25 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in August 2026
1) In the first half of 2026 TfL earned £2,374,283 from 90,511 Penalty Charge Notices for bus lane infringements. 2) The TfL bus fleet comprises 6528 double deckers and 2454 single deckers, of which
2357 are diesel, 2937 electric, 3668 hybrid and 20 hydrogen. 3) The estimated cost of replacing the platform canopies at Barons Court station is £10.3m. 4) The three junctions responsible for the greatest number of yellow box penalty charge notices are i) West Hill/Wandsworth Fire Station SW18, ii) Homerton High St/Homerton Fire Station E9, iii) Vauxhall Bridge Road/Rampayne Street SW1. 5) So far this year, 12% of bus damage incidents have involved a Wrightbus Eclipse Gemini 3, 10% have involved an ADL Enviro 400H MMC and 9% have involved a Wrightbus NRM.
6) With regard to automatic numberplate recognition, TfL operate 4243 enforcement cameras and 181 monitoring cameras. 7) Since fares restarted on bus routes through the Silvertown and Blackwall Tunnel, passenger numbers on route 108 are down 15% compared to the same time period in 2025. On route SL4 numbers are up 4% and on route 129 up 0.5%. 8) Last year in the borough of Greenwich, while crossing the road, 9 pedestrians were seriously injured on a pedestrian crossing, 6 within 50m of a pedestrian crossing and 10 elsewhere. 9) Between February and July on the Northern line, 9% of timetabled trains failed to serve the Battersea extension. 10) The four criteria used to assess tube seats following a deep clean are i) Dust or debris in crevices ii) Dust or debris on seats iii) Grime or dust on panels iv) Gum residue. The required pass mark is 80%.
11) Last year on the Underground there were 5149 reported incidents of passengers possessing an open container of alcohol but only 203 of passengers consuming alcohol. 12) Employee headcount at the eight operational control centres for the tube is 8 for the Waterloo & City, 48 for the Bakerloo, 50 for the Victoria, 65 for the Central, 69 for the Piccadilly, 76 for the Northern, 92 for the Jubilee and 247 for the combined Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan. 13) The new signage on the bus lane across Westminster Bridge incorrectly omitted motorcycles from the list of permitted vehicles so has been removed pending replacement. 14) In the last year the drivers of 63 TfL maintenance vans have been caught exceeding a 20mph speed limit. 15) Since the start of last year the tube line with the greatest number of reported robberies was the Central line, while theft of public property was most prevalent on the Piccadilly line. The Northern line was top for violence, sexual offences and public disorder.
16) If you'd like a copy of all the in-carriage line diagrams used on the tube, DLR and trams, here's a zip folder. 17) TfL's total expenditure on taxi services during the 2025/26 financial year was £6,968,396. 18) In the last financial year 3,335,464 passengers on 190,439 buses were checked by revenue staff, leading to 17,947 penalty fares being issued and 2892 successful prosecutions. 19) Over the last three months 25% of Elizabeth line services at Acton Main Line departed at least three minutes late. 20) In the week starting 29th June a bus on route 70 knocked a motorcyclist off his bike in South Kensington and another bus on route 70 crashed into a house in Notting Hill. The same driver was not responsible for both incidents.
21) There are no current plans to introduce any new weekend-only Night Services on the tube, Overground or buses. 22) When planning for a possible Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf footbridge, a report estimated that a 15m high bridge would require opening 1-4 times an hour in the navigational peak, whereas a 20m bridge would have 95% availability. 23) 43,641 London addresses are registered to two active 60+ Oyster photocards, 864 hold three and 116 hold more than three. 24) In the last twelve months the vehicle with the highest number of ULEZ Penalty Charge Notices is a Ford Focus Titanium X TDCi with 361 fines. The vehicle with the highest number of Congestion Charge PCNs has a diplomatic plate (290 fines). 25) If you ask TfL to use their office printer to print out every tube map ever produced in colour on A3 paper, along with guidance on how to fold them, they will refuse.
I missed reporting on several transport stories while I was away so here's a brief catch-up.
🚦 This Saturday the gyratory at St Paul's is being tweaked. The southern end of King Edward Street is being pedestrianised (to create Greyfriars Square) so traffic will have to go a different way and so will local buses. Precisely where the 4, 8, 25, 56, 76 and 133 stop will be altering, and route 100 has already been extended to St Bart's. TfL have produced a ridiculously complicated map to try to explain things (my head exploded), so if you need to catch a bus the City of London's vastly oversimplified version should be clearer.
🚡 It amazes me that every time I do one of these round-ups there's a new thing at the cablecar but there always is. This time it's an interactive audio guide you can listen to on the way across with different stories in either direction. It's narrated by Engi-Bear, the cablecar's lumpen mascot, and produced by an Italian software team called POPGuide. You need to bring your own headphones (and indeed your own phone). The unusual thing is that it costs £1, just £1, when they could have given it away for free or tried to make more money out of it. Upselling has never been so flaccid.
🚇 TfL have added another weekday closure of most of the Piccadilly line to their already excessive roster of downtime, specifically Wednesday 28th - Friday 30th October (immediately before a full line closure at the weekend). Whatever is wrong with the new trains must be proving intractable, given it'll be at least next spring before any member of the public gets on board, fingers crossed.
🚌 London's next dead bus is the 349 which is being withdrawn on Saturday. Expect bloggage. On the same day the latest Superloop route is being introduced, the SL12 from Gants Hill to Rainham. The good news that it'll be free to use for the first week, should you happen to live in the area. TfL have produced a route diagram and a long list of stops in both directions, but not a map because that would be too useful. I cannot overemphasise enough how remote the Rainham terminus is, so expect bloggage there too.
