some new clothes from her catalogue. I hated the pullover but thankfully it was the wrong size. They'd also sent the wrong jacket. I did however now have a blue check shirt and a cool pair of grey trousers. I loved the trousers. Wed 31: We've reached the last day of July and I hadn't been more than three miles from home all month. Looking back I can't believe how unadventurous my life was back then, but at the time I thought nothing of it.
The most visited attractions in each English county
(according to VisitEngland) [data is for 2024]
Bedfordshire: Whipsnade Zoo, Wrest Park, Shuttleworth Collection Berkshire: Windsor Great Park, Windsor Castle, Basildon Park Bristol: Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol Zoo, Wake the Tiger Buckinghamshire: Cliveden, Stowe, Bletchley Park Cambridgeshire: Fitzwilliam Museum, IWM Duxford, Anglesey Abbey Cheshire: Chester Zoo, Tatton Park, Chester Cathedral Cornwall: Eden Project, St Michael's Mount, Tintagel Castle County Durham: Beamish, Durham Cathedral, Locomotion Cumbria: Windermere Lake Cruises, Ullswater Steamers, Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway Derbyshire: Chatsworth, Calke Abbey, Hardwick Hall Devon: Plymouth Aquarium, RHS Garden Rosemoor, Killerton House Dorset: Kingston Lacy, Corfe Castle, Tank Museum East Riding of Yorkshire: Beverley Minster, Bayle Museum, Wassand Hall East Sussex: Brighton Pier, Sheffield Park Garden, Knockhatch Essex: Adventure Island Southend, RHS Garden Hyde Hall, Southend Pier Gloucestershire: National Arboretum, WWT Slimbridge, Dyrham Park Greater London: British Museum, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern Greater Manchester: Manchester Central Library, The Lowry, Manchester Museum Hampshire: Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Marwell Zoo, Mottisfont Abbey Herefordshire: Hereford Cathedral, Croft Castle, Berrington Hall Hertfordshire: St Albans Museum, NHM Tring, Verulamium Museum Isle of Wight: Osborne House, Blackgang Chine, Carisbrooke Castle Kent: Canterbury Cathedral, Leeds Castle, The Beaney Lancashire: Mrs Dowson's Ice Cream Dairy, RSPB Leighton Moss, Pendle Heritage Centre Leicestershire: National Space Centre, Leicester Museum, Leicester Guildhall Lincolnshire: Belton House, Rand Farm Park, Skegness Natureland Merseyside: Museum of Liverpool, World Museum Liverpool, Knowsley Safari Park Norfolk: Blickling Hall, BeWILDerwood, Wroxham Barns North Yorkshire: National Railway Museum, York Minster, RHS Harlow Carr Northamptonshire: Canons Ashby, Wellingborough Museum, Lyveden Northumberland: Alnwick Castle, Wallington House, Cragside Nottinghamshire: Wollaton Hall, Nottingham Castle, Newstead Abbey Oxfordshire: Blenheim Palace, Ashmolean Museum, Bodleian Libraries Rutland: Barnsdale Gardens, Lyddington Bede House, Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue Shropshire: Attingham Park, RAF Museum Cosford, Blists Hill Somerset: Roman Baths, Tyntesfield, Bath Abbey South Yorkshire: Cannon Hall Museum, Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Millennium Gallery Staffordshire: Trentham Estate, National Memorial Arboretum, Shugborough Suffolk: Abbey Gardens, Ickworth, Sutton Hoo Surrey: RHS Wisley, Polesden Lacey, Bocketts Farm Park Tyne & Wear: BALTIC Centre, Great North Museum, Sunderland Museum Warwickshire: Shakespeare's Birthplace, Charlecote Park, Baddesley Clinton West Midlands: Midlands Arts Centre, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley Zoo West Sussex: Wakehurst, Nymans, Chichester Cathedral West Yorkshire: Royal Armouries Museum, Ogden Water Country Park, Nostell Priory Wiltshire: Stonehenge, Longleat, Stourhead Worcestershire: Croome Park, Hanbury Hall, Severn Valley Railway
I've counted and there are only seven counties where I've been to the full top three.
