You could be reading more interesting transport news today. This is not it.
🚇 A new Central line timetable starts on Monday. It recognises that the line is in a slightly better state than a few years ago when lots of trains were breaking down and they had to reduce the service a bit. It means they can now run 72 trains at peak times, previously 71. It's particularly good news offpeak between White City and Leytonstone which currently sees 21 trains an hour but next week this rises to 24. The same applies on Saturdays. On Sundays this central section will now get 21-22 trains per hour (boosted to 24 between 4.30pm and 6pm).
Passengers on the eastern branches won't see much change in frequency. However it's a different matter out west, sorry. The Ealing Broadway branch will be reduced to a regular 10 minute service all week. It's currently 8 trains an hour offpeak but will now be 6. Meanwhile the West Ruislip branch is being slimmed to 8 trains an hour off-peak, down from 9. There'll also be no more off-peak trains terminating at Northolt which'll thin out services on this branch still further. Essentially if you live in Ealing you'll probably notice longer waits for trains (and if you live anywhere else you probably won't).
❓ TfL haven't published the results of any FoI requests since 3rd July. I guess someone's on holiday.
🚌 A few Hertfordshire bus changes(from 30th August)
• Route 242 (Waltham Cross to Hatfield) will be halved in length to run from Waltham Cross to Potters Bar only. The 243 will still run from Potters Bar to Hatfield.
• Route 322 (Rickmansworth to Hemel Hempstead) is losing its Sunday service. I think that means the only buses you'll be able to catch in Croxley Green on Sundays will be the long distance 724/725.
• Route PB1, the circular route round Potters Bar, is being withdrawn. It's been operated by Uno for less than 18 months. Herts County Council are investigating a replacement service.
🚇 The Next Train Indicators at Bounds Green station have been replaced. They used to have three rows of information and now they have four, also they're easier to read. This is of course excellent. However it means I'll no longer be able to write my planned blogpost 'The passive aggressive Next Train Indicators of Bounds Green'. The bottom row was an almost never-ending stream of messages warning passengers to stand back and not to drop things on the track and to respect other passengers and to watch for suspicious people and the like, and one day I was going to stand there for half an hour and note down the lot. By replacing the electronic sign the miserable finger-wagging undertone appears to have vanished for good, which is also excellent but rids me of the opportunity to tut. No other tube station was ever this jobsworth, so hurrah that it no longer is.
🚆 The Liberty line will be suspended on the second, third and fourth weekends in January 2027. It's not yet clear if the fifth weekend will be affected, not until TfL next update their rolling six-month pdf of line closures. However the first weekend looks clear, should you have January Sale plans in the Emerson Park area.
🥔 It's great to see that TfL have approved use of a TfL roundel at Spud Stop inside Wood Green Shopping Centre.
🛫 The new draft London plan proposes that expansion at Heathrow and other airports should be refused unless no unacceptable environmental, transport, and congestion impacts are demonstrated. Also new heliports should be refused, except for the exclusive use of emergency services. The draft plan has entered a consultation phase and won't be signed off by Whitehall until 2028, but it's always useful to confirm Lord Khan of Tooting's position on the matter.
🎟️ The government is to trial extra-tall, extra-low, extra hard-to-push-through ticket gates at 18 stations nationwide. The two chosen stations in London are Elephant & Castle (Thameslink) and Gipsy Hill. Installation continues into 2028, but the side entrance at Gipsy Hill is due to get barriered later this year.
🚌 As of yesterday route 186 no longer directly serves Harrow bus station, with buses remaining on Station Road instead. The official advice is that passengers travelling between Harrow Bus Station and Northwick Park Hospital "should use bus routes 182, 223, 483, H9/H10 or H14 instead". However the H10 runs clockwise so takes 70 minutes to reach the hospital so don't take that, take the H9 which goes anti-clockwise and takes 10 minutes.
🚇 The Northern line's Morden extension opened on 13th September 1926. To celebrate the centenary TfL will be running two special events in conjunction with Open House (which this year conveniently runs 12th-20th September). On 12th September there'll be a Treasure Hunt with clue packs available at Morden station from 11am. Those who successfully reach Clapham South station by 3pm will win a prize. I bet it's a tote bag, it's always a tote bag. A week later on 19th September they're running 90-minute Morden extension station tours, nothing behind the scenes but bound to be good. Booking begins on 19th August.
🎨 Art on the Underground are to introduce a Spaghetti Map next week. It's not a tube map, it's an art leaflet aimed at inspiring arty kids to reflect on art at tube stations and do some arty creative scribbling. The launch has been designed to coincide with the start of the school summer holidays. The Spaghetti Map will be available at just ten stations - South Kensington, Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms, Westminster, St James' Park, Edgware Road, Tottenham Court Road, Whitechapel, Manor House, Arsenal and Blackhorse Road. If your kids would enjoy colouring roundels creatively then look out for a copy, but if it's anything like previous Art Maps it'll vanish vanishingly fast.
The author Geoff Dyer has written a memoir of his 60s/70s childhood in Cheltenham, specifically what it was like to grow up in a working class suburb, go to an average primary school and be changed by a grammar school education. Born in 1958, Geoff was the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet metal worker, and although he's seven years older than me I still found his account extraordinarily evocative. It's called Homework and these are 100 of the things he mentioned, in no particular order and with none of Geoff's authorial flair.
