Tubewalker Blog: Blog Archives

Now that I’ve designed my route, I’ve been slowly adding points of interest to each section, and I have to say I’m really enjoying myself. I originally designed my route to go via as many interesting spots as I could find, weaving around through suburban parks, along urban rivers, past the sites of historical events and via as many famous landmarks as I could cram into a sensible day’s walk; but it’s only now that I’m annotating my maps that I’m getting properly excited, because it’s gradually dawning on me just how interesting this walk is going to be. In London, there are interesting stories every few yards, just one reason why urban walking is refreshingly different from walking in the countryside.

Part of the reason I’m discovering so much about London is Wikimapia. This wiki-powered site shows a Google map of the world that visitors can mark up with information that shows what the buildings in the map actually are. It’s particularly good in central London, where you can simply hover your mouse over the satellite images to find out the names of buildings, rivers, pubs a whole lot more. Here’s me discovering the spot where the last person was killed in England for being a witch, just to the west of the Inns of Court in Temple:

The database is, of course, far from complete, but there is a huge amount of information in there already, and without it I wouldn’t have had a clue that my route takes me past the sites of three Jack the Ripper murders, the place where the first V2 rocket hit London, and the London residences of Elton John and the late Freddie Mercury (to name just a few interesting spots).

Also invaluable has been Multimap, whose maps contain more placenames than any others that I’ve found. Multimap is particularly good on the names of parks and recreational grounds, and it’s much better than Google at showing footpaths (though its satellite shots are pretty poor, so Google still wins there). Add in the maps and guidebooks I bought at the start of this project, and I’ve got access to a massive amount of information about where I’m walking.

The trick now is to get it into the website in time for June. I’ve managed to add some 600 points of interest to the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City, District and Circle lines, and I’ll publish these on site once I’ve polished up the results. Now I just need to add points to the rest of the lines, and that will be all the planning done. I’ll need a nice long walk after all this mouse clicking, I can tell you…

One of the more enjoyable parts of my walking life comes when I publish the results on the Web. For me, part of the thrill is knowing that I’ll be able to go back in years to come and remind myself of the good (or bad) times, and being English, I thoroughly enjoy wallowing in nostalgia. But another happy aspect is when people get in touch and say they really like my site… and by the way, just how did you get your route into Google Maps? For those with a technical bent, here’s a quick overview. I’m going to assume you’re reasonably familiar with the way the Google Maps API works; if this means nothing to you, then you clearly have a life, and might want to go off and enjoy it for the rest of this post…

Getting your route online can be a bit of a trauma, especially if you haven’t already done your walk and recorded it on a GPS. With this in mind, I’ve designed my tubewalking routes digitally from the start, and to test the process, I started by producing a geographical map of the Tube.

First up, I needed a decent paper map of the Underground. The iconic Tube map is a start, but it’s only schematic and bears little relationship to the geography of the Tube, so I bought a set of Ordnance Survey Explorer maps, covering London in 1:25,000 detail. These maps show all the Tube stations, and when the Tube lines are above ground they show the lines too, so armed with a general idea of where the Tube lives, I set off to map the Underground in Google Maps.

As if reading my mind, Google added a new feature to Google Maps just as I was starting to think seriously about digitising my tubewalk. This feature, called My Maps, allows you to create routes and points on the Google Maps and save them, all using a standard web browser. So I started by creating a point for each Tube station, and then I simply drew straight lines between the stations, one for each of the 300+ legs of my tubewalk. Then, for each leg, I edited this line to follow the geographical route of the Tube, and I eventually ended up with a geographical map of the Underground, saved in My Maps. Here’s the Metropolitan line between Northwood and Northwood Hills; you can see that it’s pretty obvious when above ground, and is easy enough to trace:

But how to get this onto my website? The answer lies in My Maps’ ability to export your maps to Google Earth. Click on the ‘View in Google Earth’ link and your browser will save a KML file to your computer that you can load into Google Earth to view your map; look inside this KML file and you’ll see a URL pointing to your map on the Google server, and if you replace all the occurrences of & with an unescaped & and then paste the resulting URL into your browser, your browser will save a KML file to your computer containing all the points and routes you’ve painstakingly entered into My Maps.

Including a Google Map in your own site is the subject for a book in its own right – see Mike Williams’ excellent Google Maps API Tutorial for details – but if you’ve got a decent text editor and know how to use search and replace, it’s fairly straightforward to convert your KML file into XML, ready to be sucked into your Google Maps mash-up and displayed on site. That’s how my 2D map of the Underground works, by importing XML files like this one for the Bakerloo line (you might have to View Source in your browser to see the XML) and displaying the results using the Google Maps API.

I used an identical system to digitise my walking route, though this time I used various maps and guidebooks to design the route before entering it into My Maps. Some of the sections weave around to take in the sights and some are more direct, but technologically speaking they’re all routes in My Maps, just like the geographical Tube map. Here’s me editing the route on the Piccadilly line west of Boston Manor:

This system works fine, and it’s how the maps on my Land’s End to John o’Groats site work (though when I digitised these routes, My Maps didn’t exist, so I had to write my own, extremely crude version, which did the job, but only at the cost of my sanity). However, things are a little more involved on my Tubewalker site, because I wanted to write an application that could take an arbitrary sequence of Tube stations and output the walking route between them (because in the not-too-distant future I’m going to be offering a tubewalk planner for those wanting to design their own tubewalks, and this needs to be able to display arbitrary routes easily).