Meanwhile there are twelve counties where I haven't visited any of the top three.
Must try harder.
And it's certainly busy, so much so that they don't take walk-ups at the front any more, that's prebooked free ticketholders only. I joined the slalom round the back instead and waited 15 minutes before being waved past because I didn't have a bag. It is a proper treasure trove inside though, with urns and coins and gilt scabbards and mummies and hulking great chunks of temples and masks and manuscripts and clocks and busts and tapestries and carved wooden gods and jewellery and where exactly was Levant anyway and more urns and helmets and inscriptions and the remains of civilisations we're still bombing and chess pieces and jade and torcs and stone panels and marbles and Marbles and screenprints and sculptures with tusks and ceramics and friezes and the real Rosetta Stone and a fake Rosetta Stone to draw the crowds away and mosaics and vases and cups and more urns, not all of which were looted from their place of origin. Also a cloakroom, pizzeria, £6 cakes and £3 cans of Coke because once people have waited that long to get in they're not going anywhere else. Always a joy.
That's the NHM in South Kensington, not the Tring outpost because that only had 151,000 visitors last year. Again it took me 15 minutes to get in, which wasn't great but could have been worse. It's a proper maze this place, especially once you step away from the central hall with the blue whale skeleton, and I don't know why people pay £2 for a map because it's always disorienting whatever. I did a circuit round the dinosaurs before it got too busy, including the skippable T-rex. I walked to the back of the minerals to see the gemstones and meteorites in the Vault. I noted that the escalator into the heart of the Earth's core is working again. I found an empty exhibition you had to pay to get into at the end of a silent corridor. I passed the stuffed zebras I remember as a child, also several shops and cafes I don't. I appreciated the Fixing Our Broken Planet gallery where ways of avoiding extinction are explored. I wandered out into the new back garden with its pond full of toads, and noted that if you ever want to jump the queues just enter the building this way through the tumbleweed West Entrance. But mostly I mused that the finest display of animal behaviour onsite was the visitors themselves, from the throng of global tourists to the swarm of excitable schoolchildren, because Natural History is all around us and we are a key part.
A huge hall that's empty most of the year. Four thematic collections that don't refresh as often as they could. Odd stuff, obtuse stuff, overwrought stuff. Two exhibitions it would cost £40 to see both of. Echoing tanks with not much in. Ridiculous descriptions of thematic nonsense. Escalators that take you past where you want to be. A top floor terrace they've had to retreat from. But also Dali's lobster, Duchamp's urinal, Matisse's snail, Warhol's diptych, Rothko's maroon, inspiration, expertise, goosebumps and lots to make you think, which is why we all keep coming back.
Twenty years ago in a Singapore hotel, 54 IOC delegates voted to award the 2012 Olympic Games to London. Few saw it coming, the expectation was that the Games would go to Paris and that Seb Coe and friends had valiantly wasted years of effort. Instead the world came to Stratford to win medals and the Lower Lea Valley was duly transformed from a post-industrial backwater to a recreational and residential hub, and all in seven years flat.
I had the day off work on 6th July 2005, just in case, and over breakfast watched Seb and Becks give their 'Inspire A Generation' presentation to assorted suits. By the time I got to Trafalgar Square only London and Paris were still in the race, and a large expectant crowd had gathered to witness the opening of an envelope. When 'London' was revealed there was surprise, jubilation and a lot of ticker tape, then Heather Small stood up and sang Proud and the Red Arrows flew over. Lunchtimes have rarely been so consequential.
