diamond geezer

Small Dark Places in Richmond

2026-09-15T07:00:00.000+01:00

For my next trio of Open House visits, it's small dark places in the London borough of Richmond.

Open House: Burton Mausoleum (Mortlake) The Just Reopened One

Mention Richard Burton and most people think of the great Welsh actor, but to Victorians the name would have conjured up a great moustachioed explorer instead. This Richard lived an astonishing life with some notable firsts, aided by the fact he was a brave soul capable of speaking dozens of different languages. In 1853 he adopted several disguises in order to attend the Hajj in Mecca, an act strictly forbidden to non-Muslims, for the purposes of research. In 1858 while searching for the source of the Nile on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society he became the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In 1886 he translated The Arabian Nights into English for the first time, and three years later followed this up with the Kama Sutra. And after he died in 1890 his wife Isabel built him a unique mausoleum in Mortlake in the hope his deeds would be long-remembered. This appears to have been successful.

It's made of stone but looks like a tent, even down to the ripples in the canvas. The roof has a gold star above a cross above a row of gold stars and crescents, reflecting Richard's ambivalence to following a single religion. Isabel compounded this by erecting the mausoleum in the graveyard of a Roman Catholic church, one creed he never adopted, hence you can see the exterior round the back of St Mary Magdalen's in Mortlake any day between 9am and 3pm. However the structure was vandalised in the 1950s and has been closed ever since, even to conservators, the only opportunity to peer inside being up a short ladder round the back (through the blank pane where the stained glass window used to be). Now thankfully a lottery grant has facilitated repairs to the structure and the unblocking of the door so it's finally possible to go back inside for the first time in 70 years, as the Open House posters proudly proclaimed.

It's such a small space that the organisers were only able to allow in five at a time, the queue corralled in the church hall with an exhibition and a video. Once fully briefed we stepped inside a space both reverent and joyful, complete with camel bells in the roofspace that used to jangle every time Isabel came to pay her respects. The central shrine is bedecked with candleholders, pictureframes, glass and ceramics of no special import. Some of the lanterns came from the British consulate in Trieste, the Burton's last posting. Encircling the walls is a gold-painted quote from St Luke's gospel ("Stay with us because it is towards evening and the day is far spent"). The ceiling is painted with cherub sunbursts unnervingly resembling the sky above Teletubbyland. And there to either side are the actual coffins of Richard and Isabel, his the more ornate, the repositories of two souls incredibly well-travelled even by modern standards and very much not forgotten.

Open House: St Leonard's Court Air Raid Shelter (East Sheen) The Bunkery One

When St Leonards Court in East Sheen was being built in 1938, the threat of imminent war encouraged the owners to build a private air raid shelter out front. This was accessed through a small hut down a short staircase with one dimly-lit room to either side, all tucked beneath a layer of lawn and concrete. When war broke out privileged residents could come down and sit crammed onto benches waiting for the all clear to sound, while those in the houses opposite had to take their chances at the municipal shelters several streets away. The Blitz led to much longer spells underground so two additional rooms were built with space for 48 very basic bunk beds. No bombs ever landed hereabouts so the shelter was thankfully never tested, and perhaps more surprisingly it's also survived the subsequent 80 years and is occasionally opened up for public visits.

The handrail on the stairs is about the only thing that's new, beyond which is the same musty limewashed space and what's left of the original fittings. Two lightbulbs were all that lit each of the benched rooms, with Gents and Ladies chemical toilets tucked behind a slim partition. Each room had a tiny escape hatch accessed via a dubious ladder, these doubling up as ventilation hatches embedded in the lawn. No bunks survive but a few fragile shelves remain (DO NOT TOUCH), one with a dangling scrap of material that was used as a makeshift lampshade. The passageway still has numbered coat hooks, one room still has a heater, and its these authentic leftovers which helped residents get the shelter listed when developers threatened to replace it with fresh flats.

These days the shelter is only opened to the public once a year but all local schoolchildren get the opportunity to come down, one class at a time, and experience how challenging wartime civilian life might have been. I suspect they're all too young to realise how grim it would have become down here after a night of heavy cigarette smoking, instead aghast at how boring it would have been without wifi. My mind turned to how the wartime generation somehow endured such basic conditions night after night, how inhabitants of Ukraine are coping with something similar right now and how thus far I'd avoided anything so terrible. Some Open House venues are both a treat and a dire warning, even when hidden at the far end of an East Sheen cul-de-sac.

Open House: Kilmorey Mausoleum (Twickenham) The Nomadic One

Another Richmond street, another mausoleum containing a rich man and his lover. However this time the man is the 2nd Earl of Kilmorey, an Irish nobleman, and the woman is his much younger mistress Priscilla Hoste. Despite the 30 year age gap she died first and Francis was so disconsolate he had a pink and grey Egyptian-style mausoleum built, then refused to tell anyone who was in it. It started out in Brompton Cemetery, then when the Earl moved to Chertsey he had it moved and installed in his own grounds there. Later he returned to his original house by the river in Twickenham and moved it again, and here his nomadic mausoleum finally rested. Today it remains locked away in a private patch of garden beside St Margarets Road, the bones of a 92 year-old nobleman at rest beside his 31-year-old bit on the side.

The annual Open House opening is a rare opportunity to even see the mausoleum, let alone step inside. This heavily decorated portal resembles the top of a liftshaft to the underworld and is penned off on an octagonal dais. Each of the four sides has a bronze panel which looks like a door but only one opens, unlocked by a unique circular key with umpteen prongs. The interior is rather plainer than at Mortlake, the only decoration being a marble bas-relief of the dying Priscilla on the far wall because this nobleman was obsessed. The orange light is amazing, all of it pouring in through four star-shaped glass panels in the ceiling. But it was again unnerving to be standing between two dead bodies, particularly given neither lead-lined coffin has fared well over the years. Francis probably thought he and Priscilla would be alone together for eternity, yet every year the nosey come looking for four hours on a Sunday afternoon.

All three of these Open House visits were coordinated by a local conservation group called Habitats & Heritage, formed in 2020 by a merger of the Environmental Trust for Richmond upon Thames and the South West London Environmental Network. We should perhaps be glad their name isn't longer. They also maintain the Bazalgette Mausoleum in Wimbledon and Grove Gardens Chapel in Richmond, and if you'd organised your weekend carefully you could have visited all five sites. A shout out too to the Mortlake with East Sheen Society who staffed the air raid shelter opening, and it really is amazing how much outer suburban heritage is looked after (and made presentable) by citizens keeping history alive.

Open House 1

2026-09-14T07:00:00.000+01:00

This year it's my 25th Open House, which is quite something.
This year the overall programme felt sparser than usual, or maybe I've simply been to all the good places before.
Alas this year I was in Spain on the crucial day the booking went live, so have only visited places you could simply drop into.
And yes, for the 25th time I am about to blog about lots of special places you can no longer visit.

Open House: Heatherwick Studios (King's Cross) The Self-Satisfied One

An Open House staple each year is an architectural practice throwing open its doors so you can see what a lovely building they work in. Latest to the table is Thomas Heatherwick and his team in their new HQ at Making House, a former fashion HQ just south of King's Cross. Hundreds of visitors were welcomed with a smile and a colour map, also an employee obsessively filming the flow of people to confirm officially how well the entire event had gone down. We got to explore the ground floor which is all one long room (plus adjacent workshops) and which had been packed out with even more examples of the practice's work than usual. Just inside the door is the backside of a New Bus For London, artfully chopped off, also a plant-filled hanging garden module from a project in China. Nothing Heatherwick's make is 'normal', indeed avoiding boring architecture is their entire philosophy.

Up front we wandered through models of objects that have ended up in cities, or in several cases become focal urban neighbourhoods in the Far East. A weird airport, artificial island or business district has every chance of being a Heatherwick. Further back were quirkier structures on a smaller scale, like the model for the Olympic Cauldron, Birmingham City's new Powerhouse Stadium and a non-winning design for the Queen Elizabeth Memorial in St James's Park. I looked in vain for a Garden Bridge but it was in the leaflet so they must still be proud of it. A number of times I went "oh that was one of yours was it", for example when presented with Coal Drops Yard, Google's HQ groundscraper and the new rooftop kerfuffle at Olympia. Straight lines are not generally a main feature if the architects can possibly avoid it.

In the workshop I met an employee adding bushes to the model of a proposed Chinese development, then spraypainting them. To one side another employee tried to get me to embrace the company's campaign to humanise the built environment, maybe even buy the book, then made do with handing me a map highlighting properly characterful buildings around Kings Cross. On more than one occasion I thought 'blimey, would anyone really want to live or work in that?' before reminding myself that a capital city rammed with tedious brick-effect cuboids isn't exactly where you'd want to be either. Later in the day I visited a lowlier architectural practice who design social housing estates and 3D print them in drab white plastic, definitely important work but it reminded me that our built environment really does need more pizazz, just here and there, and Heatherwick is seemingly extremely keen to make it.

Open House: The Art Workers' Guild (King's Cross) The Table Top One

Sometimes you think you're getting one thing and you end up getting something far better. I grinned throughout. The Art Workers Guild emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement in 1884, initially bringing together young architects and designers to celebrate the all things handmade. Today more than 400 craftspeople across 60 creative disciplines still connect and meet to share their skills, their HQ being in Queen Square at the heart of Bloomsbury. I was thus expecting a nice look round a finely-decorated Georgian building, and indeed the swirling glass lampshade hanging above the hallway appeared to confirmed this. Instead I was handed a guide to the Table Top Museum, an annual open day where 30 members bring along a small collection to display, the more eclectic the better. You would have loved it.

The scene was set by a collection of snowglobes depicting scenes from around the world, then a 'Snippy Museum' of diverse pairs of scissors, then a tableful of 150 ceramics (must be small, must be white). The joy isn't just looking, it's interacting with the collector and asking how it all started, what their favourite piece is and how they decide what's in and what's out. Jon's 'Museum of Threaded Things' thus included screws, clamps and hand drills, not needles. Hugh's glass Christmas decorations all had to be Soviet era, hence a lot of cosmonauts and red stars. All Kavel's Coca-Cola cans were flattened by vehicles in Thanet in 2018/19. And Mark's 42 slides all featured animal sperm in close-up, thankfully found in a job lot at a market rather than collected separately. He handed me a postcard so I can now tell the difference between the ejaculate of a rabbit, a hamster and a vole.

It's hard to say which was my favourite but possibly Sally's collection of Salmon map postcards. Over 60 illustrated county maps were drawn by M.F. Peck between 1953 and 1974, starting with her home county of Norfolk. You'd recognise a Peck if you saw one, a line drawing with a green background and handwritten placenames with illustrations of several points of interest. I'd much rather have picked one of these from a holiday rack than a beach scene or bawdy cartoon. Sally says Maisie's designs probably inspired her own artistic style, at least when it comes to drawing map graphics. Participants are barred from bringing a similar collection next year so who knows what you might see laid out at the Art Workers Guild next September. I'm sure I could cover a tabletop with my collection of early 1980s chocolate biscuit wrappers, should anybody ask.

Open House: West Ham Pumping Station (West Ham) The Brown One

Everyone knows about Joseph Bazalgette's genius project to protect Victorian London from cholera and the Great Stink. But the gently-sloping sewers left the low-lying borough of West Ham with a levelling-up problem, specifically that all their pipes were too low to feed into it. Their solution was a mechanical pumping station built alongside the Northern Outfall Sewer, just off Abbey Road, a chimneyed building I have walked past hundreds of times without ever realising what it was. Twin beam engines pumped away 24 hours a day from 1900 onwards, apparently with the ability to raise 360 bathtubsworth of sludge per minute. Initially the nine boilers also helped generate electricity for the local area, but high population growth (and rapid expansion of the tram network) soon required a better facility elsewhere. Only when a separate pipe was built to Abbey Mills in 1972 did the engines finally fall silent, then the doors were locked shut and the interior was left to rot away.