Playing out with mates on wasteland, cap guns, grazed knees, never using the front room, creosote, the Football Pools, John West salmon sandwiches, barely-opened spirits in a drinks cabinet, snotty handkerchiefs, calling people mental, Aeros, packaged pastilles, skewering conkers, "got got got NEED!", Dinky cars, shallow footbaths at swimming pools, borrowing LPs, queuing to see the doctor, chain-smoking, bubblegum, Airfix kits, Green Shield stamps, Action Man's fuzzy hair, coal fires, Robinson Crusoe, walking into a film partway through, throwing fireworks, weekly comics, rubbing transfers with a biro, enormous cushiony headphones, Valiant comic, the class pencil sharpener, John Menzies, the rarity of a family photo, a Sunday afternoon drive, foolscap pad, knitted sweaters, British Bulldog, garden bonfires, apprenticeships, Vesta curry, making do, warm school milk, leatherette, Double Diamond, the clutch, ten-shilling note, box of logs, twine, relatives with a wartime story, red Cortina, pick your own, Corona bottles, sugar on cornflakes, doing a project, the 11-plus, arrival of the buff envelope, cap with badge, Brooke Bond tea cards, racer bikes, duffing up, ouija boards, china figurines, youth clubs, never drinking water at school, fatty sausages in batter, sewn-on badges, the Electricity Board, "fight fight FIGHT!", Wall's choc-ices, hole punches, stewed fruit, reel-to-reel, art on album covers, "hello 56704", Melody Maker, bell bottoms, driving gloves, Luxembourg 208, Athena poster of skeleton slumped on toilet, watching the TVs in Radio Rentals' window, hooded hairdrier, Sta-Prest, Arbroath nil Hamilton Academicals nil, party line, Cinzano, kung fu, orange patterned wallpaper, penpals, Skol, seven-pint tin, Saturday job, night-storage radiators, Brasso, pop posters, Berni Inn, postal orders, Waddington's Jig-Map, chicken-in-the-basket, turps.
Local government reorganisation update (because we now have fourteen more decisions)
In December 2024 the government announced that it intended to replace all England's two-tier systems with unitary authorities. There'd no longer be local councils AND county councils, just the one authority locally, mainly to save money. It was also suggested that the new authorities should have a population of at least half a million.
All affected councils were encouraged to come together to discuss what should replace them, then suggest proposals to the Secretary of State who would make the final decision. So let's see how that's going.
Surrey was settled first and will be replaced on 1st April 2027 by two new councils, West Surrey Council and East Surrey Council. Both will have populations exceeding half a million.
In March the government announced its decisions for four more counties:
• Essex will be divided into five unitary authorities based around the nuclei of Harlow, Colchester, Chelmsford, Basildon and Southend. Only North East Essex (around Colchester) will exceed the half million target.
• Suffolk will be split into threeunitary authorities, currently with the non-catchy names Western Suffolk, Central and Eastern Suffolk and Ipswich and South Suffolk. Each will have a population close to 250,000.
• Norfolk will have three unitary authorities. One will be Greater Norwich, and the rest of the county will be divided into West Norfolk and East Norfolk. Populations will be approximately 300,000.
• Hampshire will become five unitary authorities, three of them based around Basingstoke, Portsmouth and Southampton. Four will have a population of around half a million while the Isle of Wight remains a much smaller special case.
I wrote about those five changes back in March so if you want further details, maps and links it's here.
Yesterday the government confirmed the futures of fourteen more counties. They are Derbyshire, Devon, East Sussex, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Final decisions on West Sussex, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will follow once ministers have had more time to consider options.
Let's take a closer look at the three counties closest to London.
HERTFORDSHIRE will be moving to a four-authority model in 2028. This is surprising because a simple east-west split looked on the cards with each half having just over half a million people. Instead the government has plumped for four smaller quarters to allow for more local cohesion.
Northwest Hertfordshire: Dacorum + St Albans (population 310,000)
Southwest Hertfordshire: Three Rivers + Watford + Hertsmere (population 310,000)
Central Hertfordshire: Stevenage + most of Welwyn Hatfield + most of North Hertfordshire (population 320,000)
Eastern Hertfordshire: East Hertfordshire + Broxbourne + some of Welwyn Hatfield + some of North Hertfordshire (population 280,000)
The two western authorities are the most cohesive. One will comprise the three existing districts closest to London, creating an arc through Rickmansworth, Watford and Borehamwood with strong links to the capital. The other merges Hemel Hempstead with St Albans. Central Hertfordshire will follow the A1 corridor through Letchworth, Hitchin, Stevenage, Welwyn and Hatfield. The eastern slice includes the county town and will additionally absorb Royston to the north and Cuffley to the south. It has to be called Eastern Hertfordshire not East Hertfordshire to avoid confusion with the existing authority of the same name.
Changes take place on 1st April 2028, with a directly elected Mayor for Hertfordshire following "as soon as possible".
KENT will also move to a four-authority model, each with a population of approximately half a million people. One will be an estuary-side authority from Dartford to Medway. Another covers the historic tip of Kent including Canterbury, Dover and Thanet. Meanwhile Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone will fold into a well-to-do western authority. This leaves a peculiar stripe down the middle, seemingly the leftovers, an authority that'll collect the bins both at Dungeness and on the Isle of Sheppey.
This wasn't one of the original options but was proposed by councillors in Dover, Swale and Thanet. Kent County Council had instead proposed a single unitary authority, essentially preserving themselves, and have been rightly thwarted. The precise names of the new authorities are not set in stone and could be changed.
EAST SUSSEX
Sussex has proved problematic, so much so that a decision on West Sussex is still in abeyance while ministers pick the least worst option. The government's already had to run an additional consultation for East Sussex, confirming a minor variation on what all sides wanted anyway. This'll see the existing unitary authority of Brighton and Hove expand slightly along the coast by taking over four neighbouring wards - three in Peacehaven, also Saltdean and Telscombe Cliffs. Everything else in East Sussex, i.e. the other five existing districts, becomes a mostly rural authority that might as well be called East Sussex.
The two new districts will be of very different sizes but nothing in this government revamp is especially consistent, and the aspiration for 'a population of 500,000 or more' appears to have gone out the window.
Here's a quick summary of the other eleven announcements. You can read all the Secretary of State's letters to council leaders here.
• Derbyshire:Two new unitaries, Northern and Southern, one around Derby and one spanning Chesterfield and the Peak District.
• Devon:Four unitaries, three expanding out from Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay, the other the much larger remainder.