📽️ In mid-August TfL published their Advertising Annual Report, a glossy 49 page compilation of all the showiest campaigns of the last year. It reads like a bunch of talented professionals congratulating themselves on a job well done, but unfortunately that job is to make their advertising more and more difficult to miss. Key phrases include "empowering brands to unlock creativity and turn heads" and "innovation remains central to our shared focus". The scariest project is a "plan to deliver world-first, ten-metre-long digital corridor wraps in selected Elizabeth line stations", i.e. huge moving screens you can't take your eyes off. It's so controversial they've made a full-scale mock-up at UCL "to evaluate how digital corridor wraps might impact the experience of customers who are neurodivergent or disabled". See photo.
They hope the research will show any potential impacts can be mitigated, but I hope someone will grow a conscience and halt the introduction of these massive digital intrusions. Advertising targets shouldn't be fixated on increasing distraction, forever designing formats it's more and more impossible to take our eyes off.
📱 The report also suggests you could be seeing a lot more adverts on TfL Go in future. At present the app generates 76 million page views a month but only made £5,000 in revenue last year, thus "TfL Go represents a significant long-term growth opportunity".
🚌 If you enjoy those free heritage bus days when the London Bus Museum floods a historic route with vintage vehicles, the list of planned events has extended. Route 106:3rd October 2026. Route 6: 20th March 2027. Route 107: 13th June 2027. Route 85: 2nd October 2027.
This blog loves a boundary and the border between Spain and France is one of the more significant. It's 425 miles long, was finally settled in 1856 and mostly follows the drainage divide of the Pyrenees. At its western end it divides the towns of Irun (Spain) and Hendaye (France), or more precisely the Spanish town of Hondarribia and the French suburb of Zokuburu. If you stand in Hondarribia's mainsquare and look down the hill you can see where the border ends at the mouth of the river Bidasoa. Spain's on the left, France on the right.
There are many ways to cross the border here.
By road
European route E5 crosses the border four miles upstream at the Zubi Nazioartekoa. On the Spanish side the autoroute is designated AP-8, then morphs into the A63 to Bordeaux in the middle of the bridge. The French side immediately welcomes drivers with a toll booth, or if viewed the other way charges drivers for leaving the country. There are no passport checks or customs, nor at the two non-motorway bridges between the two sides. We returned via the more minor Santiago Bridge, freely crossing thanks to EU accords which have made the former queues obsolete. That said we did pass French gendarmes setting up beside the road ready to spot-check inbound traffic, so maybe be careful what you choose to take in or out.
By rail
A 120m-long railway bridge links Spanish railways to France, which is awkward because the countries have very different gauges. There are thus a heck of a lot of marshalling yards on either side to aid transfer of rolling stock. A parallel bridge carries the Euskotren metro train from San Sebastián but this travels only 400m into France before terminating at Hendaye station. Long distance rail travellers need to transfer to the Euskotren to make their connection, or else lug their luggage for a mile and a half via the Santiago Bridge. We had hoped to visit Biarritz by train but the connecting faff (and oddly infrequent services on the French side) made it far better to drive instead. [The Man in Seat 61]
By boat
The lowest crossing of the border is theferry that's been shuttling between Hondarribia and Hendaye since 1993. The service crosses Txingudi Bay in seven minutes flat for the ferry reasonable fare of €2.50. The jetty was only a ten minute walk from where I took today's first photo so I was sorely tempted to make a pointless border crossing just for the sake of it. My travelling companions instead prioritised lunch so we settled at Mika Jatetxea for pintxos and pork rib with orange and cheddar sauce and I missed my chance. Also best not risk a trip to a foreign country when your plane leaves in three hours, so Hondarribia's lovely walledtown was a far safer bet.
By air
For reasons of flatness San Sebastián's airport is 10 miles east of the city in Hondarribia, built on reclaimed land in the Bidasoa estuary. For reasons of space the runway is short so gets only a handful of flights daily, all in small planes including a few weekly returns to London City Airport. For reasons of geography the runway is incredibly close to the mid-stream national border, the centre of the runway barely 100m away, indeed only a few seconds after take-off you've already entered French airspace. If you remember the very first photo I showed you at the start of my holiday travelogue, taken from the window of my departing plane, that had Spain in the foreground, France in the background and the Santiago Bridge inbetween. One holiday, two countries, and somehow it's taken me longer to write up than I spent there.
If you've driven all the way to France you might as well stop somewhere else on the way back.
✉ A postcard from Saint-Jean-de-Luz
On my summer holidays we went to Saint-Jean-de-Luz which is in France but only just. It is six miles from Spain on the coast and it has a big bay and ice creams. It is not a fun place to park but we managed.
The place to go is thebeach, it is long and very sandy. A lot of people were playing beach volleyball because there is a lot of space. The sun was starting to set over the fort and lighthouse at the far end of the bay and it was very pretty. But nobody was in the sea because the purple flag was flying. The purple flag means JELLYFISH! or in this case Portuguese men o' war because they had invaded. I have never seen a purple flag before it is serious, if one stings you in precisely the wrong place you could die. The lifeguards sounded a big horn when they saw someone wading in. It must be gutting if you come here for a week's holiday and a blue bag of venom stops you going in the water.
The biggest building on the promenade is the casino, there is always a casino although this one closed a while back. It has a boardwalk and a pergola and little shops. We bought ice creams from a Glaces Lopez van on the promenade, they've been going since 1924. I had citron in a cornet, it was yummy and only €1.70 which is a total bargain. We also bought Gâteaux Basques from Maison Adam in the high street but only the small ones, I liked the custard filling best. Maison Adam are most famous for their macarons, they once made them for the wedding of Louis XIV and Marie Theresa of Spain which took place here in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1660. Now that's an origin story!