The rest of the pumping station building has been repurposed as a vocational training centre for apprentices and an evangelical church. Now a separate organisation called the Heritage Engineering Learning Trust has stepped in to protect and restore the engine house, and hopefully to establish a visitor attraction focusing not just on these metal behemoths but also the industrial heritage of the wider Lea Valley. They have an exceptionally long way to go because getting a lottery grant really isn't easy, but thankfully the main fabric of the engine house is in pretty good nick and for Open House they were able to throw open the doors to hundreds of the general public for the first time.
I'm impressed so many people turned up given HELT failed to put a sign outside the entrance so a lot of people got lost, also the event was described in the Open House listings as a 'Guilded Tour', and if they want that lottery money sure passion is important but so is attention to detail.

The pumphouse is surprisingly capacious, mainly in an upward direction, with two great big wheels to either side and two mighty pumping arms about halfway up. A crane dangling metal chains sits astride the lot, ready to move whatever maintenance should require. "Please don't all stand in the same place," said our tour guide, the floor panels covering a basement of much rustier pipes and chambers below. After 15 minutes of well-delivered exposition the highlight was the opportunity to climb the metal stairs, just as generations of workers would have done, and explore some of the mechanics from higher up. First to the top of the pistons, the metalwork clearly labelled Lilleshall Shropshire 1897, and then a single steep stair to beamthrust level. Many visitors of a mechanical bent were clearly thrilled by the opportunity. I can see this making a decent visitor attraction but I wonder if London doesn't already have too many preserved beam engines, far more dazzling than this, so it'll all come down to how the local angle plays out.

Morden 100

2026-09-13T01:00:00.000+01:00

It's exactly 100 years ago today since the Northern line was connected at Kennington and extended to Morden.

Nobody was blogging at the time but imagine if I was.

Monday, 13 September, 1926

What a day it's been on the Underground Electric Railways! Two years ago the City & South London and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead linked their railways at Camden Town. Today they have linked them again but on the other side of the river at Kennington. Not only are the two railways now fully connected but they've also been extended five miles south from Clapham Common to Morden, with the hope of further to come. The new Morden–Edgware line, as it's called, is the Underground's deepest penetration into south London and I have no doubt that before long it will surely be rebranded as the Southern line.

I have of course been out on a first day journey to experience this massive subterranean expansion, riding all the way from Charing Cross to Morden. I did this mostly by tube but partly by tram, because you have to come up to the surface sometimes if you want to see all the new stuff. I also took one photograph at each point of interest with my Vest Pocket Kodak, which inexplicably appear to have been developed in colour. [7 photos]

Charing Cross on the District Railway has long been the southern terminus of the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway. Well no more because it's been extended under the Thames and you can now continue to Waterloo and beyond! The loop of track has been sealed off and partly filled with rubble, then a new southbound tunnel driven beneath the river and it's amazing, you truly can't see the join. As yet it feels wholly unfamiliar seeing trains going 'the wrong way', not towards Edgware or Highgate but to strange destinations like Clapham and Morden. But what a complicated station this has now become! We already have District and Circle and Bakerloo lines and now also through trains on the C&SLR, plus of course SR trains steaming out upstairs. Personally I would rename this station Embankment and then rebrand Strand as Charing Cross and maybe merge it with Trafalgar Square, but I doubt anyone will act fast on my excellent idea.

In exciting news Waterloo now has a Morden-Edgware platform as well as a Bakerloo platform, so double the opportunity for Surrey commuters to change to the tube. It still amazes me when I see the lights on the front of a train emerging from a tunnel underneath Britain's greatest river. But this is nothing compared to the ridiculous kerfuffle that's been installed down the line at Kennington while the station's been closed for three years. The new tunnels from Waterloo sweep in so they arrive parallel to the existing platforms, then connect in a huge loop that allows trains to turn round. You must not ride the loop, they chuck you off, perhaps there are ghosts round there or something.

The next section of the line has obviously been here since 1900 thus is old hat, so I climbed the 79 steps up to street level and took the tram instead. Off we went down the Clapham Road past many taverns and a pickle factory, also stations at Oval, Stockwell and Clapham North, also the Temperance Billiard Hall (Moderate Charges). At one point the tram driver stopped for three minutes to even out the gaps in the service, something which would never happen on the trains below. Eventually we arrived at Clapham Common with its trademark dome which had been the end of the line for over 25 years but no more! It seems amazing that this narrow crowded platform is now just another stopping point rather than full-on buffered.

The first station on the extension is Clapham South, although they nearly called it Nightingale Lane because that's where it is. Wow it looks so different to what we've all been used to. The tiles are gorgeous, all shimmering emerald around the roundels, also that's a lot of electrical cupboards at the bottom of the escalator, also the uplighters dazzle, also the octagonal skylights are proper unusual, also the electrical chandelier at the entrance to the ticket hall is quite something. This new Charles Holden guy they've got designing the stations sure knows how to make an architectural statement!

Sadly the next station at Balham isn't yet ready. This is absolutely typical of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, yet another project mis-delivered with shoddy construction and poor planning. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't open until December, and in the meantime trains will whizz straight through to Trinity Road (Tooting Bec). It's not a catchy name and I bet they shorten it. The platform here has a gentle curve, also that's some gusty wind blowing newspapers down the escalators, also I like the way there are two stark buildings at street level facing different sides of the main crossroads. Is it too early to describe Holden's designs as Modernist?

Tooting Broadway station is a curved stone battlement with strip windows and three very strategically placed roundels. It dominates the crossroads at the top of Mitcham Road, a presence which might be diminished if anyone ever shifted the new statue of Edward VII off the traffic island and plonked it in front. A florist has already set up their stall outside the station and I was shocked to see them charging 5d for a bunch of irises, which is daylight robbery! But the station is busy even on Day One, and it seems almost natural to see a stream of gentlemen in bowler hats flocking towards the ticket collector, their cigarette smoke swirling up towards the octagonal skylights, before pouring downwards into the depths.

By Colliers Wood the similarity of these new stations is plainly evident, always Portland stone frontage, always bold silver uplighters on the escalators and always emerald tiles on the platforms. And yet each has an inner individuality, here embodied in exterior folds, a tripartite clerestory and saturnine capitals. The gold-rimmed clocks on the platforms are a similar treat, almost a Victorian touch in a station that feels anything but. So deftly has Charles Holden weaved his magic that he could even replace Admiral Lord Nelson as the local hero hereabouts, at least sufficiently to see The Victory pub renamed after him.

There have been many debates about the name of the next station, with the somewhat-vague South Wimbledon eventually ousting the much more sensible Merton Grove. There already are plans to add the word 'Merton' to the roundels, although I think they already look appealingly chunky with South Wimbledon spread across two lines. The News Counter in the ticket hall hedges its bets by advertising both the Wimbledon News at one end of its fascia and the Merton & Morden News at the other. If you like twiddly arrows check out the finial flourish on the Way Out signs, also the quadruple fletchings in the cross passage.

Just before Morden the incredibly long tunnel - potentially record breaking - finally breaks out into a lengthy cutting. It's possible local NIMBYs will demand the last quarter mile be covered by a linear park to limit suburban disruption, but come on guys, these electric trains are neither noisy nor do they belch steam. The end of the line is marked by a sprawl of open-air platforms and stairs to street level through one last glorious Holdenesque gateway. Push through the wooden doors and you emerge into as yet nothing much, but imagine the potential. Even the station entrance has space behind it to build some pig-ugly office block should the need arise.

This new terminus has announced its intention to become a suburban bridgehead with a significant bus service departing from outside, also a car park for those commuters who prefer to leave their Morris Oxfords here. Imagine the streets and avenues that might spread across the fields of Surrey now that London's underground railway has pierced its rustic rim. Imagine the ease with which you could now live in Morden Park and work in the City, then on Saturday head up west to the Shaftesbury Theatre to see Charles Crawford in Just a Kiss. And imagine how different life in south London could be in 100 years time, simply because entrepreneurs had the foresight to build an electric railway that everyone in 2026 will take totally for granted.

Anorak corner (bus edition)

2026-09-12T07:00:00.000+01:00

Anorak Corner [bus edition] (th e an nu al up da te)

Once again TfL have silently published their annual spreadsheet listing the number of passengers using every London bus route and how many kilometres those buses travelled. Data is for April 2025 - March 2026. Comparisons are with the previous year.

London's ten busiest bus routes (2025/26)
  1) -- 18 Euston - Sudbury (12.5m)
  2) -- 149 London Bridge - Edmonton Green (11.6m)
  3) -- 29 Trafalgar Square - Wood Green (11.2m)
  4) ↑2 5 Canning Town - Romford (10.6m)
  5) ↓1 207 White City - Southall (10.22m)
  6) ↓1 86 Stratford - Romford (10.21m)
  7) -- 243 Waterloo - Wood Green (9.8m)
  8) ↑3 35 Shoreditch - Clapham Junction (9.7m)
  9) ↑3 25 Holborn - Ilford (9.5m)
10) ↓1 36 Queens Park - New Cross Gate (9.2m)

The next ten: 279, 109, 53, 38, 43, 141, 65, 21, 158, 140

For the seventh year running London's busiest bus is the 18, long-term plier of the Harrow Road. The runners-up remain two northern workhorses, the 149 and 29. The 149 may tumble next year given TfL now have plans to divert it. Three east London radial routes find a place in the top 10 (5, 86, 25). The 207 is the all-stops version of Superloop service SL8 (which is in 21st place). Within the top 10 only three routes go south of the Thames (243, 35, 36), none exclusively so.

n.b. Only six bus routes conveyed more than ten million passengers, down from thirteen before the pandemic.

London's ten least busy bus routes (2025/26)
  1) -- 399 Barnet - Hadley Wood (6700)
  2) -- 389 Barnet - Underhill (8900)
  3) ↑1 R10 Orpington - Orpington ↺ (23279)
  4) ↓1 H3 Golders Green - Hilltop (23294)
  5) -- R5 Orpington - Orpington ↻ (23800)
  6) -- 385 Chingford - Crooked Billet (30900)
  7) ↑2 327 Waltham Cross - Elsinge Estate (47700)
  8) ↑2 R8 Orpington - Biggin Hill (53000)
  9) ↑2 U10 Uxbridge - Ruislip (71600)
10) ↑3 375 Romford - Passingford Bridge (75600)

The next ten: 146, 209, 464, 467, W14, 359, 404, R2, 379, 485

These are all the usual suspects, topped off by a pair of brief turns in Barnet connecting daytime residents to the shops. The 399 to Hadley Wood has 21% fewer passengers this year, so is even less used than usual. The R5 and R10 operate the same route in rural Bromley but in opposite directions, and would be in 7th place if their totals were combined. Only fifteen passengers separated the R10 and H3. Six of the top 10 are circular routes. Route 18 is busier than the forty-four least used buses put together.

n.b. Routes 549 and 347 and were both withdrawn during the prevous year, leaving space for the routes below them to shuffle up a couple of places. The 549 was merged into the W14 which still only manages 15th place. The 347 was merged into the 346 which doesn't even appear in the bottom 50, so could be described as a great success.

London's ten most travelled bus routes (2025/26)
  1) -- SL7 Croydon - Heathrow (2,140,000 km)
  2) ↑1 111 Kingston - Heathrow (1,890,000 km)
  3) ↓1 18 Euston - Sudbury (1,889,000 km)
  4) -- 5 Canning Town - Romford (1,878,000 km)
  5) ↑2 102 Brent Cross - Edmonton (1,780,000 km)
  6) ↓1 86 Stratford - Romford (1,740,000 km)
  7) ↑4 96 Woolwich - Bluewater (1,730,000 km)
  8) ↑2 53 Lambeth North - Plumstead (1,700,000 km)
  9) -- SL8 White City - Uxbridge (1,690,000 km)
10) ↑470 129 Lewisham - Gallions Reach (1,680,000 km)

The next ten: 466, 182, 38, 113, 207, 25, 174, 229, 221, SL3

This is a list of the routes whose vehicles travelled the greatest distance in one year. Long distance buses (like the SL7 and 111) and high frequency buses (like the 18 and 86) tend to travel the furthest. Superloop route SL7, which traverses 24 miles across southwest London, remains top by a considerable distance. Expect the SL8 to climb to second place next year as its frequency was recently increased from every ten minutes to every eight.

n.b. The 129 really has climbed 470 places to reach the Top 10. It was previously a runty Lewisham-Greenwich route but was extended through the Royal Docks when the Silvertown Tunnel opened and boosted to run every eight minutes (a frequency which ridership would suggest is unjustified).
n.b. The 389 remains London's least travelled bus route, covering just over 8000km per year.