• Gloucestershire:One unitary, the simplest change yet.
• Lancashire:Four unitaries, notionally called North Lancashire, South Lancashire, Pennine Lancashire and Fylde Coast.
• Leicestershire: A much-enlarged city of Leicester, then everything else (known as Leicestershire & Rutland).
• Lincolnshire: Lincoln City (expanded from current limits) and 'Rural Lincolnshire'. No changes are proposed to the existing unitaries of N Lincs and NE Lincs.
• Nottinghamshire:Two unitaries, one in the southwest around Nottingham, then everything else. Nice map here.
• Oxfordshire:Three unitaries, a messy break-up forming Greater Oxford, Northern Oxfordshire and Ridgeway.
• Staffordshire:Two unitaries, North Staffordshire (around Stoke) and the un-catchy Southern and Mid-Staffordshire.
• Warwickshire:Two unitaries, North and South, snapping the existing county along a line between Rugby and Warwick.
• Worcestershire:Two unitaries, North and South, coalescing around Bromsgrove/Redditch and Worcester respectively.
There are a lot of furious local and county councillors out there today, all fuming that their option wasn't selected and their administrative realm is about to vanish. Some are convinced it's a political stitch-up by the Labour government, not an efficiency drive, while others are already plotting how to get back into power in shadow elections next May. Whatever, it's a profound change to local government across England and it's coming soon as two-tier local government inexorably fades away.
Compared to your average greenspace Crystal Palace Park is extraordinarily recreationally diverse. There's the top bit where the exhibition centre was, the middle bit where the sports centre is and the lower bit where the dinosaurs are, not to mention woodland, lakes, a farm, visitor centre, cafe, museum, sphinxes, ornamental garden, maze and whopping great TV transmitter. But over the last year large parts of the park have been out of bounds while undergoing what some would call 'a major glow-up', or more accurately a long overdue restoration and makeover. And now it's finished, near enough. [10 photos]
These are the Italian terraces at the top of the park, part of the pleasure grounds opened when the Great Exhibition's huge glass hall was moved to Sydenham in 1852. But they've been poorly preserved since the palace burned down in 1936, with most of the classical statues decayed or lost, and more recently resembled an extensive split-level wasteland. The plan has thus been to make the terraces a much nicer place to linger and also to add something the Victorians never considered - step-free access.
For the upper connection they've gone right to the far end - so far that initially I didn't spot it - and added a gentle all-weather slope. This changes direction four times on the way down, and in an impressively practical move includes two stepping-stoned shortcuts to stop able-bodied visitors trampling desire lines through the flowerbeds. They could alternatively get down quicker via the adjacent original staircase, a broad flight whose stonework has been fully scrubbed or jetwashed, as indeed have all the other staircases further along. It all looks good.
The lower step-free connection is more cunning, having been squeezed into a thin gap where a disused staircase used to be. Again it's a zig zag but this time much more concentrated with seven narrow ramps within the confines of the balustrade itself. Handrails wend all the way up and there are also two central benches tucked back in the shrubbery, perhaps better for taking a rest than enjoying a view. This modern ascent looks very out of place but only close-up, thus is an ingenious solution to finally making the split level terraces accessible again.
On my visit two workmen were standing halfway up the ramp, by the sound of it doing some last-minute snagging, while two more of their colleagues worked the earth in front of the balustrade. The lower slope is all due to be prettily wildflowered, as some of the indentations further along already are. But at present the path ends in three further zigzags across open soil, weedy in places, and there is no way people are going to stick to the tarmac on the two hairpin bends. Expect rapid denudation as thousands of feet cut corners before any protective plants grow next summer.
The middle terrace doesn't look great yet either, not helped by the extremely dry weather we've been having lately. The designer'ssketches show substantial areas of picnic-friendly lawn and a lot of wildflower meadow with grass paths weaving off to either side. It looks nothing like that yet, the entire terrace having been dug up over the last year to improve drainage and help prevent future subsidence. I turned up while a forklift truck was shuttling back and forth removing protective barriers so that visitors could finally wander in, and was only impressed by the barren expanse because I'd seen how much worse it looked at the height of the works.
The most impressive sight is perhaps the bust of Joseph Paxton, designer of 1851's Crystal Palace and the subsequent pleasure park, which was previously on a plinth down by the sports centre. He's since been spruced up with National Lottery money and now takes pride of place on the central terrace. It's a seriously outsized head for the location and thanks to the sideburns looks more than a little like Noddy Holder, but also in the perfect spot as he looks out across his creation. A rectangle on the front of the plinth appears to be awaiting a plaque, perhaps whenever the proper reopening takes place.
Further money has been spent doing up the Grand Centre Walk and also on a new Visitor Centre, more appealingly modern than before but not due to open until Saturday morning. But the biggest difference in the lower park relates to the famous dinosaurs and their lakeland surround where some long overdue rescue and repair has taken place. It's so good that initially I wondered why they'd replaced all the originals with modern facsimiles. But then I recognised the weird-eyed fish, the elongated croc and the lizard resting its claw on a treestump, and blimey I don't know what they've done to spruce up the outer surfaces but it's amazing.
Again it's not all finished, not quite, so I was treated to the sight of four hi-vis project staff sharing notes behind the megalosaurus like overkeen Jurassic Park employees. But it all looks seriously pristine at the moment, even down to beautifully arranged gravel at the lakeside and along a weaving path behind. The dinosaurs' island has recently been linked to the mainland via a crowdfunded bridge, providing access only for approved groups, but you do get a great view of the erroneous reptilian menagerie from the opposite bank. Throw in a new dinosaur-themed playground round the back, which is already getting heavy use, and it all looks unexpectedly impressive.