The highstreet is proper characterful, all narrow with brightly-painted shutters. It's also a bit designer in places, such is the tourist clientele, although if you buy surf gear you have to go out of town to use it because the bay doesn't get big waves. At the lower end are a lot of outdoor bar tables, London has nothing on this, also the marina where the nice boats are. The smart dockfront museum is the House of the Infanta, this because Marie Theresa spent the night before her wedding here (Maison Louis XIV is just round the corner). The harbour is also the mouth of the Nivelle but it is not a famous river.
On the way back to the car we passed the public fronton, which is the place where they play pelote. I first learned about pelote in my Tricolore textbook and now here I was watching two Basque lads hurling a ball really hard against a wall using their long curved xistera. Then they had to stop playing because a truck arrived with tree trunks for tonight's Basque Strengthevent, a display of athletic sawing, bale lifting, sack racing and tug of war. We didn't have time to stay but what with the pelote, games and gâteaux we had learned that Saint-Jean-de-Luz is just as Basque as towns the other side of the Spanish border. [10 photos]
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, plenty of variety, seaside chic, trois plages, lifeguard-assisted, Belle Époque architecture, multiple refreshment opportunities, rocky promontories, Atlantic rollers, walking in the steps of Napoleon, occasional lizards, stripy parasols, warmer than home, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's une belle promenade along the coast of southwest France from Biarritz's old lighthouse to the Virgin's rock, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same. [30 photos]
Biarritz is an iconic seasideresort 20 miles round the Bay of Biscay from the Spanish border, still technically in the Basque country if less conspicuously. It grew in popularity during the 19th century, first as somewhere to bathe in the waters and then as somewhere to be seen, attracting notable summer residents including kings and emperors. Officially it's a city but in reality a coastal suburb of more-sprawling Bayonne, part of the departement of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. For today's perambulation we'll be hugging the shore from one headland to the next, technically doable in half an hour but far better to take your time. If you want to follow along here's a map, or else you can let my Flickr album lead you through by choosing the 'slideshow' icon and imagining you were there.
The walk starts by the lighthouse atop Pointe Saint-Martin, a sandstone headland at the northern end of the bay. This is the dividing line between the rocky Basque coast and the much flatter sandy beaches of the Landes region which can be seen stretching off into the far distance, but only if you think to walk round the back of the toilets. The more obvious view is southacross the town and the various rocks which dot the bay, sone of which are actually arches, just not from this angle.
The screw propeller in pride of place in the upper gardens belongs to the Franz Hals, a trawler bound for scrap in 1996 which slipped its moorings and ran aground on the beach below. Local hoteliers feared they were in for a direct hit. The lower gardens cling to the rockface and look extensively scenic but alas are all fenced off, either temporarily for maintenance or more likely permanently for safety. You could spend €5 and climb the lighthouse before departing but the views are probably good enough from the clifftop, also a Nice Walk shouldn't kick off with 248 unnecessary steps.
A short walk at street level is required before the first beach access, this via a steep set of steps called Descente de l'Océan. A big plus in strolling north to south is that this is downhill but be warned, a reverse price will need to be paid at the end of the walk. The first beach is Plage de Miramar, a quieter strand than the town's main drag but still with a narrow stretch watched over by red and yellow coastguards. There's that arch I promised you, an offshore sandstone hump called Roche Ronde which from the right angle resembles a heeled shoe. You are however a century too late to spot Edward VII, who used come to Biarritz every year so he could spend a month with his mistress rather than his wife.
Edward stayed just up top in the enormous Hôtel du Palais, a 5* luxury pile in extensive private grounds. It was originally built by Napoleon III in 1855 as a summer villa for his new wife, the Empress Eugénie, so she didn't too feel homesick for her native Spain. Beyond the protruding hotel is the Grande Plage, the most prestigious of the beaches, probably because it's the easiest to reach. It has perfect sand, a broader patch overseen by lifeguards and a very chic row of striped beach parasols in primary colours. Towel density increases the further south you go, or at least it did in mid-August, as did the number of beachgoers taking a paddle or dip.
If you fancy heading up into the main town this is best place to do it. Firstly it's immediately above and secondly the slope here is the gentlest, which you may appreciate later. The prime interstitial spot is taken by the town's casino, a fin de siècle gambling fortress which these days allows anyone inside to play its slots. Keep climbing to reach the Hôtel de Ville, the tourist information palace and all the smart shops you'd expect to find where sophisticated tourists gather. It's also the best place to spot the tram-buses and teensy navettes operated by Txik Txak, the local transport operator (whose very-Basque name represents the noise made by a double bounce in the game of pelota).
We stopped for an hour at a cafe beneath the casino because sometimes it helps to immerse yourself in the landscape, not just walk through it. I had croque monsieur and a bottle of Orangina to reflect the fact we were briefly in a different country, and watched every example of smart beachwear pass by on the promenade.
The southern end of the bay is rockier, the first of a dozen offshore lumps being the Roche des Enfants (the one children shouldn't swim past). The boulevard now climbs to duck below more hotels and a Gothic church, the occasional footbridge providing access to a separate rocky viewpoint. The small cove here was once used by the town's fishermen to unload sardines, the jetties more recently appropriated by small white motorboats. To explore properly would require negotiating a lot of stone steps and minor scenic deviations, but if you're keeping it short head through the tunnel beneath the Aquarium and give the headland benches a miss.