London's ten most crowded bus routes (2025/26)
  1) -- W7 Finsbury Park - Muswell Hill (9.0 passengers per km)
  2) ↑2 35 Shoreditch - Clapham Junction (8.2)
  3) ↓1 149 London Bridge - Edmonton (8.0)
  4) ↑4 238 Stratford - Barking (8.0)
  5) ↑1 109 Brixton - Croydon (7.9)
  6) ↓1 29 Trafalgar Square - Wood Green (7.8)
  7) ↓4 98 Holborn - Willesden (7.7)
  8) ↓1 9 Aldwych - Hammersmith (7.6)
  9) ↑1 41 Archway - Tottenham Hale (7.2)
10) ↓1 104 Stratford - Beckton (7.1)

This Top 10 is determined by dividing the number of passengers by the number of km travelled to get a 'number of passengers per km'. The higher the number, the less likely it is you'll be able to find a seat. By this measure the most crowded bus is the W7 which, along with the 41, delivers residents of Muswell Hill and Crouch End to nearby tube stations. Haringey is scoring highly here. The 195 is the most crowded single decker (5.1 passengers per km) so is arguably more crowded than some of these double deckers. Most London bus routes carry 2-5 passengers per km.

The next ten: 205, 243, 120, 58, 14, 207, 69, 18, 94, 220

London's ten emptiest buses: R5, 399, R10, R8, 464, H3, 146, W14, R2, 404

Six of these buses serve the rural fringes of Bromley, London's emptiest outlier. Other buses which failed to carry 1 passenger per kilometre include the 246, 434, R3 and R7.

The ten routes with the biggest increase in passengers: 129, 310, 45, W12, W9, 298, 108, 14, W13, B14

Five of these aren't the same route they were last year (129, 45, W12, W13, B14). The 310 is new and now has its first full year of data. The W9 and 298 have recovered their reliability under a new operator. The 108 and 129 were free all year, so obviously popular. The two routes with the biggest increases that aren't explained by operational changes are the SL2 and SL3, up 21% and 17% respectively.

The ten routes with the biggest decrease in passengers: W14, 283, 30, 472, 399, 452, 56, 138, 352, 242

These ten routes all lost more than 15% of their passengers last year. The W14 is what the minor 549 morphed into. The 283 and 472 were withdrawn so don't have a full year of data. The 30 and 452 have both been shortened. The 56 and 138 had their frequencies reduced. The 399, 352 and 242 are just less popular than they used to be.

London's ten busiest nightbuses: N15, N25, N18, N207, N29, N9, N279, N8, N98, N140
London's ten least busy nightbuses: 486, 213, 365, N33, 85, N72, 321, 474, 24, 381

Passengerwise the N15 is 40% ahead of its nearest competitor, the N25.

London's ten busiest single deckers: 235, 195, C10, 316, 108, 170, 112, 214, W15, 366
London's ten least busy double deckers: 467, SL6, 481, 412, 317, 298, 498, 215, 492, 428

All those single deckers are busier than all those double deckers.

London's busiest Superloop routes: SL8 (8m), SL9 (5m), SL7 (4m), SL10 (3.3m), SL2 (3.2m), SL4 (2.7m)
London's least busy Superloop routes: SL6 (0.4m), SL11 (0.9m), BL1 (1.1m), SL5 (1.6m), SL3 (2.4m), SL1 (2.6m)

The SL8 is by far the busiest Superloop route, and the SL9 the busiest orbital route.

London's ten busiest lettered buses: W3, EL1, E3, H98, W7, C10, E8, E2, EL2, W8
London's nine busiest one-digit buses: 5, 2, 1, 8, 6, 9, 3, 4, 7

The 5 is the only single-digit route not to enter central London.

South London's ten busiest buses: 35, 36, 109, 53, 65, 21, 185, 93, 453, 133
London's ten busiest buses that run outside London: 279, 96, 235, 142, 81, 80, 150, 466, 407, 217

Technically the 149 is south London's busiest bus, but 99% of the route is north of London Bridge.

London's most average bus: C11 Archway - Brent Cross (3.3 million passengers, 825,000km travelled)

Total passenger numbers are down from 1.83 billion to 1.82 billion, a 1% fall.

Visit Reading

2026-09-11T07:00:00.000+01:00

Gadabout: READING

Reading has been on the tube map since 2019 despite being 20 miles outside London, thus is an easy place to get to for a rather good day out. However you should never take the Elizabeth line because that takes almost an hour from Paddington whereas a fast GWR train gets you here in just over 20 minutes (and for the same fare). Reading is a significant historic town that's since evolved into a major commercial centre, also one of the largest English towns never to have been made a city despite several attempts. Also they really want you visit, so grab all the leaflets you can from the tourist cart by the station gateline and head off to explore. [Visit Reading] [14 photos]

1) Reading Museum

The museum is housed across three floors of Reading's Gothic town hall, a very short walk from the station. Its finest exhibit is a full-sized fully-stitched replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, as blogged yesterday, which stretches around the entire mezzanine. But it has several other interesting galleries, indeed sufficient to keep me within the building for over an hour what with 1066 and all that. The ground floor focuses not unexpectedly on the history of the town, a significant portion given over to Reading's royally significant Norman abbey. After that was pulled down it was Reading's strategic location on the rivers Thames and Kennet that lured people in, also companies like Gillette (who developed the first twin-blade razor here). Apparently Victorians couldn't get enough of Cook's Reading Sauce, a spicy condiment containing mushroom, capers, chutney and anchovy essence, and sooner them than me.

Huntley and Palmers were such a significant employer that they merit an entire gallery on the top floor, crammed with every kind of decorated tin that once flew out of the world's largest biscuit factory. If that feels very much like an art gallery there is also a proper one, also a windowed room bedecked with sculptures and another with splendid Roman-inspired ceramics. Not far from Reading was the major Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, now known as Silchester, whose story is told in a large artefact-packed gallery on the second floor. Archaeologists hit the jackpot here because the site was never built on after the Empire fell, so even though only the walls remain standing the complete street pattern is known and a full history can be told. Throw in a stag donated to the collection by George V from his Windsor herd and Reading Museum feels like it has several important stories to tell, not just a collection of randomly old things.

2) Reading Abbey

In a further connection to the Bayeux Tapestry, Reading's magnificent Abbey was founded by King Henry I, longest-reigning of the sons of William the Conqueror. He built it to gain salvation for himself and his family, and selected a gravel spur between the rivers Kennet and Thames as the best site for accessibility to other towns and cities. Henry died before it was finished, leaving instructions that he be buried in front of the high altar (which almost all of him was, although his heart and intestines ended up in Rouen). Alas his tomb didn't survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the approximate site now marked with a plaque given nobody's quite sure where it is or if he's even still there.

The most substantial of the abbey's remains are now the high walls of the chapter house and refectory, which remain pretty impressive. You wander in from the park with the big lion, past the remnants of Civil War earthworks and a plaque pointing out where the west end of the abbey used to be. Close by is the Abbey Gateway where Jane Austen went to school, which would be more of an astonishing coup for Reading had the standalone building not collapsed in a storm and been rebuilt by the Victorians in artificially Gothic style. Another building erected withing the abbey grounds is Reading Jail, a New Model Prison whose car park overlaps the footprint of the lady chapel. Its most famous prisoner was Oscar Wilde who spent two miserable years in cell C.3.3, and who might just be the prisoner Banksy depicted clambering over the wall opposite the roundabout (now safely secured behind a sheet of perspex).

3) Camino Inglés

Reading Abbey was dedicated to St James and for this reason has been selected as the start of England's only official section of the Camino de Santiago. Officially it begins outside St James's church, a much later Roman Catholic addition, but then weaves off through the Abbey ruins and off down the Kennet. It's so official that a "mouteira" (or stone milestone marker,) was gifted to the town last year and installed down by the river. Galicia may be 690 miles as the crow flies but the Camino Inglés is only 68 miles long, wending its way south through Winchester to Southampton past occasional scallop shell markers. The idea is that you walk this and can then get away with a shorter walk in Spain (from A Coruña) and still be eligible for a certificate. Reading's taking this honour very seriously, thus in the Museum you can pick up an official pilgrim's passport (£6) and get it stamped, and also buy the official A-Z guide to the St James's Way with all the maps you need. Explanatory leaflet here.

4) Riverside Museum

From April to September Reading Museum has an additional outpost half a mile down the river Kennet in former industrial buildings adjacent to Blake's Lock. You get there through the Abbey Gardens, along Oscar Wilde Walk and past the site of the former Huntley & Palmers factory (now inevitably flats). But it's not big, nor indeed generally staffed. One half of the 'museum' is inside the Screen House, most of which is occupied by a brightly painted gypsy caravan, the shelves opposite displaying objects including a medieval millwheel and a copy of Fly Fishing by JR Hartley. The Turbine House overlooks the weir and all you'll normally see there is old machinery, plus during certain summer months a display of local paintings. The artist was on the phone during my entire visit, which was convenient because she never got the chance to ask "do you like them?" and I never had to lie.

5) The Museum of English Rural Life

Otherwise known as MERL, this outpost of the University of Reading is a fifteen minute walk from the town centre and also brilliant. It was founded in 1951 as part of the university's association with agriculture and most recently expanded into ten new galleries that truly display the collection to best effect. The entrance merely looks like a nice cafe but then you set off on a lengthy weaving route to the far end and back, the opening displays all thematically linked to the seasons. Yes that is a sheep wearing a white Arran jumper. It's all very much object-led and wisely displayed against gleaming white walls with just enough information, plus a few well-chosen video interactives (I proved woefully incapable of birthing lambs).

You might thus see horse brasses, ploughs, milk bottle advertising, a case of toy tractors, butter churns, a bowl-turning wood lathe, a waxed jacket, a display of Suttons seed packets, two dozen mouse traps, a recipe book published by the Cheese Information Service, a rural fire engine and an ITV poster announcing the return of Emmerdale Farm. I lingered long. One of the highlights is a massive textile panel originally displayed in in the Country Pavilion at the Festival of Britain, this one depicting the fields of Cheshire (but sometimes they swap it for Kent). Wagon Walk is a 50m-long array of wagons and carts grouped geographically so that you can see how different geologies and farming types affected vehicle design.

But I was perhaps most excited by the promise of heading upstairs to visit The Ladybird Gallery, "the only permanent exhibition space in the world dedicated to the art of the iconic Ladybird Books". However what I actually found at the end of the corridor was a small landing with just two display cases, one a temporary exhibition (now hamster-related) and the other a selection of favourite titles. "I had that!" I said at least ten times, then wandered over to see if I could find it in the reading corner. The archive collection comprises 20,000 original artworks, for example "Here is the draper's shop" and "Carried to the Moon by Swans" and it's a real shame they didn't make room to show more of them. Nevertheless MERL is a real treasure, and I'd never have spotted it was here were it not for the Bayeux Tapestry down the road.

Also...
6) Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, Whiteknights Campus (Tuesday-Thursday 0930–1630, termtime only, free)
7) Cole Museum of Zoology, Whiteknights Campus (Monday–Friday, 0900–1630, termtime only, free)
8) Royal Berkshire Hospital Medical Museum (first and third Sundays of each month, 1400-1630, free)

Also the Kennet and Avon Canal (heavily transformed hereabouts into to a restaurant heavy leisure park), also The Hexagon (a concrete bunker formerly full of snooker), also Reading Library (which has just moved to the council offices), also the HQ of Thames Water (somewhere to boo and hiss), also the River Thames (with scenic bridges and waterside meadows), also a heck of a lot of top shops (which is all most people come for), and basically what I'm saying is that Reading is a day trip screaming to be made.

Reading's Bayeux Tapestry

2026-09-10T07:00:00.000+01:00

The hottest ticket in town is for the Bayeux Tapestry, which goes on display to the public today at the British Museum. It's so hot that the rest of 2026 is fully sold out and January-March 2027 is expected to go the same way when bookings reopen next month.