In the afternoon I went for a walk up the Olympic-Park-to-be, trying to get my head round what might be going where. I bumped into film crews, BMX bikers and oblivious drunkards swigging from cans. I looked down from the Greenway across a swathe of instantly doomed businesses. I got as far as the bus garages, cash and carrys and nature reserves off Waterden Road, taking on the enormity of the transformation ahead. And on the way back I walked to the end of a cul-de-sac to find a German car company and a skip hire depot in the middle of what would eventually be the Olympic Stadium, and soon was. It was quite the day.
20 years later I've walked up the Olympic Park again to muse and reflect on the transformation wrought and the legacy delivered. I did this after 10 years too, as you'd expect, but I'll keep it briefer this time. Also there have been several significant changes since 2015, starting here.
This is the Abba Arena, erected silently during the pandemic and now playing to full houses in sequins and lace seven times a week. Technically it's a 'meanwhile' use, originally intended to be removed by 31st March 2025 and replaced by flats. Instead it's still standing because nobody kills a goose that lays golden eggs, and the owners of the Snoozebox Hotel nextdoor hope the day it finally ups sticks is as far in the future as possible. Back in 2005 all this was industrial estate with an emphasis on muck and auto parts, alongside the DLR's least significant halt. Since then the station has been massively upgraded, also relocated to dodge Crossrail, and all but one of the former warehouses has been knocked down. But even though the Games were over a decade ago not a single flat has been built within the Olympic footprint, only on land immediately outside, and a heck of a lot of empty hardstanding remains. It wouldn't surprise me if I returned in 2035 and found Pudding Mill neighbourhood still substantially incomplete.
This is the Olympic Stadium, now the London Stadium because West Ham United still haven't found anyone willing to sponsor it. On the bright side it does have a proper legacy use because that was never a given, eventually reopening in 2016, and still packs them in for rock gigs and American football takeovers as and when. If you'd walked this riverside in 2005 it would have been a lonely experience, passing silos and the backs of warehouses while a guard dog barked across the water from a lengthy tumbledown shed. It was plain luck that the braids of the Bow Back Rivers spread wide enough here to accommodate the footprint of a world class arena, also pitch perfect for security, also always going to be an annoying walk from the nearest station. Today it's a joy to see the surface of the river still as alive with damselflies as it was 20 years ago, also a damned shame that the banks of wildflowers that peaked so memorably for the Games have been allowed to almost entirely fade away.
This is the East Bank, or Olympicopolis as Boris tried to dub it, which is currently midway through its opening sequence. We've had fashion since 2023 and ballet since February, with culture from the V&A and BBC due next year. This used to be a stripe of industries nowhere else wanted, from scrapyards and repair shops to battery stores and tyre mountains, before being repurposed for swimming and water polo during the Games. It's impressively busy along here now, partly due to office workers and students but mainly thanks to the arrival of Westfield just beyond. A massive mall on former railway lands was planned on this site before Jacques Rogge opened his envelope so the IOC merely turbocharged things and the UK's busiest shopping centre is the result. The Olympic Park itself is also reassuringly abuzz, even midweek, confirming that the speakers in that Singapore hotel room weren't being entirely over-optimistic. The fountains by the bridge squirt far less often than they used to, alas.
This is the blue bridge, a single point of reference for those of us who remember how this area used to look. If I really concentrate I can remember a graffitiedcrossing beneath two tall pylons surrounded by secure fencing, just past Parkes Galvanizing Ltd, and now just look at it! I also remember Carpenters Lock as a derelictruin I wasn't supposed to clamber on, and never would have guessed it would be fully restored to full navigational use. The fact barely any boats ever use it is alas irrelevant, although when I did my 2025 walk I was thrilled to see one of the lock gates raised while two official-looking gentlemen in Canal & River Trust polo shirts checked it out. Meanwhile nobody's yet found a good reason for the Orbit to exist, not since it was a useful viewing platform above a world-class sporting event for four weeks in the summer of 2012. If the world's longest tunnel slide failed to rake them in then a recent switch to the custody of Zip World is unlikely to cut it, especially with a greedy £5 booking fee on top.