The Musée de la Mer started out as an oceanography museum, thus a bit dry, before diversifying into sea creatures in the 1960s. More recently they've introduced sharks and then a full-on aquarium extension, so the Art Deco frontage now hides a touristattraction more worthy of €17 admission. Instead our headland-to-headland walk concludes at an iron walkway which crosses potentially stormy waters to another offshore islet. This is the Rocher de la Vierge, or Virgin's Rock, so called because a bronze statue of Mary was plonked on top in 1865. The seagull on her head I believe was temporary.
What everyone in Biarritz likes to do is walk out to the rock and back, especially atsunset, passing through a tiny tunnel to gather in the larger space at the far end. Use of the coin-op telescopes is optional. The whole thing has a feel of fairyland about it, the chunky sandstone seemingly artificial as if Bournemouth's municipal engineers had a hand in it. The very tip of the rock might be too crowded to allow you to sit down, but do take the opportunity to look back onto the shore from mid-sea. The chateau-like house across the bay is called Villa Belza and is almost as photographed as the Virgin, but although it looks like you should be able to go inside it's actually a private residence.
The next beach round is a U-shaped cove formerly used by the town's whaling fleet, now a pristine tongue of sand. It's Plage du Port Vieux and its tiny strand is crammed with sunbathers packed into rows facing the water, exactly as you'd imagine a beach in Biarritz should be. A lido-like terrace curves round to provide important facilities, almost forming a recreational amphitheatre, and all accessed via the slipway they once used to pull the boats up. Meanwhile adolescent exhibitionists queue to dive acrobatically off the long jetty below the Eden Cafe, before clambering out and going round again. And we're done.
To return to the main town best take the Rue du Port-Vieux direct. We continued round the headland past Villa Belza to the next bay in the hope of seeing it thronged with boarders, this being where the sport of surfing first came to France in 1956. Unfortunately it was high tide when access is banned due to lack of sand, so we had to continue unsatisfied and find a way back up the cliff. The zigzag path proved knackering and although we saw lots of charming lizards during the ascent my companions were barely talking to me by the time we reached the top. Never push a Nice Walk too far, even if you're in Biarritz and it's not just nice, it's très très beau.
Since 1999 the London Café in Vitoria-Gasteiz has attracted punters with its London-themed decor, including a red bus behind the bar, a sign pointing to Earl's Court Station and the door of a red telephone kiosk a stuck to the wall. The food offering is more standard and the front pump merely serves Guinness at non-London prices, but there's clearly been an attempt to make Britons feel vaguely at home. BestMate'sOtherHalf remembers coming to gigs here when the bands in the back room were all ska and punk, these Basque favourites rather than a nod to London in the late 70s, but these days the cafe's more somewhere to come for beer and a burger in a wood-panelled room with a faux-London vibe.
While we were ordering at the bar I became intrigued by a sign pointing towards the toilets which said SUBWAY, a slight mis-step. So I followed it to the back room and there on the wall I found a giant tube map mural stretching up into north London. Oh that's good, I thought.
But the more I looked the more intrigued I became. The layout looked suitably reminiscent of the pre-Crossrail era but some of the stations didn't quite match reality. All those you'd expect to see were there but also at least ten extras, also lines that aren't part of the existing network, but all perfectly woven into the diagram so as to look entirely normal to the unfamiliar eye.
A check against my collection of tube maps, specifically the spread of step-free blobs and daggers, suggests this is fundamentally the 2012 tube map but with some subsequent modifications. I couldn't quite get the perfect photo because there was a man sat eating his lunch in the sweet spot, sorry, so I had to chop Alexandra Palace off the top. But you might enjoy looking as much as I did to see if you can spot the peculiarities within because I've never quite seen a tube map like it. A slightly bigger version of my photo is here and I've put the full-sized version on Flickr.
We ordered kalimotxos instead of a pint of Guinness and pintxos rather than a bag of pork scratchings, but it's reassuring to know that tube geeks are alive and well even in places as far flung as the Basque Country, and the London Café has the map to prove it.
🥓🫒🦐 The quintessential item of Basque cuisine is the pintxo (pronounced pincho, the 'tx' representing a 'ch' sound). A pintxo is a small savoury snack, bigger than bite-sized and generally breadier than tapas. They're displayed on the counter in bars to be eaten alongside a drink, sometimes a choice of umpteen and sometimes just the specialities of the house. Think cheesy ham or spiked olives with tomato or anchovies with truffle or sliced tortilla or stacked jamón chunks or cod croquettes or battered chorizo or stuffed mussel or lamb sweetbread or squirts of foie, even scooped-out sea urchin with a creamy mix of squid and mushroom, lightly grilled. There are no set combinations so you either have to ask exactly what they are or just dive in and take pot luck, a gamble you're very likely to win. It takes two or three to satisfy an appetite, alternatively you can bar hop and cherrypick from each, making this the most sociable of feasts. Prices are extremely reasonable too, maybe 2.40€ for something any London cafe would screw you over for, were they even making something delicious on the premises in the first place.
We dined on pintxos every day, so engrained are they in the culture, sometimes from a homely corner cafe and sometimes from a specialist outfit with a regional reputation. In Vitoria the top venues include Sagartoki, El Toloño and perretxiCo, all offering creations with extra pizazz rather than just a dollop of seafood squirted on half a roll. The busiest place we tried was Bar Sport in San Sebastián where the queue at the bar was four deep even at the end of the lunchtime rush, such is their reputation. A large team worked a rustic production line to process the orders, to carry the plates and (out of sight) to assemble and cook, eventually delivering us half a crab with cheesy sludge in, the aforementioned sea urchin and a rather safer mushroom croquette.