But if you can't wait, or if you baulk at paying £33 for a once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster, an alternative opportunity to view the tapestry exists. It's a full-size full-colour fully-embroidered copy of the original and entirely free to view. To view it all you need to do is go to Reading, make your way to Reading Museum and head upstairs.

Most local museums feature local stuff like clay pots, agricultural tools and something that used to hang outside a pub. Reading Museum has all of this just inside the entrance, also a painting normally held in storage and a table where a nice lady will invite you to handle a fossil. But take the back stairs (or alternatively the lift, assuming they've got it working again) and the most famous Anglo-French strip cartoon awaits your perusal.

It's 70 metres long and stretches all around the first floor mezzanine as part of a specially-designed Bayeux Gallery opened in 1992. It's been divided into three sections, the first of which curls around a square landing above the museum entrance. This follows the story as far as Edward the Confessor's funeral, then restarts across the landing above the Story of Reading Gallery. Take your time, there's no queue of paid visitors shuffling behind you here, you're free to enjoy this at your own pace.

The reason why Reading has a replica Bayeux Tapestry is all thanks to Elizabeth Wardle, a Staffordshire sewer who in 1885 travelled to see the original in Normandy. On returning she cajoled 35 members of the Leek Embroidery Society into stitching a full-size copy, having got her husband to dye threads to match the original eight colours. The replica was complete by Whitsun 1886, after which it was toured round England and also shown in Germany and the USA. It happened to be in Reading in 1895 when the Society decided to sell it, thus an alderman bought it for £300 and gave it to the town. It's still here.

Just as you'd currently see in Bloomsbury, the first panel depicts Edward the Confessor despatching Earl Harold to France. The colours are rather brighter in Reading and the background fabric isn't stained, but this particular copy hasn't been stashed in a cathedral storeroom, transported on a cattle truck or hidden from the Nazis. What you also get at both places is a simple explanation of the story unfolding scene by scene - here it's text on a green panel below, at the British Museum it's silent video narration on a screen behind.

In an early example of apposite marketing the green panel is sponsored by Norman Insurance, a local company who in 1992 were headquartered by the river. Alas their sponsorship has lasted far longer than the company as they were soon absorbed into a larger company who have themselves been rebranded. Meanwhile the display cases are courtesy of pharmaceutical giant Bayer who are still a significant player in the town, and excellently all the glass is slightly slanted which means every photo comes out with no annoying reflections.

The tapestry takes its time to tell the early part of the story. Harold sets off on a lengthy trek to Bosham and thence across the Channel to land near Beauvais. In lengthy shenanigans he gets captured, gains William's favour by assisting with a battle in Brittany and everyone carries a lot of hawks. Only after Harold has sworn an oath to William is he allowed back across the Channel, and I'm sorry if any of this is spoilers for those of you with British Museum tickets but you should have paid more attention in history lessons.

The narrative plays out impressively clearly, such was the skill of those who originally composed it. The central strip has key tableaux which often merge at the edges, say with soldiers marching from one event to the next. Only a few words are used, and you don't always have to have learned Latin to get the gist. Separate borders top and bottom feature supporting characters, often animals in the early stages but piled high with bloodied corpses by the finale.

One of the strangest scenes depicts a sexual scandal seemingly with no connection to the main plot, well known in the 11th century but which historians can no longer identify. One man in the lower border appears full frontal, contributing to a total of almost 100 willies (human and equine) depicted in the original tapestry. The ladies who stitched this Victorian facsimile chose to give him a pair of shorts to avoid scandalising their audience, but rest assured the explanatory panel underneath shows the original design with everything hanging out.

A nice touch in the Reading tapestry is that each of the embroiderers has sewn their name underneath the panels they were responsible for. Thus the opening scene is "Elizabeth Wardle's work", right up to the point where it says "ends here", whereas Harold being seized in Normandy is by "Mabel Challoner, her work" and William riding into battle is "the work of Anne Smith". By contrast we know nothing of the original embroiderers from Canterbury, nor how many of them there were nor how long they took.

Part two kicks off with Harold taking the English throne, the none too subtle subtext being that he should instead have kowtowed to William. History is told by the victors so everything here is attempting to validate William's claims, indeed the entire 70 metres is essentially a massive piece of Norman propaganda. This is also famously where Halley's Comet appears in the sky, a blazing portent of doom and also quite possibly the best known example of 11th century graphic representation.

On we walk round the balcony as William slowly gathers an army and builds the boats to sail them in. The final scene before the battle includes the only child depicted in the tapestry, also one of just three women, both of whom are fleeing a burning building. And then it's all swords and arrows and shields and lances and knights on horseback, both sides charging towards each other and falling in great numbers, right up to the famous scene where someone gets an arrow in the eye. Hic Harold Rex Interfectus Est.

The final scene in the existing Bayeux Tapestry is of the remaining English troops fleeing the battlefield. We know there used to be a follow-up panel but it was lost centuries back and nobody knows for sure what it contained. The Reading version thus has one-up on the British Museum because it displays a potential finale in a separate frame at the top of the stairs. This was sewn by embroiderer Joy Messent in 2019 and depicts the surrender of the English nobles at Berkhamsted followed by William's coronation in Westminster Abbey. It's not a happy ending, not viewed from this side of the Channel, but it helped create the country that patriots now defend with pride.

If what you want is top needlework and a rollicking story, Reading's Bayeux Tapestry certainly delivers. Admittedly it's not got the 950-year-old frisson of the original which was sewn by ladies for whom this was recent blockbuster news rather than a mere reproductive exercise. But it was here in Reading on free display long before the genuine article arrived on these shores and will still be here long after it's gone. Authenticity aside, it really is almost as good as viewing the real thing.

» Reading Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm, admission free
(but do check for gallery closures before you visit because they get a lot of school groups)

» Ian reviews the Reading version: "It may lack the miasma of history that comes from an authentic relic, but it’s so well made that you can almost forget it’s a replica and still bask in the monumental day that changed England forever."
» Ian reviews the genuine version: "If you have tickets, this once-in-a-lifetime moment will be a pure experience that hits in a way that I don’t think any exhibition I have ever been to could come close to."

Beefeater RIP

2026-09-09T08:00:00.000+01:00

If you fancy a meal at a Beefeater you've got two days left because they all close after tomorrow, every last one of them, because not enough people fancy a meal at a Beefeater any more.

Beefeater was founded by Whitbread in 1974, their first restaurant being The Halfway House in Enfield, followed in 1981 by the more-family-friendly Brewers Fayre. Prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gateau proliferated. Courage Breweries fought back in 1983 with their Harvester brand, their first restaurant being The George in Morden, as the salad bar became an integral part of a classy night out. In 1995 Beefeater absorbed the remnants of pioneering steakhouse Berni Inn, founded 40 years earlier, as the chain reached a peak of 256 outlets nationwide. In the same year Bass Charrington bought all 78 Harvesters and added them to a growing portfolio including Toby Carvery (debuting in Brentwood) and All Bar One (debuting in Sutton). In 2006 Bass-offshoot Mitchells & Butlers acquired 130 Harvester restaurants, also the 239 Beefeaters and Brewers Fayres that weren't part of a Premier Inn. What's closing this week are the remaining restaurants that are part of a Premier Inn, the Brewers Fayres on Monday and the Beefeaters after lunch tomorrow, as Whitbread sacrifices a 52 year-old brand to save its financial skin.

When I was younger we thought a Beefeater was an excellent venue for a special family meal. We were thus very excited when one opened in Croxley Green at Scotsbridge Mill, hence I celebrated my 25th birthday with soup, steak and profiteroles while the vicar watched on from a neighbouring table. We went back for my 26th where I enjoyed exactly the same meal and cunningly doubled up the whole thing as a Mothers Day treat. Two years later we celebrated my brother's 26th at a Beefeater in Norwich and my 28th a month later at the Priory Marina in Bedford, on both occasions upping my main course to a gluttonous mixed grill. We were back at Priory Marina for my 29th (pate, mixed grill, chocolate fudge dream), but after that we migrated to proper pubs and independent restaurants instead. Our Beefeater heyday was thus 1990-1994, which feels about right, and I think I've only been back once since.

Brewers Fayre in Greater London
(closed 7th September)
• Winsor House, Beckton E6
• Chequers Corner, Dagenham RM9

Beefeater in Greater London
(closing 10th September)
• Liberty Bell, Romford RM1
• London Woolwich, SE18
• Travellers Rest, Kenton HA3

But diners' tastes change, and a suburban roadhouse serving traditional favourites no longer cuts the mustard in these spicier times. This week's shutdown comes as the UK's hospitality sector faces tough financial headwinds, what with rising energy prices, higher employment costs and less frequent eating out because of the rising cost of living. With operating costs outpacing revenue Whitbread can no longer afford to maintain so many physical sites so have pulled the plug on the lot, instantly dooming the Chargrilled 5oz Gammon Steak, Smothered Chicken Melt and Caramel Apple Betty to history.

The unfussy end of the market still has Wetherspoons, Sizzling Pubs, Ember Inns and Hungry Horse, even Harvesters, should you fancy an unchallenging meal not far from home with onion rings. And rest assured that the very first Beefeater in Enfield will remain open, even after this week's restaurant Armageddon, because following all the machinations in paragraph two it's somehow ended up as a Toby Carvery.

Knitting The Air

2026-09-09T07:00:00.000+01:00

Life viewed from London E3

Knitting The Air (4-20 September 2026)
Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, E3 2SJ

The latest exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery is a striking display of data, visualising something you can't see but might kill you. It's a calendar of knitted squares representing a year of air quality in east London, hardly the Bayeux Tapestry but an important historical record all the same.

It covers three walls of the gallery, almost like it was designed to be exhibited here, and was knitted by a team of 132 volunteers over a two year period. It's amazing what you can get a community group to do if you inspire them.

The top two rows represent data taken from a sensor by the A12 in Poplar and the bottom two data from a nearby street outside Culloden Primary School. The pinks are the PM2.5 count while the blues underneath represent nitrogen dioxide. In each case there are three shades, the lightest for 'below WHO guidelines', the darkest for 'over UK legal target' and the medium for the fuzzy zone inbetween. The panel below shows that NO₂ exceeded legal levels on 1st, 6th, 7th, 8th and 16th September 2023 (coinciding with a particular hot spell) and only properly fell below WHO guidelines on 18th September (a cooler day with high winds).
n.b. ULEZ expanded to cover all of London a couple of days before September 2023 started, but this won't have had much impact here because Poplar was well inside the previous zone.

What you want to see if you live round here is a lot of light pink and a lot of light blue, and whilst maybe half the pink stripes are indeed good, light blue stripes are worryingly thin on the ground. I do indeed live around here so it's chastening to be presented with a knitted record of how much air pollution my lungs are inhaling. The Aberfeldy estate has it particularly bad, being cut off by urban dual carriageways on two sides, and maybe that's why so many people were willing to give up their time to contribute to this project.

Fran: I've lived here along the A12 for forty years, and I've just noticed the air getting worse and worse. I was on inhalers for a long time for asthma.
Gul: I'd heard of air quality but I didn't pay it much attention until I started knitting and then understood what the lines and colours meant.
Sadia: The knitting was therapeutic in itself, but the community around knitting and what the project created, I think I enjoyed that the most.
Freddie: As an educational tool it's been amazing. I was at an event at a GP surgery on the Aberfeldy Estate and there was a small display of knitting panels there and some kids from the local school came in and the questions they were asking were just amazing.

As well as the knitted panels (and explanatory detail out back), associated events include a photographic walk this afternoon, a curator's tour on Saturday and the chance to knit your own panels next Thursday. But the exhibition's only open until 20th September so you don't have long to get here (head to Bus Stop M, you can't miss it). In good news the London Transport Museum has agreed to take the artwork afterwards, rather than it clogging up the organiser's house, but given its size I expect it'll end up in storage rather than on occasional display. I hope the Mayor finds time to pop in before it goes and perhaps takes the opportunity for a photoshoot, the three walls of the gallery making clear the invisible fight he's made a cornerstone of his administration, and which those of us who live round here face daily.

It's this blog's 24th birthday

2026-09-08T07:00:00.000+01:00

It's diamond geezer's 24th birthday.