A good time to come and see the revamped park might be this Saturday and Sunday because the Crystal Palace Trust will be hosting a special reopening weekend. The Mayor of Bromley cuts the ribbon at 9.45am and then there'll be children's workshops, a streetfood market, outdoor theatre, hot air balloon ascents and a celebratory visit from the Pengenista Drummers. At the top of the park the Crystal Palace Museum will be open on both days, and we're also promised special illuminations round the dinosaur lake after 8pm each evening. Both the Dinosaurs and the Italian Terraces were previously on Historic England's At Risk Register and now they aren't, which sounds like an excellent reason to celebrate to me.
This is Canary Wharf, sorry Kaneary Wharf, the latest in a long line of rebranded tube stations.
The name change was only supposed to be up for a few days but then England performed better than expected so it lingered until Sunday. As a reference to England captain Harry Kane it's a bit contrived, but no station name provided the same open goal that (Gareth) Southgate offered in 2018.
It's a lacklustre takeover, solely affecting the two enormous roundels in the middle of the platform, also two scruffy vinyls in the upper concourse designed to be seen by those coming down the escalators. "Minimal effort maximum exposure" is the general mantra these days, all the better to avoid people moaning about inaccessible navigation.
Another London station got a World Cup-related makeover last week and that's Bellingham, renamed by Thameslink as Jude Bellingham. But that was just a bit of fun whereas Kaneary Wharf is a sponsored takeover, not a patriotic cheer. The footwear company endorsed by Harry Kane has paid TfL a chunky fee to slap a pair of football boots on the roundels in an attempt to get additional publicity, and paid several hundred thousand pounds for the privilege.
I thought I'd dig back into the history of sponsored tube stations to see how we got from "I don’t think it’s right to sell off Tube stations" to "This activation is a great example of how TfL can work with brands". [a lot of the backstory is clickable]
It's often said that Arsenal football club were the first company to shoehorn their name onto the tube map. In 1932 legendary manager Herbert Chapman decided it would be excellent publicity for his club if Gillespie Road station were renamed, his timing perfect as the Piccadilly line was just being extended into the suburbs. Months of lobbying were eventually successful, the name initially being tweaked to Arsenal (Highbury Hill) and then in the 1960s to pure Arsenal. But Chapman never paid a penny for the change, agreeing instead to an option whereby old stocks of tickets would continue to be used until they ran out, hence I don't think we can truly call Arsenal a sponsored station.
Let's start instead in February 2006 when the internet was suddenly agog at the concept of The Sponsored Tube Map. This was compiled by blog reader Paul (Hi Paul!) and replaced the name of every tube station with a sponsored alternative. Top class puns included Seven-up Sisters, Harpiccadilly circus, Sarson's Green, Aldigate, Perriervale, NatWestminster, iPoddington and Heinz Park Corner. How the blogosphere laughed. Paul had actually been inspired bya post I wrote a month earlier but I'd hate you to think any of this is my fault. Alas once the map went viral TfL got terribly litigigious and it had to be taken down.
On the July 2007 tube map the name of North Greenwich station changed to "North Greenwich for the O2". This wasn't direct sponsorship but acknowledged that O2 had bought the naming rights to the Millennium Dome, and remained on the tube map until May 2013.
In 2011 Australian wine company Oxford Landing gave it a go. They spent months negotiating with TfL to replace every sign at Oxford Circus to say Oxford Landing instead, also to flood the station with adverts. They say TfL were interested but insisted on a ten-year term with an eight-figure pricetag, citing roundel-related copyright reasons. TfL have confirmed that informal talks took place but denied the wine maker would have been allowed to re-brand everything, this because revenue-raising "does not extend to selling the names of our stations."
TfL signed their first name-related deal in2012, not for a station but for an entirely new mode of transport. Emirates sponsored the Dangleway to the tune of £36m including a chance to name not just the service but also the terminals at each end. Emirates North Greenwich and Emirates Royal Docks were unnecessary mouthfuls but deemed acceptable for the cash they raised. A door had been opened.
In2013 the Conservatives on the Greater London Assembly published a report called 'Untapped Resource: Bearing Down On Fares Through Sponsorship'. They claimed the vast majority of the public were in favour of bearing down on fares by selling off naming rights to stations, bus routes, even entire tube lines. They recommended long-term deals (because they're more valuable) and location specific changes (e.g. 'Knightsbridge, home of Harrods' or 'Virgin Euston'), particularly with respect to forthcoming extensions. In response TfL took the moral high ground and ruled it out.
Graeme Craig, TfL’s commercial development director, said: "This report is well-intentioned but I don’t think it’s right to sell off Tube stations to someone waving a cheque book and offering a bad pun. A Tube map is to show people where a station is and renaming would bring about confusion, especially among the 30 million visitors on the network every year. The mayor has in the past ruled out the renaming of stations, largely due to the cost of changing the thousands of signs and maps across the network."
In April 2015 TfL embraced their first sponsored station as Canada Water became Buxton Water on the day of the London Marathon. Every roundel on the Jubilee line and Overground platforms was renamed, tiny bottles of water were dished out in the ticket hall and a regular announcement namechecked the sponsor five times in less than thirty seconds. Nestle stumped up £110,000 for the one-day switcheroo, which TfL claimed was "part of its wider commercial plans to generate £3.4bn in non-fare revenue over the next decade". Buxton Water made a 0.003% contribution to that goal.
And on it went...
• January 2017: Amazon Web Services spent a perhaps excessive £390,000 for the right to "temporarily change internal signage referring to the station name at Westminster Underground Station to “Webminster”, to be visible during operational hours on Thursday 12th January only." This included 43 roundels, 29 line diagrams, 6 wayfinding entrance signs and 60 platform frieze illuminated panels. The general public were duly underwhelmed.
• July 2018: In an extremely memorable takeover Southgate station was renamed Gareth Southgate following England's World Cup almost-triumph. Eight roundels on each platform got the special treatment, and because this was a zone 4 station the price of a 48-hour takeover was only £80,000. What far fewer people remember is that the campaign was sponsored by Visa, so not much credit there.
• October 2019: Disney paid £105,000 for a week of activation activities at King's Cross St Pancras. This included the right to stick a bar across every roundel saying "Lion King's Cross".