Not only are there dozens of pintxo bars in town centres but most have the same layout, a long (long) bar down one side and a row of small tables on the other, with barely room to walk between. One side offers choice, the other somewhere to perch. In the suburbs land is cheaper so there's often more space, also many tables outside where the community gathers. These bars are generally open from dawn until well after dusk, evolving through the day from breakfast coffee to lunchtime snack to evening beers... like a coffee shop, cafe and pub rolled into one. We started all our mornings at the Viena Café where a selection of home-made pintxos sat under a cloche, always served with a smile, and I very much regret that the double decker tuna and cheesy-ham sandwich never made a reappearance.
🐙 I wasn't sure how I'd get on with my somewhat restricted palate but thankfully ham was everywhere, also cod and cheese but mainly ham, also I successfully dodged olives and everything squidlike, also whenever chicken came it was invariably a thin dry fillet, also on Day 1 I survived a starter of black pudding which turned out to be enormous, also Basque cheesecake is considerably tastier when it's genuinely Basque and I very much approve.
🥬 Vegetables are generally not a thing, potatoes excepted. The very idea of a side of something green is anathema in a cuisine more heavily based on meat, fish and sometimes a sauce, but often not.
🍔 Fast food is generally banished from city centres. For example Vitoria-Gasteiz (population 250,000) has only four McDonalds and five Burger Kings, all in the outer suburbs beyond the ring road.
🕑 Mealtimes are later than Britons might expect, the evening meal more of a late evening event. As for lunch we generally took this in the gap between 2pm and 4pm when a lot of shops and museums are closed, this also the perfect opportunity to sit down in the shade in the hottest part of the day. Checking the times on five of our restaurant receipts: 14:53, 15:15, 15:58, 16:32 and 16:45.
🍷 Wine is dirt cheap, which is one of the perks of living in a country that makes it. Bottles are barely 3€ in the supermarket, also when you order from the set menu a bottle of red wine is generally included. My three course lunch by Bilbao's transporter bridge cost 14.50€ and although all I really wanted was a glass, that came with a full bottle as well. Nobody even blinks if you leave some. Dining out in London now feels even worse value ever before.
🥛 A popular drink to order in a Basque bar is a kalimotxo (pronounced calimocho). It's a mix of red wine and cola and could be considered the cheap and cheery northern equivalent of sangria. In hot weather it's very refreshing, hence I enjoyed several over the holiday. I also downed a few glasses of the local aniseedy liqueur patxaran, to widespread social approval.
🍵 I struggled to make a cup of tea, first because the family home where we were staying didn't have any teabags, then because they didn't have a kettle, and ultimately because the only cups suitable for hot liquids were tiny and coffee-sized. I ended up making myself two small cups every morning.
🍎 On the last night of the holiday we treated ourselves to a night out at a cider house (or sagardotegi), a true local gastronomic tradition. Basque cider is a non-sparkling brew fermented from local apples, most of which comes from the hills above San Sebastián. The season begins with great festivity in mid-January and lasts until April, with aficionados often taking the opportunity to sample cider (and food) from different houses. Things are quieter in August but we booked in advance at Petretegi in Astigarraga, one of the more famous orchards where production dates back exactly500 years to 1526.
The scale of things was evident by the fact they have a 420-seater restaurant, a rustic timbered affair backed by rows of huge cider barrels. They keep the food simple by serving up a very set menu: first salt cod omelette, then T-bone steak, then local cheese with quince jelly and walnuts. But it's the cider where the theatre is, served not from a bottle on the table but direct from the barrels round the back. Whenever you want a drink you wander off into the nether regions, initially gasping at the scale of the operation, and hunt around for the cellarkeeper with his finger on the tap.
The approved method is to fire the cider out of the barrel and for each drinker to catch it in their glass. The distance the liquid has to travel helps to aerate it, and also adds a great deal of fun to the evening. Ideally you hold your glass on the slant, then remove it when you have about an inch of liquid so that another drinker can swoop in from behind and catch the flow. Across the evening the chosen barrel regularly changes, so you might follow up a fruity blend from cask 18 with a drier sample from silo 46 in the backroom. And if you end up chatting to everyone else while waiting for a drink, that's all part of the experience.
The Basque word for this is txotx (which if you've been paying attention today you should know how to pronounce). In many cider houses you have to wait for a shout of "txotx" before heading to the barrel but at Petretegi you can wander in at any time, ensuring more self-control is needed. We finally stumbled out just before midnight, very much appled-up, having sensibly booked accommodation at the foot of the hill.
⚖️ I have put on three pounds since going to Spain and it's not shifting.
San Sebastián is the jewel of the Basque coast, a classy city sweeping around a perfect sandy bay bookended by two high hills. It has top gastronomy, a well-spread cultural offer and a promenade to preen yourself on. Sure there's a modern urban centre tucked behind but tourists focus on the coast and the old town, which as ever is a compact nugget of narrow streets in a medievally-strategic location. The Basque name of the city is widely used, but the world knows Donostia as the famously attractive resort of San Sebastián. Imagine how many more photographs I'd have taken had the sun come out. [40 photos]
For a prime view of the city head to Monte Igueldo, the 180m peak at the western end of the bay. It's such a good spot that a casino and amusement park were built up here in 1912, the funfair still present and attracting large crowds daily. Find a decent viewpoint (away from tall trees and selfie-snappers) and the entire curve of La Concha bay will be arrayed beneath you. On the far side is the castle-topped peak of Monte Urgull and mid-bay is Isla Santa Clara, a green hump which helps dampen the waves which reach the shore behind. The horseshoe panorama is stunning, a creation worthy of Magrathea, although we only saw thebeach either side of high tide so I'm not sure how low it extends.