These are the northern parklands, arguably the greatest triumph of the post-Olympic legacy. Not only were they glorious to lounge in during the Games but they've matured since to become a wetland landscape of some beauty, complete with multiple kingfishers if you manage to get lucky. I wasn't thinking 'pandemic' when all this was created but my word it made my lockdown hugely more tolerable. That said the parkland has started to be nibbled away for housing on the west side, as was always in the long-term plan, as the neighbourhood of East Wick inexorably expands. There will still be a lot of grass left but it won't be as much as many people anticipated. Also the top of the mound beneath the Olympic rings used to have a much better view than this but the trees they planted 15 years ago are maturing now and the canopy is obscuring the horizon, with some way still to go. It is a shame the Manor House allotments had to move, split off to two less great locations, but what the wider public's gained here is immense.
This is the Lea Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre with its dazzling blue outdoor pitch. I never walked this far in 2005, the A12 was too much of a barrier, so QEOP has also helped knit the community together. This Waltham Forest End does however feel somewhat underdeveloped, only coming to life when some massive hockey event descends and seals the place off. Also it was announced last week that the indoor tennis courts are to be converted to padel instead, which has caused a lot of angry players to make a racket, but the Park's recreational overlords have always appeared more interested in income than participation. Beyond that is the Velodrome, a timber beauty that far exceeds the cycle track that used to be here, and also the only Olympic residential neighbourhoods to have been completed so far. Never did I imagine when I wandered up here in the sunshine 20 years ago quite how amazingly it was all going to turn out, almost entirely for the better, and all because three more IOC delegates were persuaded to vote for London instead of Paris.
...by which I mean the southernmost point in the borough of Haringey. Which is this pub on the Seven Sisters Road. Finsbury Park station is 50 metres away.
The southern tip of Haringey is a properly busy spot, a staggered crossroads between a mainline station and a massive park gate. It's also the meeting point of three boroughs, so the bus station's in Islington, the Happening Bagel Bakery is in Hackney and Rowans Tenpin Bowling is in Haringey. I had wondered if being called The Twelve Pins was a nod to the adjacent bowling mecca but it turns out to be the name of a mountain range in County Galway. The pub used to be called the Finsbury Park Tavern, which is appropriate because it is only a few steps from the entrance to park of that name, but the name changed when it went full-on Irish several years back. These day it's a pack'em-in multi-screen sports venue, the main attractions being every Arsenal match and all the Gaelic football, with a jealously-guarded patch of pavement screened off outside. I arrived before it opened which saved debating whether or not to peer inside and I just admired the hanging baskets instead.
This southern fringe of Haringey also used to include the main entrance to Pyke's Cinematograph, an Edwardian electric theatre, but that ornate portal was sadly demolished in 1999 and a vapid Lidl now squats on the site. So marginal is this spot that a lamppost in front of the pub supports notices by two different councils, Islington warning not to loiter on the pavement (which is theirs) and Haringey detailing rubbish collection times for adjacent properties (which are theirs). Also if you do choose to come down here tonight be warned that Fontaines DC are playing in Finsbury Park and one of their support acts is Kneecap, because this blog's psychogeographical travels are nothing if not totally in tune with the cultural zeitgeist.
Haringey East
...by which I mean the easternmost point in the borough of Haringey. Which is this footbridge over the River Lea. Meridian Water station is half a mile away.
The eastern edge of Haringey follows the River Lea, the reservoir-hugging section between Walthamstow Marshes and the North Circular. It bulges farthest on the Tottenham Marshes, not far from the big blue shed that used to be IKEA, conveniently adjacent to the sole footbridge that crosses the Navigation. This is the Chalk Bridge, a narrow crossing between parched grassland and the canal towpath, whose curving descent is the farthest east you can walk within the borough. Were it possible to leap the fence you could enter a more borderline structure which is the High Maynard Eel Transfer, or so it says on Thames Water's heavily fortified gate, behind which the real borough tip lurks in the middle of a flood relief channel.