September 2002 feels like a very long time ago, so long that Joan Littlewood was still alive, Atomic Kitten were top of the charts and London Weekend Television was still broadcasting. I don't know what you were doing 24 years ago but I was sat at my computer starting a blog, partly as procrastination to avoid ironing eleven shirts. I no longer iron shirts but I do still blog, so that worked out well.

Situations Vacant

2026-09-08T06:59:00.000+01:00

The end of another four-year period means it's time to renew the oversight bodies that help keep diamond geezer ticking over. If you think you've got what it takes to contribute to one of these important voluntary groups, please submit your credentials before 6:59am tomorrow.

SITUATIONS VACANT

Diamond Geezer Content Strategy Caucus
• Remote
• Unpaid role, expenses not paid
• 2 hours weekly

Purpose: to determine the editorial focus of upcoming posts and stir the creative pot
Commitment: weekly Zoom meeting (Sunday evening, 2 hrs approx)
Role: to trawl through upcoming anniversaries; to pinpoint unreported unusualness within and beyond Greater London; to identify permissable transport foci; to propose quirky topics for reportage; to formalise the collective investor pitch; to assign dates to future topics; also to discourage too many posts about buses because nobody wants to read them

Typical engagement
dg: So what's everyone got?
Rob: I see Oxhey Grange footbridge is due to be demolished next week.
Dan: You've never covered London's most equidistant pubs.
Uy: How about following the London Strategic Heat Main?
Sergei: Also the Florence Nightingale Museum is free to enter next Monday.
Alex: Nobody's yet written about Tottenham Hale's 'new' Platform 4a.
Ashley: I'd like to propose "How do I know which end of the platform is the front of the tube train?" - it always catches me out!
Tania: I mean, just off the top of my head, an analysis of leaf-fall timetables, could Zak Polanski win, how do litter bins vary borough by borough, a quiz where all the clues are chemical symbols, my favourite chocolate biscuit wrappers.
dg: And Tony, you've been looking into obscure London suburbs starting with S. So which is it to be?
Tony: Obviously Sundridge, Selsdon and Shacklewell are top considerations, also let's not overlook Shirley, sadly you've already covered Southborough, alas I fear Sipson might be quite limiting, personally I'd quite like to see Stroud Green, perhaps you might consider Stonecot?

Diamond Geezer Daily Planning Huddle
• Remote
• Unpaid role, expenses not paid
• 30 minutes daily

Purpose: to confirm the broad-brush outline of tomorrow's post
Commitment: conference call every morning at 8.30am (also touch base at 5pm)
Role: to agree tomorrow's topic, to research background information, to plan locations to visit; to optimise the itinerary; to complete necessary risk assessment; to react to fast-moving news stories; to provide bullet points for article composition; to veto patently tedious outcomes

Typical engagement
dg: So what's everyone got?
Kieran: No sign of a fresh TfL press release this morning, so it's all systems go.
Louise: We reckon you can be in West Finchley by 10.15am.
Kieran: I've emailed a map of the walking route you should follow.
Louise: Apparently the bollard on Sydney Street used to be part of a medieval outhouse, so make sure you get a photo.
Kieran: You should be wrapped up at New Southgate by noon.
Louise: After the opening summary write about the history, then the connection to Winston Churchill, then the six bridges in chronological order.
Kieran: Do not under any circumstances mention the local bus route.
dg: I'll ping you the early drafts before the teatime catch-up.

Diamond Geezer Overnight Quality Review
• Remote
• Unpaid role, expenses not paid
• 10 minutes nightly

Purpose: to pedantically check the content of tomorrow's post
Commitment: receive copy by 1am, submit email feedback by 6.45am
Role: to read through pre-final draft and identify a) spelling errors b) grammatical errors c) factual errors d) substandard text e) potential improvements in order to prevent embarrassment when the post goes live at 7am

Typical feedback
Ian: "sup-optimal" in the second paragraph.
Richard: I think that you meant to say “steps of 20 km/h” rather than “steps of 20mph”.
Michael: The parade referred to is NE rather than NW of the station.
Carl: You seem to have omitted the fact that Margaret Thatcher cut the ribbon near Watford.
Nick: You have different numbers of bulls gored on your Flickr photo compared to your post.
Frank: Is the description "just a bunch of backroom gibbons" necessary in relation to something quite so trivial?
John: Surely that should be fewer than ten services a day, not less than?

Diamond Geezer Retrospective Appraisal Surgery
• Peer-to-peer
• Unpaid role, expenses not paid
• 1 hour weekly

Purpose: to critique the week's content, identifying successes and points of weakness
Commitment: weekly win/loss review (Saturday, 7pm)
Role: to apply 360-degree feedback techniques; to set future targets; to optimise continuous improvement; to identify individual development needs; to formalise lessons-learned; to engage in dispute resolution; to compare with AI-generated content to ensure human input is still preferential; to offer praise if merited

Typical feedback
Amir: I'm not surprised the Sutton post only got three comments.
Vince: Did we really need a whole fortnight focusing on your holiday to Spain? Perhaps stay in this country for a while.
Sophie: I thought you were quite rude to Derek.
Amir: Personally I enjoyed the analysis of museum leaflets but I may have been alone in that.
Vince: Please tell me no more bus routes are changing any time soon.
Sophie: Take more Saturdays off.
Amir: Perhaps tone down the use of all those unnecessary commas.
Vince: I don't understand why you spent eight hours crafting a post of interest to hardly anybody.
Sophie: To be honest I enjoyed your posts more in 2012.

SL12 - To the World's End

2026-09-07T07:00:00.000+01:00

In 1985 the BBC made a documentary about the number 31 bus route called To the World's End. (It's still on iPlayer).
In 2026 TfL have just launched a bus route that really does go To the World's End, London-speaking.
It's a new Superloop route to the back of beyond, which in this case is two stops beyond Rainham.

Route SL12: Gants Hill - Rainham Ferry Lane South
Length of journey: 13 miles, 50 minutes

London's newest bus route is really three in one. First it's a limited stop version of route 66, speeding along the A12. Then it's a much needed north-south link across Havering, speedily linking Romford, Elm Park and Rainham. And then it's a break into virgin territory to serve no houses whatsoever, just an industrial estate by the Thames estuary, which is the headscratchy bit. Let's take each part separately.

Part 1 - The Limited Stop 66

If you get your kicks on route 66, which is already a speedy radial route, you can now get them faster on the SL12. The six mile dash starts outside Gants Hill station, stopping just five times on the way to Romford compared to 18 aboard the 66. At present both run every 12 minutes, which seems generous on a corridor that's already well bussed. Gants Hill isn't the most useful of terminuses but you can easily change between the SL2 and SL12 here, adding an extra limb to London's existing Superloop network. For Central line interchange Newbury Park is your best bet.

n.b. The bus shelter at Gants Hill has an almost brand-new spider map, but because it's dated 1st August 2026 it doesn't include the SL12 and I Wouldn't Have Done That.
n.b. The bus shelter at Gants Hill doesn't have a roundel on top, whereas most of the other shelters along the route do.
n.b. The first five miles of the SL12 follow the A12, so there is some accidental logic to the numbering system here.

As usual when a Superloop route launches, some passengers haven't taken on board the 'express' concept. It even says LIMITED STOP on the front blind but not everyone notices. Thus on my journey someone dinged the bell just after leaving Padnall Road expecting to get off almost immediately, but was instead swept ahead two miles to the Romford outskirts. As the doors closed another passenger then dinged, stood up and watched four stops go by before finally escaping in the town centre. She had a long chat with the driver before alighting and seemed to be appeased.

Part 2 - The Much-Needed North-South Link

Many outer London boroughs have good radial transport links but nothing decent orbitally, a deficit the Superloop is designed to mitigate. Havering has always been particularly tough to cross north to south, the only railway connection being the Liberty line, runtiest of the Overground family. The SL12 thus provides an invaluable new service by connecting the Elizabeth line to the District line and c2c, previously only doable slowly and indirect. Initial loadings look good, especially on the hyperleap between Romford and Elm Park which would previously have been 10 stops on the 252.

n.b. The new buses smell new, also they have USB ports at every seat.
n.b. If you're sitting at the front on the top deck there's no STOP button in sight, only one out of reach at the top of the stairs. (In fact the nearest button is on the back of your seat, furthest from the aisle, but nobody's going to see it there.)
n.b. Elm Park remains quite flaggy, whereas most other London suburbs have taken down their threadbare red crosses.

From Elm Park to Rainham the corridor of housing is quite narrow so three routes already follow the same route south for almost two miles. The SL12 now adds a fourth which is perhaps over-frequent overkill. I suspect whoever assembled the original SL12 consultation had never been to Rainham because they failed to include a stop in the town centre, but thankfully everyone screamed and buses do now call at the key Tesco interchange. The leader of Havering Council remains unimpressed that adjacent development areas like Beam Park have been missed, thus is already lobbying for "a second Superloop to reach those parts missed by the current service", but populists do tend to want the moon on a stick.

Part 3 - To The World's End

Within Greater London there are only two places where you can draw a circle with diameter two miles and not hit a TfL bus route, or at least there were. One is the middle of Richmond Park and the other was the Ferry Lane trading estate south of Rainham, a remote industrial stripe amid the marshes by the Thames estuary. It's long been TfL's aim to fill this latter gap, saving estate employees a lengthy walk, but never previously justifiable in terms of cost. In 2019 an exceptionally detailed study of Bus Services in London Riverside East considered multiple imaginative scenarios and concluded that the only potentially feasible option was a peak hours shuttle from Rainham station, no more than six buses a day. Instead the Mayor has sent brand new double deckers running five times an hour, a decision you could describe as questionable.

n.b. The first SL12 of the day departs at 5am, the last arrives at 1.15am.
n.b. The SL12 terminates here even at the weekend when nobody's working.
n.b. The only reason this isn't absolutely bonkers is that the bus company's garage is just round the corner off Ferry Lane, so the vehicles would have to run empty anyway.

After leaving Rainham Tesco the SL12 ducks under the railway and enters the top end of the industrial estate. The first stop is called Rainham Station South Side, although it's a bit of a hike to a train so not the friendliest of interchanges. We've entered a world of big sheds and open marshes, one you probably only recognise if you've walked the last leg of the London Loop. The A13 scythes through on a concrete viaduct, chopping the estate in half, the SL12 terminating on the other side between a huge distribution warehouse and a scrap metal yard. The contrast with the Gants Hill roundabout, indeed with any other Superloop route, is extreme. Let's hope the employees who actually work here find the SL12 useful.

n.b. The south side of the estate is a long thin loop of road that's over a mile long. And yet the SL12 only stops at the very top end, exiting by doing a full anti-clockwise circuit, so anyone employed at the tip faces a ten minute walk to catch a bus that goes straight past their workplace. In the consultation 11 people requested an additional stop on Ferry Lane but this was not taken forward.

Part 4 - Beyond the SL12

Now that London's bus network has a new remote terminus, what might you discover if you come here?

A five minute walk through the estate brings you to the edge of the Thames estuary, hidden behind a thick concrete wall to help keep potential floodwater at bay. Stand atop the embankment and you can see the incinerator at Belvedere and the town of Erith, also perhaps a number of large ships and small boats sailing by. A plaque on the wall confirms this as the landing point for the Pilgrim Ferry, an estuary crossing operational between the 12th and 19th centuries, initially aimed at those making a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Should TfL ever chooses to reinstate the ferry, the SL12 is perfectly poised to make the connection.

Havering Council have recently spent money making this liminal stripe a tad more attractive for workers taking a fag break, courtesy of the Rainham Riverside Public Realm Improvement Project. They've added proper steps, garden seating, several bright yellow bins and a substantial metal pergola lookout, all with informative signage. Best not imagine the smell when this was the site of a factory manufacturing fertiliser from fish carcasses. I particularly liked The Museum of Garden Escapes, a raised bed of non-native self-seeded plants laid out on the footprint of the former Three Crowns pub. Full marks, at least compared to how it used to look.