The funfair isn't huge but retains several rides that were thrilling in 1912 including a carousel, a coaster and a water ride called Mysterious River. This invites you to board a boat for a brief circuit below the hotel walls, an entirely tame loop except that one side is adjacent to a sheer drop, thus its queue gets very long. Even longer is the line for Swiss Mountain, a rollercoaster mild enough not to require restraints, which intermittently takes riders on a scenic loop around the summit. Even loftier views can be had from the Lookout, a fairytale tower rising from the upper terrace which started life as a wooden lighthouse. Not everyone likes hiking up a hill for their entertainment so to maintain patronage the funfair is linked to the bay below by a woodenfunicular, also pre-WW1, although at 5.50€ return that's a bit steep.
The chief attraction at the foot of the cliffs, if you exclude the 'Wimbledon English Pub', is a trio of iron sculptures by the Basque artist Eduardo Chillida. These were placed at the very far end of the bay in 1977 and are an early triumph of site-specific art. One of the gnarled claws is attached to the cliff, another to an offshore rock and the third in the near distance beyond the end of the walkway. Apparently they represent past, present and future, though not necessarily in that order. More fun are the seven holes in the promenade through which air (or sometimes water) is forced by the action of the waves underneath. I watched as people stood on them thinking "this won't..." and then suddenly the updraught sent their hair flailing upwards generating the broadest of grins. The collective installation is called Peine del Viento, or The Comb of the Wind, and I imagine looks far more dramatic in stormy conditions.
It takes an hour to walk the curve of the bay, which I know because we walked it twice, once to the Comb and once back. Most people don't get that far as you can tell from the density of sunbathers at one end of the beach and the scarcity at the other. One section at Ondaretta is officially private with stripy blue and white parasols furthest from the waves, then hundreds of white chairs stacked in rows at the regulation distance apart. Various points of interest ensure a stroll along the promenade doesn't become a slog, including the brief tunnel beneath the grounds of the Miramar Palace (the summer home of one of Queen Victoria's great-grandchildren, the Infanta Marie Cristina). You'll also pass an abstract sculpture entitled 'Tribute to Fleming' (Alexander, not Ian), a luxury seawater spa called La Perla and a thin white clocktower that's actually a barometer. I apologise to my companions for stopping and photographing the view every few minutes but the ever-changing perspective was entirely beguiling.
The edge of the old town is heralded by tropical gardens and the ostentatious splendour of CityHall. No government money was wasted on its construction, this because it used to be a grand casino until a military coup in 1923 saw Spain outlaw gambling altogether. The divide between old and new is a boulevard called Boulevard, a broad stripe where street-food is sold, buses terminate and buskers in bunny costumes attempt to cadge money off tourists before they overheat. Narrowstreets bear off to the north across the neck of the headland, a wonky grid of bars, cafes, high-brand shopping, more bars and more cafes. Most of it's only 200 years old, the walled city having been burnt to the ground in 1813 when the French garrison was stormed by angry British and Portuguese troops. The only street still standing is called 31 de Agosto after the date of the pillaging, where these days the foreign invasion is mostly for pintxos and wine.
Down by the marina you can eye up some of the smart craft moored there, join a boat trip round the bay or see inside the Aquarium. For 16€ this tells the maritime history of the city (including a fair amount of whaling) before concluding with a walk past 30 fishy tanks. We didn't go in because we were prioritising exploring over experiences, also time was short after the two hour beach walk, also we skipped the Basque-focused San Telmo Museum for the same reasons. Instead we completed the beachfront walk around the foot of the eastern headland, which is Monte Urgull, and definitely didn't walk up to the summit because that would have been knackering. A succession of waves crashed into the outer rocks, a yacht bobbed out into the bay and a garish Mr Bean amusement ride slotted into the gap where a car park would have been were it not festival week.
It turned out we were visiting at the end of Semana Grande, the annual 'Great Week' when the city goes all cultural and fills its streets with entertainment. Chief amongst these are the fireworks that light up the sky each night at 10.45pm, part of an international competition peaking this year on the Feast of the Assumption with a particularly big offshore bash. We'd left by then so all we saw were the participants setting up in the tropical gardens, which were annoyingly fenced-off, and testing the sound system by playing Dire Straits exceptionally loud on big speakers. Maddeningly we also missed the daily parade of the Basque giants...
...despite being in the old town at precisely the right time, I guess just not in the right place on the processional circuit. San Sebastián's not really a city you can cover in five hours flat, and although we had a damned good try there is a limit to how much of a sparkling jewel you can admire in nowhere near enough time.
It all became inevitable in July 2001 when I scored myself a job in the West End after years of living in the sticks. I could have found digs in the Home Counties and commuted but instead I wanted to grasp the capital and take advantage of everything it offered. The more my Mum asked "You don't really want to live in London do you?" the more I realised I did. And so it proved.
At the start of August I took the train to Stratford and starting asking letting agents what they had on offer. They showed me flats in Canning Town, Manor Park, Bethnal Green, Bow and the Isle of Dogs, some of which were absolutely horrid, as previously blogged. I had to make my mind up really fast and plumped for the E3 option with the filthy toilet, which thankfully a few limescale tablets fixed. I often congratulate myself for picking the right place because not only was the rent reasonable but the landlord was too, hence I'm somehow still in the same flat 25 years later.