From the top of the footbridge you can look south towards sylvan waterside in Haringey where a long chain of narrowboats is moored up - somewhat messily if you wander down and take a closer look. For total contrast the northerly panorama is of pylons, bus depots and post-industrial estate, this all in Enfield who are busy developing the hell out of it. I walk this fairly regularly and even I was surprised to now see diggers landscaping earthworks along the water's edge and a cluster of lift towers beyond as Meridian Water begins to truly erupt. For now more people live on the Haringey side, afloat and bobbing, but it won't be long before Enfield totally dominates.
Haringey North
...by which I mean the northernmost point in the borough of Haringey. Which is this traffic island on the North Circular. New Southgate station is 600 metres away.
What a contrast, from the peace of a riverside to the hurly burly of a mega-crossroads. There is a river here which is the Bounds Green Brook, a minor stream whose valley was exploited to force the A406 through towards Finchley. We're not at the really terrible junction where all the traffic on the North Circular has to turn off to go straight on, but we are just one jump away so the traffic is often really snarled. Worse still Thames Water were digging up the road when I visited, merely minor cone-age but enough to entirely hobble anyone trying to pass through quickly. Only Bounds Green Road is actually in Haringey, running as it does beside the long grassy stripe of Bounds Green which is all that remains of Bounds Green Farm, appropriately enough for the boundary of the borough.
Pedestrians feel very much of an afterthought round here, forced to wait at zigzagging crossings occasionally spanning broad swathes of tarmac, so if you're trying to get from say the Premier Inn to the M&S Food at the BP Garage it can take a long time. And for obscure heritage reasons Haringey's jurisdiction nudges no further than the centre of a small triangular traffic island, protected only by three brief sets of railings, two LOOK RIGHTs and one LOOK LEFT. Do not recommend.
Haringey West
...by which I mean the westernmost point in the borough of Haringey. Which is this playing field on Hampstead Lane. Kenwood House is 250 metres away.
We've journeyed to the top edge of Hampstead Heath, as in most highly elevated, not far from the constriction that is Spaniards Inn. The road along the Heath's perimeter is Hampstead Lane, here heavily walled with occasional gates through to Kenwood, and the other road bearing off here is The Bishop's Avenue. This is famously one of London's priciest streets lined by opulent mansions and sheikh's hideaways, also levelled plots where rich folk are planning to rebuild something even gaudier.
None of that is (quite) in Haringey, whose western protrusion hereabouts is a large sports ground called Far Field. It belongs to Highgate School and consists of a grassy rectangle with a small toilet block, the faint remnants of white stripes and several hockey goalposts pushed to one side. I wondered why it didn't look occupied and then noted that Highgate's school year ended on Thursday because the more you pay the shorter your terms are. What's more the school recently put in a planning application to replace the pitches here with astroturf, claiming they're often too waterlogged to use, and the local populace are up in arms. Synthetic turf is unsustainable, bad for wildlife, bad for biodiversity, bad for water management and made from evil fossil fuels, apparently, although peering through the railings it does feel like there ought to be far more important things to grumble about.
And while none of these four compass points is exceptionally interesting, as a quartet they showcase the sheer diversity of this outer London borough. From traffic-choked junctions to pylon-stalked marshland to highbrow suburbia, that's the full extent of Haringey.
TfL's anniversary poster series highlights several major achievements across the last 25 years, but they haven't released one for each year, not yet anyway.
So I had a go at selecting annual highlights.