So, instead of static XML files, I’ve put all my route information into a MySQL database and written a PHP application that accepts a list of station numbers (starting at 0 for Acton Town, 1 for Aldgate and so on) and returns the XML for the walking route between those stations. This is in exactly the same format as the static XML above, but it’s dynamically generated.

To take an example, consider the route on the Metropolitan line from Aldgate to Liverpool Street to Moorgate. In my database, these stations have IDs 1, 138 and 150 respectively, so the URL to display the walking route is:

www.tubewalker.com/route/map.php?route=1-138-150

Under the bonnet, map.php takes the route argument and passes it on to another PHP application, map_xml.php, which returns the XML for this route (again, you might have to View Source in your browser to see the XML):

www.tubewalker.com/route/map_xml.php?route=1-138-150

This is passed into the Google Maps API in the same way as the static XML file I used for the geographical Tube map, and works because the XML loader simply takes a URL as an argument, and it doesn’t care whether this points to a static file or dynamically generated XML.

For the final stage I added shortcuts for the line names, so:

www.tubewalker.com/route/map.php?route=metropolitan

shows the Metropolitan line, and there’s also support for a tube parameter that shows the Tube lines instead of the walking route:

www.tubewalker.com/route/map.php?route=metropolitan&tube=1

And that, in a very tight nutshell, is how my maps work. The next step is to enter all the points of interest I hope to visit into My Maps, export these into the database, and add them to the output, along with some toggle switches to hide them. Watch this space…

Every walker knows that beer is a wonder fuel, but apparently it’s now official. In the latest edition of First Draught, the magazine of the Fuller’s Fine Ale Club, there’s an article called ‘Beer in a healthy lifestyle’ that reckons beer is a Good Thing, especially for people like marathon runners and long-distance walkers. Here’s why:

• New research by Danish doctors reveals that people who exercise and drink moderately (in their study, up to 14 units of alcohol a week) are at less risk of heart disease then teetotallers. 15-love!
• According to the Beautiful Beer campaign, ‘you can enjoy beer after exercise as the high water content – as much as 95% of the drink – will help to re-hydrate,’ though they do add that ‘it is probably wise to slake the thirst straight after vigorous exercise with a pint of water before drinking beer,’ as well as sticking to sensible limits. 30-love!
• Oh, and apparently ‘beer also contains anti-oxidants, vitamins and minerals, including dietary silicon, which may help to build bone density and protect against osteoporosis.’ It also contains carbohydrates, which exercisers need, though perhaps it’s too much to suggest a diet of beer is as good as a diet of pasta. 40-love!

Add to this the undeniable fact that beer is a muscle relaxant and a mood enhancer, and it seems perfectly clear to me that beer should be a part of every healthy walker’s routine. Game, set and match!

It comes as a bit of a relief, that…

At last, I’ve managed to come up with a walking schedule for my summer tubewalk. My proposed walking route – which I’ve now added to the left-hand navigation – comes to a grand total of 402 miles, which I’ve split into 42 pleasant walking days, varying from 4.5 miles for the shortest day to a whopping 13 for the longest. This is a considerably shorter than a typical day on my Land’s End to John o’Groats jaunt, where the daily distance ranged from 6.5 to 24 miles, but this time the emphasis is on quality, not quantity. Besides, there are more pubs in London than in the countryside, and it would be rude to avoid them.

If you want to see what each day looks like, then check out the new sections on my site. There’s one for each line, and in there you can find a complete walking route for each line, as well as routes for each of the 42 walking days. If anyone out there fancies joining me for a jaunt, just let me know; and if I’m walking through your neck of the woods and you’re planning to be there, then I’m always up for a medicinal ale or two at the end of the walking day. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

My next blog post will be a rather technical look at how I created these maps, for which I apologise in advance. Though only a bit.

Here’s a sneak preview of the walking routes I’m planning to take on each line:

• Bakerloo
• Central
• Circle
• District
• Hammersmith and City
• Jubilee
• Metropolitan
• Northern
• Piccadilly
• Victoria
• Waterloo and City

I’ve weaved around to take in as many points of interest as I can, and my next task is to add those points of interest to each map (as then they might make a bit more sense). I’m also going to calculate the length of each leg, work out how far I can comfortably walk in a day, and then turn this into a schedule. My current thinking is that I might walk the lines in chronological order of their opening, so I’m effectively walking through Tube history, but we’ll see whether that works.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy them; I’ve been working on these routes since before Christmas, and it’s a considerable relief to have them done…

My tubewalk has been blogged, and it was a lot less painful than it sounds. I’ve also received my first few donations, and a big thanks to everyone who’s put their hands in their pockets. I love you, just in a hands-off kind of way.

My first blog mention is courtesy of a walker for whom I have nothing but admiration. I met Alan Sloman via my Land’s End to John o’Groats website, while he was planning his Big Walk of 2007 (a 1687-mile hike from south to north). His blog is a great read, and not only has he given me a right royal write-up, he’s dug into his own pockets and donated to the cause. What a nice man.

Another nice man who’s blogged me is Daryl May, who is currently walking from John o’Groats to Land’s End, having done it the other way round last year. Daryl, who hails from sunny Florida, is another LEJOGger whom I met through my site, and his blog is a fun read, particularly for those of us who’ve done the End-to-End. Ah, the memories! Thanks for mentioning my tubewalk, Daryl, and here’s to a celebratory ale or two when you make it back to London.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to publish my walking route in the next day or so, so you can see exactly what I’m planning. Then I’ll tot up the miles, break it down into days and come up with a schedule, so if anyone fancies joining me for a station or two, you’ll be able to take your pick. Everyone’s welcome!