The day I came to Bow to collect the keys was 25 years ago yesterday. I turned up at the letting agents to sign the paperwork and to pay the deposit, which I did by cheque because 2001 was a very different era. I was surprised to be given a bottle of champagne for my trouble... which I still have because opportunities for sharing a bottle have been thin on the ground ever since, so I should probably open it today to celebrate the 25th anniversary, although I suspect it went flat years ago.
I caught the bus to my new front door, which shows just what a newbie I was because I could easily have walked. First I emptied the letterbox which was rammed with flyers, free papers and all sorts of mail the previous tenant hadn't redirected. Then I unlocked my new front door with my new keys, once I'd worked out which was which, and stepped inside. Blimey it was dark because there were no windows in the hallway, also those weren't the lampshades I'd have chosen, but the rest of the flat was a blank canvas I was about to make my own.
I didn't hang about. I opened the kitchen cupboards to see what I'd been left and wrote myself an inventory because the letting agent hadn't... which one day they're going to be very embarrassed about not doing. I tried to decide which of my belongings would go where and whether or not to switch the bedroom round. I nipped out to Tesco to buy some grocery staples, including milk for the fridge and those all-too necessary limescale tablets. But I didn't stay overnight because I hadn't moved my stuff down yet, so I wasn't a proper Londoner at that point.
The next day I woke up back in Suffolk surrounded by a lot of boxes. The removal men arrived in a white van at 9am, two blokes called Geoff and Nigel who helped pile half my life inside. They then drove everything down the A12, somehow acquiring my AA road atlas in the process which I never got back. I was more grateful of their help at the other end because that involved lugging everything upstairs, also they switched the beds which are so heavy I've never been able to move them since.
At 1pm on Sunday 26th August 2001 they drove off and left me in my new home, my centre of gravity now switched. I did a lot of unpacking, reshelving and cleaning of sticky surfaces, also I managed to cook some pasta on an unfamiliar hob. I discovered that TV reception was appalling and that BT hadn't connected my phone yet, which was far more of a communications disaster then than it would be today. I also realised that the flat had no fitted cupboards other than in the kitchen, so either I'd have to go minimalist or have a lot of stuff on display.
By the end of the day I had all my shelves filled, my clothes hung up and the jumbo prize crossword completed, this because I'd had very few external distractions. I started wondering how the previous occupant had survived without curtains and put that on my urgent to-do list. Without a shower in the bathroom I noted it would now be baths or nothing, and so it still is 25 years later. And with fresh sheets on my bed I was able to stay in my own flat overnight, and I reckon that's when I finally became a Londoner.
My first full day in London was a bank holiday so I took full advantage. First I dashed to Argos for a TV signal booster and a bath rack from Woolworths. In my diary I described Stratford as 'very Luton-y', which I guess it was at the time. My second outing was much more on-brand - I rode the number 8 bus all the way to Victoria, excited to be living somewhere with ubiquitous public transport rather than in a village with six buses a day. I spent time mooching round bookshops and record shops (because you could do that then) and eased my communication issues in an internet cafe. And for my final round trip of the day I took the tube to Tottenham Court Road, was propositioned by a prostitute and drank some beers I could safely travel home from. Hell yes.
I still had four weeks of my old job left, so after the bank holiday weekend I took the train back east and started using my new London pad for weekends only. The first weekend I found a new barber, BT connected my phone and I rolled back home on the nightbus at three in the morning. The second weekend I started visiting London friends and spent £130 on things they didn't sell in Suffolk. The third weekend I ventured to Canary Wharf and got a photo taken for my new London Travelcard. And on the fourth weekend I finally vanned the other half of my belongings down to Bow and abandoned my former life altogether. I've been a London resident ever since.
I was very nearly a Londoner by birth having been born within 400 yards of a tube station, except it was 10 miles outside the capital at the time because Greater London wasn't invented until I was three weeks old. I then grew up two miles beyond its boundary thus am very much a product of Hertfordshire rather than the capital, so complete was the administrative divide. It took until I was 36 years old before I finally managed to move to London, which feels late in life but might also never have happened if the cards had fallen a different way. How lucky am I?
London is a very different kind of community to where I was before. With 9 million neighbours it's easy to blend in with everyone and to walk down even a local street without ever being addressed by anyone you know. E3 doesn't have the same level of social organisation as a village, nor a network of societies everyone belongs to, nor an urban centre you can't avoid using. I couldn't even tell you how many people live nextdoor to me, let alone what their names are, because in London it's so much easier to be anonymous.
And living in London doesn't come cheap. Unless you were born into property here, house prices are ridiculous and rents are extortionate compared to what you could get for the same money elsewhere. I'm extremely fortunate to still be in the same flat, my packing boxes tucked away where I left them 25 years ago, but I've had to make 300 rent payments for the privilege. Many of my London neighbours haven't been able to withstand the financial pressure so have moved the other way. And yet it's still true that anyone can be a Londoner, you just have to live here, which diverse people at all levels of society somehow manage to do.
My adopted city has kept me busy in ways that the county towns of East Anglia never could. London has a dense cultural heart, extensive suburbs and a wide range of landscapes. It has world-class cultural highlights that tourists travel round the world to visit, also centuries of history on the doorstep, also every kind of global cuisine. More importantly it has a public transport system second to none which is why I sold my car 25 years ago and have never looked back.
Since 2001 I've explored London more than most, indeed that's an understatement, from the council estates of Hounslow to the deep woodland beyond Orpington. It took me a year before I started a blog to tell you about it, relating the capital's minutiae in ever increasing detail, a creative output I could never have sustained where I'd previously lived. After quarter of a century I reckon I've been everywhere in London, yet simultaneously barely scratched the surface.