2000 Tramlink 2001 Bus Saver tickets 2002 Journey Planner / Trafalgar Square 2003 Oyster / Congestion Charge 2004 Legible London 2005 Accessible buses 2006 Baby on board badge 2007 Overground 2008 Priority seating 2009 iBus / New Routemaster 2010 Pedestrian Countdown / Tube aircon / Cycle Superhighways / Cycle Hire 2011 DLR Stratford International 2012 Olympics / Dangleway 2013 150th Tube anniversary 2014 Contactless 2015 Closing ticket offices / Bus Stop M 2016 Night Tube / Hopper 2017 Night Overground 2018 - 2019 Woolwich Ferry / Cycleways 2020 Essential Travel / TfL Go 2021 Northern line extension 2022 Crossrail / Barking Riverside 2023 ULEZ extension 2024 Superloop 2025 Silvertown Tunnel
Some years are full-on project pile-ups and some are achievement deserts. 2010 had multiple riches, for example, whereas I've struggled to find any exciting initiatives in 2018.
But which TfL thing is best of all? Let's take five years at a time and see if we can narrow it down.
2000 Tramlink 2001 Bus Saver tickets 2002 Journey Planner / Trafalgar Square 2003Oyster / Congestion Charge 2004 Legible London
We can discount Tramlink because that opened two months before TfL was formed. Pedestrianising one side of Trafalgar Square was radical by 2002 standards but feels tame now. 2003 is clearly where it's at, not least for introducing road charging, but I'm going with the introduction of Oyster as a revolution that made travel so much simpler and still does to this day.
2005 Accessible buses 2006 Baby on board badge 2007Overground 2008 Priority seating 2009 iBus / New Routemaster
People cursed when Mayor Ken killed off Routemasters but a fully-accessible bus service was truly advanced for 2005. The emergence of iBus made it possible to check when your bus was coming and led eventually to the plethora of travel apps we have today. But my vote for the best here is 2007's creation of the Overground, the upgrade and joining-together of something once overlooked, now a hugely successful and much used brand.
This is a tough selection from which to pick a favourite. Air-cooled trains were a revelation in 2010, as we've learned again this week. Cycle hire arguably kickstarted an active travel revolution that continues to grow. I reckon 2012 pips them both though, not the eternal irrelevance of the Dangleway but the fear that transportation would be the Achilles heel of London's Olympics whereas instead it greased the wheels nigh perfectly.
2015 Closing ticket offices / Bus Stop M 2016 Night Tube / Hopper 2017 Night Overground 2019 Woolwich Ferry / Cycleways 2020Essential Travel / TfL Go
By rights Bus Stop M should be the highlight here, certainly given the paucity of some of the opposition. The new Woolwich Ferries were a floating disaster and rebranded Cycleways remain a confusing tangled web. I nearly picked 2016's Night Tube for the way it fired up the weekends, but I really have to go with TfL continuing to run a comprehensive transport network for not many passengers despite minimal fare income during a two year-long pandemic.
This is a really strong list, as if Sadiq's TfL was finally getting into its stride and opening everything. And there can only be one winner here, 2022's utterly transformative Elizabeth line, which despite being ridiculously late Londoners can no longer live without.
And finally let's crown a winner from the victors of the five previous shortlists.
I confess Crossrail nearly won out, a transport project on a different scale to anything London's seen in generations. But in the end I went with Oyster, an impressively early gamechanger permitting frictionless travel and the bedrock of so many other innovations that followed.
Oyster is the best thing TfL ever did. (unless of course you know better)
Happy Birthday to TfL, who are 25 years old today.
Celebrations started in January with a panoply of posters highlighting past successes, also scattered silver roundels reminding Londoners that Every Journey Matters. But the actual birthday is today, a founding date shared with the Greater London Authority because they're 25 too.
Ken Livingstone was elected Mayor of London at the start of May 2000 but only on 3rd July did statutory powers from the Greater London Authority Act finally kick in. Ken's levers at this time were few and his budget small, but all the powers and public scrutiny we now take for granted started here.