• January 2020: In one of the most creative rebrands, Piccadilly Circus was renamed Picard-dilly Circus to promote a new Star Trek-themed TV series. Amazon Prime paid £250,000 for two days, which as well as including 24 platform roundels also covered the right for "up to 6 promotional staff to roam the station and interact with TfL customers".
• October 2020: O2 paid £400,000 for a three week campaign to promote new 4G connections on the Jubilee line. Seven stations each got a couple of rebranded roundels and a 2m square activation space in the ticket hall. They were lucky to get in just before Boris ordered a second lockdown, but I still suspect customer footfall was inefficiently low.
• November 2020: In possibly the best rebranding yet, four roundels outside Oxford Circus station were replaced by colourful symbols to promote the launch of the PlayStation 5. Sony paid £280,000 for two days, for which they also got to add "30 vinyl based symbol installations" at Oxford Circus station, also one snazzy roundel each at Lancaster Gate, Mile End, Seven Sisters and West Ham. Passengerwise it was a disaster because lockdown was back in place, but the visual image went uber-viral and probably paid for itself several times over.
• January 2022: the BBC paid £135,000 so that four roundels at Green Park station could be changed to Green Planet for two days.
• September 2023: This proved one step too far. Bond Street station got a full blue makeover, both out front and on the platforms, as it became Burberry Street for the duration of London Fashion Week. Passengers complained that the name was unfamiliar and misleading and made wayfinding too difficult. Given the £200,000 deal involved 80 roundels, 132 platform friezes and 30 line diagrams you can see their point. TfL apologised afterwards and have never rebranded an entire station since, indeed this may be the over-reach that finally killed off the idea.
• January 2024: Samsung forked out an incredible £830,000 to promote their new 'Circle to Search' phone feature over a 30-day period. Rather than changing roundels a circular tube map was created and this was permitted to be displayed at "up to 8 large scale locations throughout Kings Cross Underground Station and "up to 10 locations where the London Underground Map is currently located". The map was produced in-house, hence a sponsor-free version was later shared via an FoI request.
• July 2024: Samsung again, this time plugging their new Fold phone by renaming Old Street as Fold Street. They paid £250,000 for a one-week campaign including a bespoke Fold-themed Old Street roundel and a lot of vinyls round the Old Street roundabout. The peripheral location didn't aid public recognition, the brand ambassadors looked well bored and I suspect this campaign misfired somewhat.
• July 2025: TfL announced it was seeking "the first ever sponsor of the Waterloo & City line". The name of the line wouldn't change but a successful partner would get to rebrand platforms, trains, moquette and the travelator surround, weekends excepted.
• September 2025: Charing Cross became Haring Cross for two days for vodka-related reasons, raising £210,000. According to the PR company the brief was to "Create cultural cut-through with a disruptive moment to amplify the partnership between Absolut Vodka and Keith Haring" and the campaign achieved 122M+ Earned Reach. I wrote "nothing sounds so interesting as a tube station pop-up you never saw, thereby avoiding the underwhelm of seeing it in person."
• January 2026: Heineken spent £375,000 to rebrand eight Bakerloo line stations for three weeks. They were advertising an alcohol-free lager, hence the use of 0.0 in all collateral from Bakerl0.0 to Oxf0.0rd Circus. The contract specifically restricted the takeover to 50% of all Bakerloo line platform roundels and 50% of named Bakerloo line platform friezes.
• February 2026: Six roundels at Tottenham Court Road and Covent Garden stations were reworked to show the Guinness Harp as a promotion for a new brewery attraction. Eight line diagrams were also given a black background to represent a frothing pint. Guinness paid £255,000 for this four day takeover which, crucially, never changed the name of the station
• March 2026: Warburtons spent £260,000 to add four crumpet roundels to the northbound Jubilee line platform at Baker Street station. No money was wasted southbound, or indeed anywhere else, thus renaming the station Bakers Street caused an absolute minimum of disruption. I was wholly unimpressed by the delivery, concluding "it doesn't matter how lacklustre the actual activation is, it's all about the write-up elsewhere".
• March 2026: New Balance trainers paid £200,000 for a three-day campaign at Waterloo station, plus an additional £150,000 of advertising spending. For this they got rights to "a limited number" of themed platform roundels (specifically 18%), also cobranding on 50% of Bakerloo line platform friezes, also ads on all Bakerloo line diagrams.
• July 2026: Kaneary Wharf, duration and cost to be confirmed.
As you can see, the implementation of sponsored rebrandings appears to have ramped up recently with six activations over the last twelve months. Over one million pounds has been raised in this way since the start of the year, which might sound a lot but is barely 0.01% of TfL's budget. Reassuringly takeovers are no longer allowed to cover the whole of a station, it's all about the maximum impact a creative change can deliver. But it does reflect a shift in policy from 2013 with TfL now happy to encourage brand-led experiences of limited duration, publicly focusing on the fact they make passengers smile, not that they're commercial advertising.
Emma Strain, customer director at TfL, said: “We are always keen to work with brands to create new experiences for the millions of people who travel on our network. Through well-planned, creative activations like these, we can help companies reach people as they travel across London. Any activations on our network are fully assessed to ensure that they do not impact our services, staff or customers, and the additional revenue raised is invested into London’s transport network to provide further improvements across the capital.”
We have thus far dodged the prostitution of 'Burger King's Cross' or 'Knightsbridge, home of Harrods' as permanent station names, but TfL are now much happier to offload tube stations to someone waving the modern equivalent of a cheque book and offering a bad pun. I'm not convinced it helps.
🇫🇷 C'est le 14 juillet, la fête nationale 🇫🇷
So I've been to a central London street named France.