The estate ends at a wall of silos belonging to the Tilda rice factory, this being the furthest south the SL12 gets. Follow the squished riverside path past their private jetty and you emerge onto an undefended stretch of estuary and, at least at low tide, a spread of mudflats. The chief attraction here is a fleet of concrete barges constructed during the war when building materials were scarce, and intended for use fuelling the D-Day landings. A decade later they were dumped here in the Thames as protection from the great flood of 1953 and here they remain, sunk into a beach at a variety of angles, slowly not-rusting away.

A short distance away, anchored eight metres down into the riverbed, is a twisted mass of galvanised steel in humanoid form. This is The Diver, a submersible artwork installed in the year 2000 by artist John Kaufman and dedicated to his grandfather who used to be a diver in the old London Docks. Come at low tide and the entire sculpture stands proud above water level, but as the Thames slowly rises the diver starts to vanish, until at certain spring tides each year the top of the helmet is fully submerged. Previously to get here would have been a 40 minute hike from Rainham station but now it's only 20 minutes from a Superloop bus stop far more convenient for the middle of nowhere, at The World's End.

Minnie's Coffee and Food

2026-09-06T07:30:00.000+01:00

Life viewed from London E3

An extraordinary thing is happening tomorrow on Stroudley Walk, a new cafe is opening! We've had fried chicken for a while and a juice bar gave it a go after lockdown, but this is the first time there's been a sitdowner with macchiatos, croissants, hash browns and lasagne. It's called Minnie's Coffee and Food and it made me double-take.

It lurks underneath Zellie Emerson House, one of four new housing blocks hereabouts, in a small unit I'd assumed would stay uneconomically empty. Instead our local social housing company have hired out the space as part of their HARCA Café Collective, "an initiative making quality food and drink accessible and affordable to residents and visitors across Bow and Poplar". It's not clear whether Minnie is the owner's name or a reference to Minnie Lansbury the East End suffragette, but given the estate's history and thematic rebrand I'd assume the latter.

Apart from the obvious hot drinks the menu also includes breakfast options (until 11am), snacks and a limited range of lunches. I can't remember the last time anywhere round here did a genuine cooked breakfast, and OK there's no bacon but £8 is a pretty good deal. As for lunches each day of the week brings a single meat or vegetarian choice (Mondays curried, Tuesdays stir-fried, Wednesdays filo royale, Thursdays lasagne and Fridays crispy with potato wedges), also soup, also foccacia-based sandwiches, also six quid salads. And yes I know you've probably had this round your way for ages but this is Stroudley Walk for heaven's sake, a culinary dead end since time immemorial.

Like most modern food outlets they've not bothered with a website just an Instagram account nobody would ever think to search for. Unnervingly the first post said "Almost ready to serve you!" and that was in June. Also their tagline is "More than just coffee, we’re a community" which I reckon is wilfully unproven given they haven't opened yet. But opening day is Monday at 7.30am and to celebrate they've got a special offer of 50% OFF ALL HOT DRINKS UNTIL MIDDAY. I live nearby and have a kettle so not even Builders Tea for 75p is going to tempt me in, but I wish Minnie well as gentrification finally sparks to life in Stroudley Walk. It's what the incomers who've paid half a million to live in the tower nextdoor have been waiting for, indeed long expected.

Unblogged September 1986

2026-09-06T07:00:00.000+01:00

30 unblogged things I did in September 1986

They didn't have blogs or the internet forty years ago, so here are 30 things I didn't digitally publish at the time. To help you get your bearings I was 21, teetering between university and a job, so chose to delay things by undertaking an extra year's study up north.

Mon 1: Sign on at the dole office, but am called to one side to undergo a random check. Thankfully they weren't tough checks in those days. [On TV: London Plus with John Stapleton]
Tue 2: My university tutor pops up on Radio 1 Newsbeat talking about vaccinated chickens. Get a phone call inviting me to a job interview on Friday but turn them down because I've decided oil economics isn't for me.
Wed 3: Have to go for a job-related medical. Worried it might be a full strip-off but it's no worse than filling a bottle and getting my blood pressure checked. [The supervising medic was called Dr Doodoo]
Thu 4: Two friends from university drive over and meet the tortoise, then we go for a walk round Ruislip Lido, watch the water skiing and have cheeseburgers in Wimpy. [Ooh look, I have a photo]

Fri 5: My dad takes the morning off work but the man from Anglian Windows never turns up to do the survey and I have rarely heard him so cross.
Sat 6: Wimbledon FC beat Watford 1-0 to stay top of Division 1, so I annoy my brother by putting a Womble on the doorstep when he gets home from the match. [On TV: Episode 1 of the season-long Doctor Who story, Trial of a Time Lord]
Sun 7: Mum and Dad are debating where to go for a silver wedding getaway next month [it turns out to be a cottage near a radar station in Norfolk]
Mon 8: University friend returns and drives us down to the Odeon Marble Arch to watch Aliens. Thoroughly enjoy. [Alas moving up north will squash this budding friendship] [A quick check online and I see he's just retired from his top job in the City]
Tue 9: When our nextdoor neighbour moved out she gave us £40 to go out for a family meal, so tonight we go to the Ponderosa Steak House in Watford High Street, a legendary venue. I have sirloin steak and they forget to offer us any free refills.
Wed 10: Buy a £299 Sony hi-fi from Tottenham Court Road and nearly collapse lugging it home on the tube.
Thu 11: For my 'final' meal Mum cooks roast lamb (washed down with a bottle of Riesling) and lemon meringue pie. [nobody has ever made lemon meringue pie as well as my Mum did]

Fri 12: A very long drive up the A1 with the boot full of boxes. Mum refuses to drive over the Humber Bridge so we take the M18 and M62 to Hull. I'm not convinced she's impressed by my new student digs (and neither am I). One of my new flatmates takes me out for beers along the Cottingham Road. [this never happens again]
Sat 13: Explore Hull, mainly to find food, a barber and a photobooth because I need 4 mugshots for registration on Monday. Start to suspect the girl in the room nextdoor might be overwrought and clingy.

Sun 14: Struggle to cook in the communal kitchen because it's shared by six of us. No toaster so we have to use a ropey gas grill. My Smash instant mash proves far too watery.
Mon 15: Successfully register for the course in a very analogue manner, i.e. laminated cards, pigeonhole numbers and pins in maps. [On TV: Calendar with Richard Whiteley]
Tue 16: Introductory lecture and seminar. Try to discover who amongst my new coursemates is worth making friends with. [should have stayed for lunch rather than going down the chippy]
Wed 17: Use one of my photos to get myself a student railcard [aww, cute], then dash back to college for a video narrated by Annie Nightingale.
Thu 18: A first visit to the work experience location. Mr Kipling gives us a tour of the building.
Fri 19: A quiet evening in implodes somewhat when my clingy neighbour pours out her troubles and tells me she has weight issues, nervous issues, panic attack issues, agoraphobia and claustrophobia, also fear of travelling, also she hasn't told her parents any of this but she has told me. I fear this is going to be tough.
Sat 20: Up early to whizz across country to a friend's 21st birthday party in Cheshire (via Doncaster and Liverpool). Help cut the cucumbers. Her boyfriend sends a bouquet from Crewe hospital where he's recuperating. It never gets wild because three generations are present.
Sun 21: Sleep on the sofa, then return the cutlery to the sailing club and start my 5-hour journey back. Thank goodness for the emergency pack of Garibaldis.

Mon 22: First day of work experience. They've nicknamed me Lofty after Michelle's fiancé on Eastenders.
Tue 23: Second day of work experience. They didn't tell me to wear trainers so I have to stay in the viewing area.
Wed 24: Third day of work experience. Remembered my trainers this time so I get to participate.
Thu 25: Fourth day of work experience. Rachel says she's thinking of quitting already.
Fri 26: My paranoid neighbour knocks on my door and asks if I'd look after her tub of 40 Valium for her. [I should never have agreed - see October 10th].
Sat 27: Go exploring down Whitefriargate and The Land of Green Ginger. My neighbour has started banging on our adjoining wall. I've started pretending I'm out.
Sun 28: I'm discovering what it's like to be the chosen confidante of someone who's chronically depressed. Please stop fiddling with my frog.
Mon 29: The Hull Daily Mail celebrates its 101st birthday by going tabloid. [On TV: On Brookside, Heather walks in on Nick overdosing on heroin]
Tue 30: Potentially suicidal are you? This was not how I was expecting my first month in Hull to turn out... (it gets a lot better on October 16th)

September events diary 2026

2026-09-05T07:00:00.000+01:00

It's September again but never fear, London's putting on a last flurry of events, activities and happenings before the nights draw in and we're all invited. Here's my weekend-by-weekend guide to free September delights.

All month
» Totally Thames (Sep 1-30): Once again a whole month of river-focused events, many ticketed, ranging from art to walks to virtual talks to a folksong singalong. Thankfully the website's events section is easier to scroll through these days, but it's still hard to spot the highlights.
» Lambeth Heritage Festival (Sep 1-30): Dozens of free talks, guided walks and openings across the borough (plus a proper 36-page brochure to flick through, bliss). Hats off to whoever organises this every year. If you live locally you should definitely take a look.

Weekend 1: September 5/6
» Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (21 Aug - 6 Sep): This significant splurge of spectacular performances delivers artistic wonders annually. The GDIF brochure now mostly tells you what you've missed. On this final weekend there's a heck of a lot of dancing in Stratford on Saturday and a street dance finale in Woolwich on Sunday.
» Lambeth Local History Fair (Sat, from 10): A coming-together of local societies, heritage organisations, friends groups and local history publishers at Brixton Library. Includes short films and guided walks.
» Creative Mile (Sat, 11-5): Art in venues across Brentford, a full mile from the canal basin to the Steam Museum.
» Black on the Square (Sat, from noon): The Mayor's latest culturally-themed Trafalgar Square takeover, now in its fourth year. Performers include Triniboi Joocie and Tomorrow's Warriors.
» Brassworks (Sat, from noon): A Festival of Horns at Woolwich Works, also noisy parading up and down outside.
» Croxfest (Sat, from noon): OK this one's not quite in London, but where else are you going to hear The Silent Rogues, Lickin Stick, Many Bats and Our Friends Electric other than on the Green in Croxley?
» Denmark Street Sessions (Sat, 1-11): A heck of a lot of live performances down former Tin Pan Alley.
» Angel Canal Festival (Sun, 11-4): Waterside gaiety beside City Road Lock, this year celebrating its 40th anniversary. The Mayor of Islington usually arrives by narrowboat. I went in 2023.
» Brompton Cemetery Open Day (Sun, 11-5): Includes opportunities to meet bees, birds of prey and Chelsea Pensioners.
» Palmers Green Festival (Sun, 12-5): All the fun of music on the green, donkey rides and dozens of community stalls in Broomfield Park N13.

Weekend 2: September 12/13
» Open House London (this weekend and next): The grand-daddy of architectural festivals, with hundreds of weird and wonderful buildings throwing open their doors across the capital for two weekends. The online calendar currently includes 819 properties, over 500 of which are "just turn up". It's quite central-London-centric again this year (3 in Havering but 98 in Westminster), although I always think the outer boroughs have some of the genuine treasures. It's possible to search by date, borough, event type and map location and also to filter out events that are fully booked. As ever there's far too much to choose from, but if you need inspiration here are my reports from 2018, 2019, 20 22, 20 23, 20 24 and 20 25. Be there or regret it for the subsequent 51 weeks.
» Heritage Open Days (Fri - next Sun): In an awkward overlap, the nationwide opening-up of historic buildings coincides with Open House again this year. 121 are in the capital, including sculpturetastic Dorich House, 600 year-old Harmondsworth Great Barn and the British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum (many appear in the Open House listings too).
» London Design Festival (continues next weekend): Hundreds of design-er events, many aimed at "the trade" but others more public-focused. I see TfL have an installation at The Pickle Factory all week, for example.
» St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival (Sat, Sun): Annual gathering of small boats near Tower Bridge, including Dunkirk Little Ships, dockside entertainment, opportunities to go on board and yachting celebrity Tom Cunliffe.
» Hampton Court Open Gardens (Sat, Sun): One of half a dozen opportunities annually to explore the palace's historic grounds for free.
» Markfield Road Festival (Sat, Sun): Art, DJs and a carnival procession, spilling out into the streets up N15 way.
» Scadbury Open Weekend (Sat, Sun, 2-5): Archaeological excavations at the moated medieval manor house near the Sidcup bypass. I went in 2022 and enjoyed.
» The Great River Race (Sat from 10.15am): 300 craft engage in a spectacular paddle up the Thames from Docklands to Richmond.
» Emerge East (Sat, 11-9): Placemaking exercise at Barking Riverside, including DJ AG, sauna sessions, nature workshops and a Luke Jerram inflatable.
» Thames Tidefest (Sun, 6-6): River-based activities scattered between Brentford and Chiswick, with a particular marquee-focus at Strand-on-the-Green, W4.
(yes there is far far too much going on this weekend, they should spread it out better)

Weekend 3: September 19/20
» Open House London: Weekend two
» Heritage Open Days Weekend two
» Bermondsey Street Festival (Sat, 11-7): A designery "village fête", plus the obligatory dog show, plus curated live music, plus food and stalls. Now in its 20th year.
» Chiswick House Dog Show (Sun, 11-4.15): With a theme of 'Faithful Hound', celebrity judges give the dogs of W4 the runaround.
» Pearly Kings and Queens Harvest Festival (Sun, 1.30): Cockney royalty offers live entertainment in Guildhall Yard.