I have now spent 40% of my life in the city that I love, increasingly convinced it was the best decision I ever made.
25 years, and absolutely no plans to move away unless they drag me out.
Spanish quiz
Here are clues to the names of 30 Spanish cities, towns and islands.
The first column are all anagrams, the rest are cryptic.
n.b. I've taken liberties with pronunciation and ignored accents.
How many can you identify?
11) nuts-free 12) six depart 13) post-Abbey 14) proper house 15) friend mother 16) £10 prevalent 17) ITV northwest 18) large California 19) small California 20) scoundrel I last
21) soldier Bon Jovi 22) thus food returns 23) all and do in legit 24) cable no graduate 25) Mum learner stove 26) more atomic bonds 27) notes hand because 28) southeast French town 29) receipt for steamed bun 30) Southeastern train operator
Bilbao is one of mainland Spain's ten largest cities, also the most populous in the Basque country. It's on the country's north coast facing the Bay of Biscay, hence the local province is called Biscay (or Bizkaia in Basque). The metropolitanarea mostly follows a long estuary flanked by hills, with the city centre about ten miles from the sea. Bilbao used to be a industrial town linked to a busy port but has reinvented itself in recent years as a serious tourist draw. And the building which kickstarted this incredible revolution is this.
It's the GuggenheimMuseum, an explosion of shiny metalwork which opened beside the Nervión river in 1997. The Basque government had seen the transformative power the Olympics had brought to Barcelona and were keen to wave a similar wand over Bilbao. They approached the Guggenheim Foundation with a proposal to build their third great museum (after those in New York and Venice), and they in turn approached the architect Frank Gehry to design the building. He responded with an extraordinary construction of seemingly random curves clad in glass, titanium and limestone, inside which were nineteen gallery spaces of irregular proportions. Not only did the project come in on budget and on time, it had also paid for itself in terms of economic uplift within the first three years. They call it the 'Bilbao effect' and it's proved exceptionally difficult to recreate elsewhere.
The building simply dazzles from whatever angle, whether you're up high on the approach or low down by the river. Stepped public realm creates room to step back and appreciate its beguiling form from all sides, the laminated plates never quite making cohesive sense. The entrance is central but on the lowest level, thus accessed down a long ramp where on-spec visitors hope that not all of today's tickets have sold out. They hadn't the day I went but I chose not to buy one, leaving the mysteries of the internal spaces for another day. My travelling companions had seen it all before and were happy for me to go in but it would have taken a serious chunk out of our day. I thus prioritised 'seeing more of other stuff' over 'seeing some modern art', also the museum was by far the most expensive attraction on my holiday and it would have been hard to justify 18€ for a mere quickfire visit. I did however poke briefly into the cafe, just to say I'd been inside. And I also made sure I met this chap.
This is 'Puppy', an artwork by Jeff Koons which has been standing guard outside the museum since it opened. It's a 13m-high statue of a West Highland Terrier entirely covered in bright flowers, perfectly manicured and the focus of almost as many cameras as the building itself. The other enormous creature hereabouts is down on the riverside promenade close to a shimmering silvery pool. It's 'Maman' by Louise Bourgeois, one of her massive bronze spiders that regular visitors to Tate Modern should have seen at least once. If nothing else this menagerie creates interest for those who simply wander around the building rather than explore inside, which I didn't. I've reassured myself that the art would have looked abstractly familiar anyway, plus it's saved you from having to look at a dozen more photos of the extraordinary architecture.
I made a terrible error walking from the Guggenheim to our next destination, the Artxanda Funicular. I knew the terminal was across the river so headed up the long staircase to cross via the La Salve Bridge. The steps ultimately led to the far side of a six lane carriageway, alas on the wrong side for the classicview of the museum, the pavement then curving at great height onto the eastern bank. To reach the suburb beneath we had to find a walkway underneath the viaduct, then double back to descend a massive tower of steps and hunt for the elevator that would ultimately take us down to the correct level. What I should have done was stick to the riverbank and cross the attractive Zubizuri footbridge instead, a simple-step-free route, and such are the perils of using a contour-free map in an unfamiliar territory.
Other museums we didn't visit include the Basque Museum, the Maritime Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. The latter has been overshadowed somewhat by the snazzier Guggenheim and, although we walked past and it's free, it's always closed on Tuesdays. But we did visit the Azkuna Zentroa, or Atrium of Cultures, indeed we parked our hire car underneath it. This former wine warehouse was hollowed out in 2010 and filled with a cinema multiplex, leisure centre (including pool), library, auditorium, refreshment and retail. The clever bit is that the interiorstructure is supported on 43columns, each of a different artistic design and each made of a different material. One's spiral terracotta, one's crystalline steel, one's swirly marble and the other 40 are just as intriguing, should you be in the area.
More likely you'll be in the old town where the real character is. The Siete Calles, or Seven Streets, date from the 14th century and form the nucleus of the Casco Viejo where the tourists throng. The first time I stumbled into one of these tight medieval warrens I was inordinately impressed - the narrow period streets, the high balconies, the pavement tables, the tiny bars serving pintxos and somewhere in the midst of things a huge cathedral crammed beside a compact irregular square. By the end of the holiday I was still impressed but I'd seen several of them, one in each city, because that's the way the Basque Country hangs. Bilbao perhaps more than most is a truly successful merger of ancient and modern.
» 70 Bilbao photos on Flickr(kicking off with today's touristy stuff)
» Quiz later...
» Then I reckon another four or five posts should finish it
Spanish quiz