To mark the first day a Board Meeting was held, not at City Hall because that was nowhere near ready but instead at Romney House on Marsham Street. With some inevitability that building's since been sold off as housing - to be more precise 169 flats and a health club - and I wonder if the current occupant of Room AG16 realises how historic their apartment is.
Best of all the deeper recesses of the TfL website remain firmly intact so we still have access to the Agenda and the Minutes for that inaugural meeting, and indeed of every Board meeting since.
London's transport had been centrally controlled since 1933 when the London Passenger Transport Board was formed, followed sequentially by the London Transport Executive, London Transport Board, London Transport Executive (GLC) and London Regional Transport. To the general public they were long known simply as London Transport. 25 years ago saw a switch to the more user-friendly Transport for London, a name recognising that the Mayor and Board were working on behalf of Londoners. What's interesting here is the italicisation of 'for' in the name Transport for London, this on every mention in the minutes and even in the three-letter acronym. It's always TfL, never TfL, a really powerful branding statement which at some point in the subsequent years was summarily ditched. TfL is no longer quite so for London as on the day it was born.
According to the minutes Ken Livingstone chose to become a member of the Board, his presence wasn't assumed. A striking feature of the attendance list is the inclusion of two defeated Mayoral candidates as founding Board Members. Steven Norris had been the Conservative candidate (he came 2nd) and Susan Kramer the Liberal Democrat candidate (she came 4th). It'd be unthinkable to have political opponents on the Board these days but things were a little more collegiate in those earliest days as TfL established itself. There was no place on the Board for Frank Dobson, the defeated Labour candidate.
It's clear that those present recognised this was a new dawn for London's transport, both in terms of public accountability and the potential for improving the lives of Londoners. That said there were in fact two meetings on that first day, a public one and a private one, because there will always be sensitive topics better not shared.
A lot of the first meeting was about structures and appointments, this because several formerly separate organisations had just been brought together under the TfL umbrella.
Traffic Director for London
Traffic Control Systems Unit
Public Carriage Office
Docklands Light Railway
Victoria Coach Station Ltd
Croydon Tramlink
Dial-a-Ride
Transport Trading Ltd
London Buses Ltd
London Bus Services Ltd
London River Services Ltd
London Regional Transport
The biggest omission from that list, if you look carefully, was London Underground Limited. It would be 2003 before this was finally transferred across to TfL control. The tube was held back to allow the government time to set up a public–private partnership model separating out trains and infrastructure, a PPP model they knew Ken Livingstone would vehemently oppose. This he did but it went through anyway, at least until infracos failed to deliver and by 2010 everything would be back in house.
One dull but necessary discussion point at the first Board meeting was the need for a common Health and Safety policy, another the introduction of supervisory roles within the new structure. There would be seven senior positions within Transport for London - the Chief Executive and six director posts - all appointed via a standard competitive selection process. By the end of the meeting the position of Chief Executive had been retitled 'Commissioner of Transport for London' because it sounded better, and in October New Yorker transit boss Bob Kiley was appointed in the top role.
Money was also a necessary topic, not that the new body had a lot of it. The TfL Budget for 2000/01 was based on adding up plans for predecessor bodies and totalled just £400.7m of grant funding, with zero in the reserves. By contrast TfL's budget for 2025/26 is more like £9½bn, and follows on from the organisation's first operating surplus, which just shows how much things have moved on in the last 25 years.
Fares would be a focus of the second Board meeting on July 27th. Ken took issue with the government's assumption that fares should increase 1% in real terms in January 2001, instead sticking to inflation-based rises on the tube and a fares freeze on the buses. He also expressed an aspiration to introduce a flat fare for all buses across London, rather than £1 for journeys in Zone 1 and 70p elsewhere. Meanwhile a decision was made to end the right of senior TfL staff to a company car, "with appropriate compensation in negotiation with the individuals affected".