Weekend 4: September 26/27
» Woolmen’s Sheep Drive and Wool Fair (Sun, 10-4): The celeb leading this year's first tranche over Southwark Bridge will be revealed shortly, but they'll do well to beat Mary Berry or Michael Portillo. Come too for wool-related trade stalls and lamb burgers.
» Brixton Windmill Harvest Festival (Sun, 1-5): Milling, Morris dancing and making hedgehog buns, as autumn draws in.
» Something Else Probably (maybe): I'm still looking, but there must be something.

n.b. This year the Chelsea Physic Garden Open Weekend is at the start of October...
n.b. ...and the annual Thames Barrier all-day closure is on Sunday 11th October.
n.b. Peckham Festival and the Mayor's Liberty Festival are having a year off.

Slim Summer Saturdays

2026-09-05T01:00:00.000+01:00

Slim Summer Saturday

It's time to rest Slim Summer Saturday after eight slender weeks. Technically there are still three summer Saturdays to go but that's enough for now. I only introduced the feature to help get me through a particularly busy season of long-distance travel and I'm pleased to say it achieved its purpose.

Slim Summer Saturday posts started out particularly slim (a photo of a tree in Harringay) but ultimately ended up a few paragraphs long so became less of a throwaway. Statistics show that the most viewed SSS post was the first one, the aforementioned tree, confirming there is no correlation between 'effort expended' and 'exposure earned'. Every SSS post gained more than 10 comments, which is more than yesterday's Full Fat Friday post managed. The most-commented SSS post was a cut-and-pasted list of things someone else remembered, which just goes to prove that nostalgia is always a successful fallback. The other seriously successful post feedbackwise was a photo of a peculiar tube map I saw in a bar in Spain, because inviting transport-related engagement usually delivers.

I have learned that less is sometimes more. And normal Saturday service is now restored.

Route 349 RIP

2026-09-04T03:49:00.000+01:00

London's next dead bus
349: Ponders End to Stamford Hill
Location: north London, outer
Length of journey: 6 miles, 50 minutes
Dies: tonight

Normally when I do one of these write-ups I go for a last ride and then weave all the themes into a seamless travelogue. This time I've split it into separate bits so you can pick and choose.

Past, Present and Future
The 349 was introduced in 2004 to strengthen bus capacity down the old A10, aka the High Road, as Ken Livingstone expanded the network. It's now being removed because that capacity isn't needed and times are tight, along with other cuts and tweaks as TfL take a small axe to services in the upper Lea Valley. If you're heading south currently the 279 starts at Waltham Cross, the 349 joins in at Ponders End, the 149 and 259 are added at Edmonton Green, then the 476, 243 and 76 feed in through Tottenham. The plan is for the 259 to nudge back to Ponders End to fill in the gap left by the 349 and also for the 279 to switch to Stamford Hill at the southern end, all starting tomorrow. In separate plans the 149 will be whisked away later. No journeys become impossible as a result of any of this, you might just have to wait longer for a fuller bus.

Bus Geekery
The 349 is currently one of the contenders for London's straightest bus route. It has a right turn just after the first stop and a left turn just before the last stop, but everything else is straight up (or down) the High Road. That's 94% of the route on the same road (even if that road's not perfectly straight). Other contenders for the title include the 32 (93% along Watling Street with a short bend at either end) and the 116 (91%, wrecked only by the pedestrianisation of Hounslow High Street). From this weekend the 279 will also be 93%, the Waltham Cross bypass accounting for most of the unstraight 7%.

The Withdrawal Poster
It's better than some and less good than others. The map is very complicated because it includes every single bus stop on two routes. It's trying to show that one route is being withdrawn while two other routes are both curtailed and diverted, all on the same map. However the text is about withdrawing just one route and how to cope afterwards. It offers this advice correctly but sub-optimally. Effectively it says "when the 349 disappears use the 279, unless your journey includes Enfield Bus Garage in which case use the 259". What it omits to say is "for any journey inbetween Ponders End and Seven Sisters you can catch either the 259 OR the 279". This is most journeys, but this broad advice has been skipped to focus on edge cases. Basically you can't win when writing bus change posters, they're either too complicated or too simplistic, and this is simultaneously both.

80 things I saw on my southbound journey

» Enfield Bus Garage. A man waiting by the bus stop asking if I have £1 to spare (I do not). Hassidic teenage day out. Long wait to turn right. The QUBE. Sign welcoming us to Ponders End Shopping Centre. The White Hart (former pub, its name falling off). The Kürecikliler Centre. Desserts End. Cycle lanes and copious traffic calming.

» Ponders End Park. Balkan Brew. Shaggy-haired postman scanning a code inside an opened pillar box. Caravan in front garden. Van delivering charcoal to a kebab shop (if you think about it, it must happen). Memzy Barbers. NIW Furniture. Man on mobility scooter following the cycle lane by cutting through a bus stop. ICC House Of Prayer. Jet garage [petrol 155.9p, diesel 178.9p].

» Bounces Road. Nursery based in former pub. Wonky spire atop Edmonton Baptist Church. Woman weaving through traffic wearing pink crocs. Temporary traffic lights with five minute queue. Digger full of soil. Bus station (edge of). Edmonton Green Shopping Centre. Speedy Spud. Overground station.

» Hut called Cafe Nadia. Man yelling outside police station. Hugs & Mags. Tiny front garden at number 341 brimming with tall colourful flowers (hollyhocks included). Edmonton Glory House Revival Centre. Kingdom Life Chapel. Old school launderette. Hot Nuts. Edmonton Labour Party HQ (with postwar signage). North Circular Road at Angel Corner.

» Superloop bus. Big Ben Fisheries. Brazilian flag outside The White Horse. The Gilpin's Bell freehouse. Arch across road marking change of borough. Wire horse outside Florence Hayes Recreation Ground. 'This Is Tottenham' banners. London Beard Co. White Hart Lane. 3 Points Cafe (which is more than Tottenham have got at the moment).

» Shopping parade dated 1829. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Pubs and cafes that Spurs supporters go to. Sign pointing to Skywalk. King Ledley mural. Car with N17 numberplate (naturally). Whitbread-topped clock. Winglab. Job Centre Plus. Trampery Tottenham ("a focal point for entrepreneurship").

» Jenny Greetings. A very closed Poundland. Pub called The Elbow Room. Ghost sign for former undertakers. High Cross micropub. College with lots of cars out front because term's just restarted. Very long Tesco. Seven Sisters Market reborn. Flashing sign saying OVERHEIGHT VEHICLE TURN BACK. German container aboard freight train.

» Advert for tuition to get into grammar school. Brazbq (rarely has a six-letter name conveyed a restaurant brand so well). Texaco garage [petrol 161.9p, diesel 186.9p]. Hosiery World. Row of cement mixers for sale outside shop. Megaphone City. Very ropey-looking lone fruit stall. Gitty Pinter Campus. Stamford Hill Bus Garage. Georgian Orthodox church.

The family who sat alongside
Mum and Dad and two boys. Dad with the loud and chatty eight year-old in the front seat. Mum and quieter six year-old behind (inwardly cursing the old man hogging the other front seat). Riding from Edmonton (where they live now) to Tottenham (where they used to live) to visit the school shop to buy uniform before term starts. "I liked our old house more" says eldest son. "But you have your own room now," says Dad. "I'm the psycho one!" says eldest son. "I can't believe the patty shop has closed," says Dad. "If we lived in those flats I would drop apples off the balcony," says eldest son. Good luck to the teacher who has him in their class this week.

Implementation of the changes
As usual the TfL Tile Switching Team have been out early, switching tiles before the date of the actual change. This is great for future journeys and arguably a useful nudge pointing out imminent changes. However it never helps if you're unfamiliar with the area and turn up during the interregnum. In particular there are pairs of southbound stops in Tottenham where one stop is for buses heading towards Stamford Hill and the other for buses towards Manor House. This week the 279 stops at one of them but from tomorrow it'll stop at the other, so swapping the tiles early means you might wait in the wrong place. It's only a small lie but it needn't have happened so prematurely.

Summary
The 349 dies tonight. TfL can take a dozen vehicles off the road as a result.

Dead Buses Since 2023
2023: 271, 332, 507, 521, 168
2024: 455, 549
2025: 347, 497, 118, 414, R6, 283
2026: 472, 533, 349

R is for Roxeth

2026-09-03T07:00:00.000+01:00

LONDON A-Z
R is for Roxeth

The view from Roxeth is very fine. The playing fields of Harrow School, the spire of St Mary's Church and various villas on the slopes below.

However Roxeth isn't the cultured enclave at the top of Harrow Hill it's a suburb at the bottom, originally a village to the southwest, hence arguably Harrow-Under-The Hill. It's another example of somewhere that does have a station, indeed it has two, but ever since the bigger one was called South Harrow in 1903 the original name's been ebbing away. It lingers in streetnames, also the local library, park and two schools, whereas the local authority ward of the same name is a modern invention and doesn't quite match the original Roxeth at all. Let's start on the opposite side of the road to my first photo where we find Roxeth's oldest building, a 17th century weatherboarded farmhouse called Roxeth Farm.

Alas the owners have sought to shield their property behind a very high hedge so all you can see is a hipped roof from the side and a sash-windowed slot at the front, but it does look to be delightfully wonky. I had wondered if the barn out back was another rural survivor but no, it's one of three pavilions for Harrow School's extensive cricket fields, the Philathletic Ground. According to the whiteboard on West Street the last matches played here were against Merchant Taylors' on 20th June, over ten weeks ago, because one thing that termly fees of £21,990 deliver is a very long summer break.

The centre of the village was a four-way junction on the Northolt Road, now a five-way maelstrom called Roxeth Corner. The only building a Victorian would remember is The Half Moon pub, a half-timbered beauty originally named after the shape of the village pond. Its place in history relates to Britain's first fatal car accident in 1899 which, as a plaque elsewhere attests, took place below Harrow School during a descent of Grove Hill. The Half Moon was merely the site of the subsequent public enquiry, hearing how a rear wheel collapsed and two passengers were hurled from their seats, one dying instantly and the other from his injuries three days later. Perhaps unsurprisingly the pub is now an Indian Grill and Shisha Lounge called the Salt Bar, but if you still want a more traditional local try The White Horse a short walk up Middle Hill.

The road rising eastwards here is Roxeth Hill, this the route the 258 bus takes to climb from South Harrow to the upper heights of Harrow School. Full marks to the TfL employee who designated the bus stop halfway up with the letters RH. Roxeth Hill is lined by some of the finer buildings erected as the suburb expanded, from small-scale workers' cottages to Arts and Crafts semis, also rustic Christ Church built to cater to a growing population and set back from the main road. Roxeth Primary still educates pupils in an angular hall built for that very purpose in 1851, indeed it's Harrow's oldest surviving state school. I suspect the triple-bend footbridge shoehorned outside is pupil-related, self-evidently over-engineered when a lollipop lady would do, but the upper span does offer excellent views across the rooftops of Roxeth and the plains of Ruislip.