Petty France is a short street just south of St James's Park. Its name comes from a small settlement of French traders that grew up on the edge of in Westminster in the 16th century. One end was for woolstaplers (i.e. traders in wool) and called "Petty Calais", and the other end for French merchants who sailed over to buy which became known as "Petty France". Its strategic semi-rural location, roughly halfway between Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, would eventually make Petty France an attractive place to live. During the French Revolutionary War residents voted to change the name, aghast at its connections, and in the precise opposite of what might happen today chose to rename it in honour of the Duke of York. The road retained the name York Street until approximately 100 years ago when its original name was restored.
The eastern end of Petty France is the mini-roundabout at the foot of Queen Anne's Gate, just outside a busy tube station. The famous building on the left is the historic headquarters of London Underground, Charles Holden's groundbreaking nine-storey cruciform office block, which was constructed on top of St James's Park station in the late 1920s. It was called 55 Broadway because the main entrance opens onto a brief stretch of road of that name, whereas had the door been a few feet to the left it might instead have been known as 100 Petty France. Given it doesn't officially open onto today's street I shall instead cross the street to number 102.
The hulking concrete of 102 Petty France is admired by lovers of Brutalist architecture and virtually nobody else. It was built by Basil Spence on the site of a former mansion block and completed 50 years ago. Originally it was intended to be a commercial office development but the Home Office needed space so they moved in instead, staying until 2005 when they departed to a purpose-built building in Marsham Street. This was perfect timing for the Ministry of Justice, founded in 2007, so a new tranche of civil servants moved in and this is now David Lammy's administrative domain.
It's very much an bureaucratic fortress with a perimeter of concrete blocks and sturdy bollards, also CCTV cameras pointing every which way and more. I suspect they got exceptionally suspicious when I started taking photos, indeed this is now an intensely surveilled street. The building's only assuaging feature is a series of justice-related quotations in the lower windows, from John Locke and the 1689 English Bill of Rights to Francis Bacon and (obviously) Magna Carta. It may look incongruously tall but it has the same number of floors as the block it replaced - Queen Anne's Mansions - which at 14 storeys was once the loftiest residential building in Britain. The most famous person to rent a flat there was probably Sir Edward Elgar who stayed for six months in 1910 while trying to write his Violin Concerto.
Even Queen Anne's Mansions was controversial, not least because it replaced the home of one of Britain's greatest poets. That'd be John Milton who moved into a 'pretty Garden-house on Petty-France' in 1651 when he was Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Cromwell's administration. His rear garden would have opened directly onto St James's Park and was also terribly convenient for Parliament. John was alas going blind around this time, thus when it came to writing Paradise Lost it all had to be dictated and that particular challenge started here. Later occupants of number 19 include philosopher Jeremy Bentham, founder of University College London, and the libertarian essayist William Hazlitt, both drawn here by Milton's previous presence. Demolition of this revered property came in 1873, also the felling of a tall tree planted by Milton himself, and somehow this makes the Ministry of Justice's current tenure all the more uncomfortable.
The whole of the rest of the north side of Petty France is occupied by an even more repellent official building - Wellington Barracks. A military garrison opened here in 1833 facing onto St James's Park, ideally situated for London ceremonial, with the addition of interlocking concrete buildings out back in 1979. This required the demolition of all the existing buildings fronting Petty France, replaced by a very thick wall, an accommodation block and the entrance to a large area of parking. Armed soldiers oversee the raising of the barrier at all times, just in case, so this is an even worse place than the MoJ to be taking photos. Looking up towards the soldiers' tiny rooms everyone has the same utilitarian curtains and some display the flags of the occupant's army company, proudly proclaiming "look, I'm in the Coldstream Guards".
The other side of Petty France is if anything drabber, at least at the eastern end. Albany House is an L-shaped office block built just north of the tube platforms in 1972 and currently to let. Its sole redeeming features are two anthropomorphic bronzes either side of the main entrance, a twisted holey pair called Man and Woman by Willi Soukop (who was a tutor of Elisabeth Frink). A more significant government office block lingers up the road at number 70 - Clive House - which for 50 years was London's regional UK Passport Office. Until 2002 you might have found yourself dashing here for an emergency replacement and waiting in an accursed queue, before that particular service moved to Eccleston Square. Clive House was recently offloaded by the Civil Service as part of a consolidation/savings programme, and there are plans for the Ministry of Justice's building to follow suit, not yet in train.
Thankfully some older buildings survive in the remaining quarter of the street. The Adam and Eve on the corner of Palmer Street has been serving beer for over 300 years, although the existing building dates to 1881. These days it focuses on the passing tourist trade, plugging Pub Food and Fish & Chips in the windows, although a few more hanging baskets wouldn't go amiss. Those outside the Buckingham Arms are gloriously colourful and attract considerably more tourist interest, indeed I had to apologise to a florally-obsessed Japanese couple for getting in their way. The beer's good, CAMRA says, but the current pub manifestation is only from 1898. Petty France's sole listed building is a few doors down, roughly opposite the barracks' entrance, a small 17th century hint of how this street would once have looked.
Tourist coaches often park up Tothill Street, the other side of the tube station, their cargoes snaking off towards the Palace behind a flag-holding guide. Other visitors rouse from their hotel beds and need somewhere that serves sparse luxury patisserie, so two outlets called Royal Quarter oblige. Employees of the Crown Prosecution Service and Office for Budget Responsibility can instead buy nicotine pouches and Red Bull at Portlands Express convenience store, while military types whip out their IDs to gain admittance at the barracks' back door. It's all tourists, civil servants and soldiers down Petty France these days, and no sign of anything French whatsoever.
Fifty years ago today I flew to Canada. I know because I kept a diary of the trip and here's the cover.
It was the best, biggest and longest holiday my family ever went on, also totally out of the ordinary for the era. Most families still holidayed in the UK, indeed when I got back to school in the autumn only two of my class had been abroad that summer. It was doable because we weren't paying for accommodation, we were staying with my Mum's penfriend who she'd been at school with in the 1940s, at least until her sudden emigration to Canada. I was now about the same age they'd been, i.e. 11 years old, and my parents were keen to make this one-off transatlantic holiday before I'd have to pay full adult fare. Somehow they wangled me out of my last week at primary school - it'd never be permitted today - and so began an amazing three weeks in and around the province of Ontario.