The initial expectation was that TfL would hold ten Board meetings a year. By the second meeting that had been nudged down to a more manageable eight and these days it's just six. In the 2020s Board meetings are more a rubber-stamping opportunity than a decision-making forum, accompanied by glossy 250-page reports, but still held in public, still covering the breadth of London's transport and still with the Mayor at the helm.
From a lowly start in a Westminster meeting room to today's back-slapping celebrations, the last 25 years have seen TfL grow from a fledgling organisation still finding its feet to a world-class brand-obsessed innovator delivering better transport to millions.
It's been quite the journey, but then Every Journey Matters.
45 Squared 23) GOLDEN SQUARE, W1
Borough of Westminster, 60m×60m
On the middle day of the year we reach the middle square in my year-long series. I thought we'd do a central well-ish-known one for a change.
Golden Square is one of Soho's largest public spaces, mainly due to a lack of public spaces rather than being particularly large. It lies east of Regent Street and south of Carnaby Street but is visible from neither, and as with most of Greater London it was once all fields. That field was called Geldings Close, presumably for its horsey occupants, and was first licenced for housing in 1673. Two landowners claimed the freehold and disagreed majorly on how to proceed, with a compromise plan eventually emerging from the office of Christopher Wren. The resulting square was eventually split between them, not quite symmetrically, and the connecting roads named James Street and John Street in their memory.
» a very full history here (and on the six subsequent pages)
Initially the aspiration was for "such houses as might accommodate Gentry", indeed there were still six peers living in Golden Square in 1720, but the subsequent growth of Mayfair lured these away and numbers dropped to two in 1730 and one in 1740. Next came the diplomatic envoys, hence a blue plaque at Number 23 recalls this being the Portuguese Embassy in the early 18th century, then a kind of reverse gentrification took place... first artists, then craftsmen, then boarding houses. By the time Dickens described it in the second chapter of Nicholas Nickleby it was a place of swarthy moustached men and itinerant glee-singers based round a mournful statue.
Although a few members of the graver professions live about Golden Square, it is not exactly in anybody's way to or from anywhere. It is one of the squares that have been; a quarter of the town that has gone down in the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first and second floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it takes boarders besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The dark-complexioned men who wear large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and bushy whiskers, and who congregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about the box-office in the season, between four and five in the afternoon, when they give away the orders,--all live in Golden Square, or within a street of it.
It's not like that now. What changed at the end of the nineteenth century was the arrival of the woollen and worsted trade, attracted by proximity to London's tailors, who began to replace the original domestic buildings by larger office and warehouse blocks. And when they moved on Golden Square started to fill with media and creative types, so for example the north side now hosts outdoor overlords Clear Channel and the global HQ of advertising gurus M&C Saatchi. As an example of this inexorable transition Number 22 was first owned by a colonel, later a printseller, then became the showroom for a Huddersfield woollen mill and now houses The Film and TV Charity. Meanwhile Number 1's first owner was a lord, later a harpsichord maker, then a plate glass workshop and most recently BauerMedia, purveyors of Magic, Kiss, Absolute and Greatest Hits. The subjugation of UK local radio, it turns out, was plotted from the corner of Golden Square.
But for the average punter it's not about the perimeter it's about the space in the centre, such as it is. It's never been impressive, having once been described as an "anaemic paved garden", and since they upgraded it in the 1950s it's arguably even worse. The pitted statue in the centre is of George II, never a monarch Britain particularly liked, which it's said was donated to the square after a buyer accidentally bought it at auction. The beds of Damascena roses underneath are much more recent, planted in 2018 as "a gift to London from Bulgarian Londoners", and soften the ambience somewhat. Beyond that are empty urns, empty plinths and empty pingpong tables, hardly the most inspiring collection, and around the edge a ring of bogstandard benches just the right length to sleep on.
I may not have seen the square at its best - I got the bin lorry and the minion affixing 'Parking Suspension' notices ahead of Pride - but I suspect it merely merits bronze status, not truly Golden.