By contrast the main road south from Roxeth Corner is architecturally grim. Here former pubs and cottages have been replaced by dubious postwar and postmillennial flats, while the former petrol station has become a drab stacked hotel. The largest presence is Harrow Police Station (alas not Roxeth Police Station), an outdated flag-flying office block whose front desk remains at risk of closure. Arguably the big Waitrose is a big improvement on what was on the site before, namely a mighty tall gasholder with the letters 'NO' painted on the side, this because it was a key navigational landmark on the approach to Northolt airfield. The sole attractive building on this stretch is the clubhouse of the Royal British Legion's Harrow branch which was built in 1927 in Dutch style, its bar and function room even busier visually than the twiddly exterior.

Which brings us to the tube station, namely South Harrow, which was opened in 1903 by the District Railway and transferred to the Piccadilly line in 1932. Charles Holden designed the new station building which outside looks to be less of a stunner than usual, but inside has a whoppingly broad ticket hall and a pair of delightful recessed benches halfway up the stairs in case an ascent of 40 steps proves too much. To the north of the station the railway crosses Roxeth Marsh on a low viaduct, hard though it is today to imagine the adjacent avenues as mushy fields. But just down to the left is the source of the River Roxbourne, a minor brook so named because it rises outside Roxeth, and I've previously blogged that in depth so won't dive in again.

More relevant is what's been crammed under the arches immediately opposite the station. This is South Harrow Market, one of London's quirkier retail hideaways, essentially two long alleyways serving a warren of tiny bazaars. Most serve up food, so you may need to push past a delivery driver or two, while others will print you a banner, buy your gold or stab needles in your feet. The curse of AI graphics has struck several of the menus, hence I found the Nepalese and Gujarati pictures less convincing than the proper photos at Syria Food. Again it's a shame it's not called Roxeth Market, given it's right on the edge of the original village, but the nominative pull of the adjacent tube station has proved too strong.

Continue down the Northolt Road and barely any businesses mention the old place, with only Roxeth Library flying the flag. Even the Chiltern Railways station at the foot of the hill was only called 'South Harrow and Roxeth' for the first three years after opening, after which it was renamed Northolt Park thanks to the creation of a neighbouring housing estate, thus Roxeth's chances of long-term renown were scuppered. For a proper commemoration best see the information boards at the entrance to Roxeth Recreation Ground, these a step up from Harrow's normal design. The text confirms that the name "Hroecs Seath" was first mentioned in monastic documents in 845AD, even if nobody's 100% sure what Hroecs Seath meant, also that several trees in the park are leftovers from ancient field boundaries. You have alas missed this year's Roxeth Show, the revival of a 1970s tradition, because that was in July.

Across the railway line from the rec is South Hill Drive, a lengthy avenue whose streetsign has the unusual combination of a 'No Through Road' symbol and underneath "Except by Toll Road". Follow along and all looks normal at first until suddenly the road forks at two white gates, both closed to vehicles unless you have the correct gizmo to open them. The low road enters land owned by the South Hill Estate while the high road enters the Mount Park Estate, another private residential enclave. Both declare that there is NO THOROUGHFARE FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC but fail to clarify whether pedestrians are included so I strode through a side gate, greeted a resident walking down the hill with a Waitrose bag and chanced my arm.

It feels more Surrey than Middlesex, a sylvan climb where villas and minor mansions still feel the need to hide behind high fences and hedges despite supposedly being private anyway. Some have odd names like The Hut (which definitely isn't) or The Site, while others go for supreme Metro-land bland and call themselves Northmount, Southview, Hillcrest or The Oaks. A dozen have been here since the 19th century, a few are totally-out of character modern flats, and I have no idea how residents successfully held suburbia at bay but it's an extraordinary and privileged residential backwater nonetheless. I exited unscathed through a gate near the top of Sudbury Hill, still historically in ye olde Roxeth, another patch of secret London unlocked.

Unblogged August

2026-09-02T07:00:00.000+01:00

31 unblogged things I did in August

Sat 1: I have never previously tried to get ten days' blogposts prepared in advance whilst also writing posts for current publication. Wish me luck finishing the last few by Thursday.
Sun 2: My favourite London meteorological data resource, NW3 Weather, has finally revamped to a modern mobile-friendly template, maybe 10 years later than it should have done. Naturally I hate the new format because nothing fits on a laptop screen any more, so I'm delighted the old version remains if you know where to look.
Mon 3: I've been playing Threes on my phone for 12 years, that's over 22,000 games, and today I finally got my first 3072 tile. My high score more than doubled to 185,148 as a result. Just one more tile to get (maybe never).
Tue 4: Nipped into Stanfords to buy a road map of the Basque Country (Michelin 144). It cost just £6.99 (and will prove incredibly useful because a satnav can't solve everything).

Wed 5: A squirrel turned up on my balcony attracted by a tub of water in a drought. We engaged in a lengthy staring match, then he came right up to the French windows and I tempted him away with an acorn (because I keep a stash too). Much nibbling ensued.
Thu 6: I realised last week that my EHIC health insurance card had expired so sent off for a new GHIC, the post-Brexit equivalent, not thinking it'd arrive in time. It arrived the day before the holiday, hell yes.

holiday unblogged
Fri 7: When we boarded the plane at Gatwick an important man was sitting in my seat so the stewardess relocated the three of us across the aisle. I may never sit in seat 1A again.
Sat 8: The house where we're staying is firmly shuttered to keep out the heat, thus always dark inside. It's not usually 37°C here but apparently full-on shuttering is normal midsummer behaviour.
Sun 9: I note that tattoos aren't generally a thing in the Basque Country, because if they were in this weather I'd have had an eyeful by now.
Mon 10: Other cities' transport networks are often baffling and allow you to make a complete mess of things. I thought I'd done really well at the Txik Txak terminal in Biarritz, successfully buying a group ticket just before the bus departed. However when I showed it to the driver he gestured me off the bus with a Gallic shrug, this because I'd merely shown him my receipt and the ticket was still in the tray. Thankfully he waited while I ran back to collect it.

Tue 11: Portugalete metro station in Bilbao is the furthest west I've been this year. I thought it was a lot further west, but on checking it's merely due south of Lyme Regis.
Wed 12: I was expecting total eclipse day to be a manic panic checking weather forecasts, traffic news and contour maps. Instead the forecast was so perfect that I relaxed all afternoon watching Netflix with the shutters down, then sauntered over to a bar safe in the knowledge that a full solar bite would be unobscured from the precise spot I'd chosen to holiday in. Still can't believe my luck.
Thu 13: Things we saw on TV: several gossipy studio-based shows with half a dozen manicured hosts, very very long ad breaks, Basque TV channels promoting local culture (watch live here), a 2 hour-edition of First Dates (Spanish version), various potboiler dramas, Doc Martin dubbed.
Fri 14: Since 2000 all Spanish numberplates have comprised four digits followed by three consonants, e.g. 9183 LZG. Registrations have been issued sequentially, first 9999 plates ending BBB, then BBC, then BBD, etc. We're currently up to the N's. The earliest number plate I saw was 3123 BDZ on a motorbike and the latest was 2844 NRW on a new white van.
Sat 15: We nearly went to Biarritz today but thankfully checked for local events and discovered it was the day of the big Assumption fireworks so traffic would have been monstrous from mid-afternoon and much of the beachfront would have been sealed off. Monday was much quieter (and much better weather).

Sun 16: As soon as I got home from the airport I made myself beans on toast and had a proper cup of tea. I do miss the cheesy ham pintxos though.
Mon 17: Having successfully taken my laptop to Spain and back, today it awoke with a blue screen of death I'd never seen before, demanding a 32-character BitLocker code. Eek. I didn't have a 32-character code, nor did any of my verification attempts uncover one. Eventually I solved the problem by clicking on 'Skip this drive'... and haven't dared turn off my laptop since.
Tue 18: Just before 11pm my niece gave birth to her first child, instantly making my brother a grandfather. I merely became a great uncle which doesn't feel anywhere near as scarily generational.
Wed 19: The baby's name was revealed, and as expected yes it has been used for a Disney character.
Thu 20: I don't think I've ever seen grass in London looking so dry. This is Wanstead Green looking more like a threadbare carpet of straw.

Fri 21: I loved re-watching the Housemartins documentary London 0 Hull 4, as seen on BBC2's Paul Heaton Night, because the first time I saw it in 1987 I was living half a mile round the corner from 70 Grafton Street where the band formed.
Sat 22: The spout of my kettle has furred up so I decided to give the gauze a scrub. I did this very gently but still managed to break the gauze, hence the kettle now pours much more smoothly but also lets chunks of limescale through, dammit.
Sun 23: The westbound waiting room at New Malden station now has a sign on the door saying 'Calming space' alongside an autism infinity symbol. SWR's Calming Spaces "are waiting rooms which incorporate calming features to create a more inclusive space for customers who are neurodiverse or may have non-visible disabilities." It's a lovely idea, should you be planning on travelling to Surbiton rather than Waterloo, but only brief respite before the utter hubbub of a train carriage.
Mon 24: Today is 40 days after St Swithin's Day, which was dry. I've done my usual check since and can confirm that 33 of the subsequent days were dry, which is the saint's best prediction since 1989 and 1990 (which were also both 33☀️ 7🌧️). It would have been 35 if only I hadn't gone to Norfolk and Romford and been hit by rogue showers.

Tue 25: The long-standing motor vehicle service centre at 169-173 Bow Road has closed and is up for sale. This is because ATS Euromaster Ltd is winding down its UK operations. A sign attached to the gate says "Closed Until Tomorrow", and somebody really should cross out the last two words. The site has a guide price of £1,750,000 and I expect it to be sold for housing. You could easily cram several dozen flats onto this brownfield quarter-acre, and in five years' time I bet somebody has.
Wed 26: I did not open the bottle of champagne given to me when I moved into my flat 25 years ago, a possible option having evaporated, so the wait for a suitable moment continues.
Thu 27: You may remember that last year, rather perversely, I set foot in every London borough at least 40 times. This year I've reached the same total but in August, so who knows how high I can get it by New Year's Eve.
Fri 28: Today my Dad and I got to meet (and hold) the newest member of our family. He's so small, also his nails are surprisingly long, also he wriggles a lot, also I'd like to think that was a smile, also thanks for filling your nappy five minutes before we arrived, also by the time he's my age there still won't have been a total solar eclipse in the UK.
Sat 29: Christmas puddings, festive bakewells and panettone are back on the shelves in Tesco, and obviously I bought six mince pies to celebrate.

Sun 30: Radio 4 Extra repeated an episode of The Grumbleweeds from 1986 (blimey, as late as that?), and I can't believe we found it funny and listened every week.
Mon 31: On Instagram I watched reels of people having a great bank holiday abroad, at festivals, up mountains, at restaurants, on rivers, at airports, at weddings etc and all I did was walk across Selsdon Woods and Southwark Bridge. Must try harder.

TfL FoI requests in August 2026

2026-09-01T08:00:00.000+01:00

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 on Westminster Bridge Road 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.

Belated transport news

2026-09-01T07:00:00.000+01:00

Belated transport news

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.

Basque Country

2026-08-31T09:00:00.000+01:00

THE BASQUE COUNTRY
Bilbao & its transport [70 photos]	San Sebastián & cideria [50 photos]	Biarritz France [40 photos]
VITORIA-GASTEIZ & total solar eclipse [60 photos]		DLR trains
salt valley	La Rioja [←40 photos→]	Pamplona

the Spain/France border

2026-08-31T08:00:00.000+01:00

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 main square 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 the ferry 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 walled town 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.

Saint-Jean-de-Luz

2026-08-31T07:00:00.000+01:00

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 the beach, 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 high street 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 Strength event, 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]

Biarritz

2026-08-30T07:00:00.000+01:00

A Nice Walk: Biarritz (1½ miles)

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 seaside resort 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 south across 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 tourist attraction 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 at sunset, 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.

» 30 photos on Flickr (all along the Nice Walk)

The London Café tube map

2026-08-29T07:00:00.000+01:00

Slim Summer Saturday

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.