13th July 1976 (London → Toronto)
We got up early ready to head off to Heathrow by taxi, it being too risky to leave the connection to the 724 coach. My brother and I didn't have to worry about the packing because Mum always chose our clothes, also we were still on a parental passport. It was my first visit to Terminal 3 having never flown long-haul before and I was very much looking forward to our flight in a Boeing 747. Unfortunately when we got to Gate 3 there was no Jumbo, only a VC10, a plane so old that it'd soon be reaching the end of its working life. The switch may well have been the reason for BA619's delayed take-off, our departure being precisely 1 hour and 12 minutes late which I know because I was being particularly anal about recording everything in my diary. Honestly, all the clues to how the blog might turn out were already there.
I failed to write down what time we took off but I do know they gave us an in-flight snack at 11.00am, that Manchester and Carlisle passed underneath at 11.05am and 11.20am respectively, and that we touched down at Prestwick airport at 11.40am. Here there was an issue with "a false bomb scare" which I seem to have taken completely in my stride but may have given my parents the heebeegeebees, the result of which was another lengthy delay while we waited for the extra passengers to board. It was 1.05pm by the time we took off and 2pm by the time lunch was served somewhere over the Atlantic. I'd love to know what that lunch was but sadly this is where I stopped recording everything in such granular detail. All I know is that the mid-morning snack had included cream cheese and a danish pastry, and that my insular 1970s palate was thrilled by the novelty of a cosmopolitan sugar rush.
One thing British Airways gave young long-haul fliers in those days was membership of their Junior Jet Club. A special brown envelope was delivered by the stewardess, inside which were a pristine blue membership book and a pin badge with wings. On the inside page was a greeting from Captain Leo Budd, one of BA's Concorde pilots, the supersonic wonder which had made its maiden passenger flight six months earlier. The next pages had 50 spaces to record flights made, the idea being that the captain of your flight would sign it and record the number of miles travelled, in this case 3557. All you had to do to receive "a special mileage certificate" was to get that total up to 25,000, the equivalent of seven transatlantic flights, which needless to say never happened.
Annoyingly I didn't get a JJC Pack on the flight out, only on the way back on 6th August. This meant I'd already missed out on 3557 logged miles, indeed actually 3621 because a flight via Prestwick is 64 miles longer. 11 year old me had already learned that AirMiles were a scam. My log book had been signed with a squiggle and underneath it said P.P. CAPTAIN, which I thought was extra special until my parents explained that meant the captain hadn't signed it. We weren't made of money so I never got my mileage certificate, indeed it turned out I wouldn't fly with British Airways again until 2001, and the Junior Jet Club was disbanded in 1984. Perhaps unsurprisingly my JJC badge is still attached to its original card.
Anyway, back on my outbound flight the novelty of flying over an ocean soon wore off. Also a VC10 wasn't as much fun as a 747 with its multi-channel inflight entertainment system, so I hope I took a good book. We spotted Canada almost four hours after leaving Prestwick, likely Goose Bay, which was my very first sighting of another continent. Landing at Toronto didn't seem to worry me, I was too busy checking my watch and noting it was 2.15pm local time, then bemoaning how long it took them to attach the steps. Such was 'security' in those days that Mum's penfriend was waving to us as we disembarked the plane. Before long we were following her to Car Park 6 before driving back to the suburb of Oshawa (and also I assume hugging and embracing after all those missed years but I never recorded that bit).
14th July 1976
I was still writing my diary comprehensively at this point, as you can see.
I had my first experience of product placement in a television programme (Rocketship 7) and was distinctly unimpressed. Later we went to the shops and I went in my first drug store, which looked suspiciously like a chemist. In the afternoon we went to the Ontario Centre, which I assume was a shopping mall but I didn't write down enough clues to be able to confirm this 50 years later. I disliked the moany woman in the InfoCentre but liked Coles, a bookshop. I felt patronised when a waitress gave me a colouring book. After supper we "went down to the Creek where we made a bridge", I assume Pringle Creek but I don't think anybody called it that at the time.
15th July 1976
And after that, annoyingly, I just wrote notes. My intention was to write it all up in proper sentences but I never did so all I have now in my diary is a list of words that no longer make proper sense. I deduce from "Turnstile. Cinesphere, Roof. Forum. Boats." that we went to Ontario Place, a recreational island off Toronto, also that it was brilliant because I left myself three blank pages to write a full account. 16th July is even worse, it just says "Help. Footsteps. Smoke. Pancakes. Tire. Haircut. Sprinkler. Doctor. Pack." And on 17th July we drove off on a week-long campervan tour round Lake Ontario, including my first ever visit to the USA, but I wrote about that last week so won't go over it again.
Some further highlights...
25th July:Camp Sumac. Dairy Queen Peanut Butter Sundae. 26th July: Science Centre (we totally loved the Ontario Science Centre) 27th July: Bo Peep. 28th July:Lake Simcoe. Eildon Hall. 29th July:Pickering Nuclear Power Station(alas no tours today) 30th July: Science Centre (again) 31st July: Parade. Pouring rain. 1st August: Cgugqg (I have absolutely no idea) 2nd August:Holiday. Fireworks. 3rd August:Centreville. Ponderosa Steak House. 4th August: Go Train. CN Tower (the world's tallest free standing tower had only been open for five weeks and the queue was 1½ hours long) (I wrote only three words - fantastic, windy, scared) 5th August:Planetarium. Check-in. BA600. Bye. 6th August:(back to drought-stricken England)
It's thus not quite as memorable as I'd like it to have been. But wow, what a holiday!
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, chunky sculptures, ursine whimsy, suburban-adjacent, wildlife-abundant, shady interludes, refreshment opportunities midway, mostly off-piste, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a walk round Chislehurst that's both wooden and woody, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same. [map][leaflet]
The Bear Trail started as a single carved log in 2013, re-envisioned over lockdown as three dozen cheery bears scattered around the environs of Chislehurst. All were carved by Bedfordshire sculptor Will Lee in his workshop near Ivinghoe using sustainable oak, cedar and redwood. The trail was organised by the Chislehurst Society who initially promoted it heavily, raising money for two local defibrillators, but less strongly of late so good luck finding a map or leaflet. Each bear also has a QR code but this now leads to a page saying 'file not found', suggesting it only takes five years for a great idea to erode.
The original leaflet had a hand-drawn map, full walking directions and a single 12km circuit. The current pdfs instead show two big loops, red and blue, but with nigh no background information and an over-focus on using What 3 Words. I used the former leaflet because it's vastly superior, despite no longer being hosted on the Chislehurst Society website. I also chose to walk just a third of the main loop because it had well over half of the sculptures, stopping at Edgebury just before a 2-mile-long bear desert.
Elmstead Woods is arguably London's prettiest station thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the local gardening team. The two outer platforms are pleasant enough with memorial rosebeds, arty pillars, hidden compost heaps, shrubby tubs, a fairy garden and even a steam train called Steve. But the horticultural masterwork is on the central island between the waiting room and the tunnel, a patch of platform transformed into an intricate garden with raised beds and bee-magnets. And there waiting to greet you is Gardening Bear with spade and secateurs at the ready, surrounded (because it's summer) by a blaze of floral glory.
The next raised bed is wilder, this on the footprint of a former Permanent Way hut and attracting many a butterfly with its buddleia. Then heavens there's an actual lily pond tucked between platforms 2 and 3, this because it's amazing how much you can jazz up a black plastic liner, beside which Fishing Bear has been snaffling wooden prey with his paw. The adjacent patch of lavender is at its peak at present - I lost count of the bumblebees. Then come two shady benches ideal for waiting in a heatwave, one of which involves a little climb and the other overseen by a bear named Emma. It's phenomenal what they've done here on two hours of hard graft every Tuesday morning, as the certificates round the ticket office attest. Throw in a second-hand book corner that feels larger than some Bromley libraries and Elmstead Woods station is always worth dropping by simply for an appreciative look.
After leaving the station it was almost a mile before I saw my next bear, this after a hike up Elmstead Lane and down Cow Path. The latter is a long thin remnant from more rural days, a narrow stripe of brambly all-weather woodland preserved between encroaching cul-de-sacs. Cow Path starts with a pawprint post to confirm you're on the right track, its entrances adorned with multiple signs barring bikes and motorbikes but not cattle. And it ends with a furry wooden carnivore staring up at the sky bearing a carved message, hence its name is Welcome to Walden Rec Bear.
The next two bears are small and hidden in trees on the edge of Walden Wood so hard to spot. It took me three attempts before I found one high in the gnarled branches of an oak and the second I confess defeated me, my only failure on this 18-bear orienteering challenge. Cow Path weaves on from wood to rec to wood to rec, as I would have known if I'd ever managed to tick off the entire Green Chain Walk but this flailing Chislehurst tendril had eluded me. And it's on entering Whyte's Woodland that I finally reached that very first bear sculpture, carved in 2013 from the trunk of an oak tree felled by lightning. I had to wait 30 minutes before a mother and her small child stopped sitting/clambering on it, so I hope you appreciate the effort.
It's the Boating Bears, two of them facing each other in a tiny rowing boat and another two seemingly sitting on teensy rafts or inflatable rings. The fifth may just be sitting beside a fish, it's hard to be sure because Will Lee was just making the best of a fallen log, not attempting to be physically consistent. Ahead in Chislehurst Rec I found an extra bear that's not in the original leaflet - Baloo the Scout Bear, complete with green uniform and an armful of badges - this because the 5th Chislehurst Troop are based close by. The Friends of Chislehurst Recreation Grounds are the voluntary overseers of this chain of green spaces, their latest battle trying to keep the Roost cafe open, but otherwise what an excellent job they're doing.
Cow Path ends at the top of bustling bijou Chislehurst High Street, right beside the library which is good because there's another bear outside. He's called Darwin not because the great naturalist had connections to Chislehurst but because living in Bromley was sufficient. There are no maps or leaflets in the library, I checked. The other bear in the High Street is in the window of an estate agents, seemingly the only business persuadable to participate, and is no longer clutching his original SOLD board. To find the next you have to disappear down Church Passage where Lord of the Manor Bear stands guard outside the Old Chapel. This looks more 1990s than genuinely Old, having been blandly converted, and is home to a) The Chislehurst Society b) a second bear propped up in the side window. Twelve down, half a dozen to go.
Time for the second dull road walk, this time quarter of a mile up Belmont Lane to Edgebury. It's time to explore Belmont Open Space, five acres of dippy grass and woodland threaded through by the diminutive Kemnal Stream. I'd been before but only ever spotted one bear, the obvious one by the footbridge sitting on a book of fairy tales - naturally Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I'd missed Oak Tree Bear because he's tiny and several branchesworth off the ground, also Football Bear because he's inside the playground and I'm a bit old to be creeping in there. My favourite pair of bears were in a secluded glade at the foot of the slope, one beside a bench and a second reclining on a log opposite, briefly joined by a red admiral bringing a burst of colour.
This is where I capitulated rather than slog on to Scadbury Park for scant reward, hence I also missed out on Commuter Bear and Ticket Collector Bear at the ultimate destination of Chislehurst station. But if you've never been to Kemnal and Foxbury before then it's worth dipping deeper into this remote valley before heading off, even given the lack of bears, because it's full-on WTF round here. Obviously the Chislehurst Bear Trail is aimed at families with kids, not old men from the era of Winnie-the-Pooh and Rupert, but don't let that put you off an ursine exploration. It's really an excellent opportunity to explore somewhere new, the hunt for whimsical carvings simply an enticing extra, so why not grin and bear it?
