Tubewalker Blog: Blog Archives

The East London line is closed and is going to re-open as part of the London Overground, so I assumed that it wasn’t part of the Tube network any more. Wrong! It turns out that because there is a bus replacement service being run in the meantime by London Underground, the East London line is technically still part of the Tube, and will be until it re-opens.

So… I’ve added the East London line to my tubewalk. It’s one more day, bringing the total to 43 days, and without a doubt the highlight is that the route takes me past the Winchester pub from Sean of the Dead (though in real life it’s called The Duke of Albany, and it’s closed, awaiting demolition.

I’m also going to re-route my Jubilee line walk so it avoids the ferry across the Thames, and instead detours via the Greenwich foot tunnel, as then my entire walk will actually be a walk. Still, that’s a couple of months away, so I’ll worry about that later… because for now, my focus is on Monday, and day one of my tubewalk. I can’t wait!

I’m delighted to say we’ve broken through the £1000 barrier, thanks to some really generous donations. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed, and let’s hope they keep on rolling in, as I’ve now raised the target to £2000.

T-minus six days, and counting…

When you’re walking in the countryside, there’s only one kind of map you need: an Ordnance Survey map. My preferred choice is the orange-covered 1:25,000 Explorer series, whose maps show field boundaries, individual buildings and enough details to make navigation a pleasure. The purple 1:50,000 Landranger maps aren’t bad either, but while OS maps might be the Naz out there in the sticks, they are practically useless in big cities, and they don’t get a lot bigger than Greater London.

The problem is that the individual buildings tend to merge into one big, pinkish blob that smothers the whole map and makes it hard to pick out individual features. Road are shown, of course, but apart from major road numbers (like the A40, A4 and so on) they aren’t named, so you’d be stuffed if you tried to find your way round the City. This isn’t a criticism of the product – OS maps aren’t supposed to be used for city navigation, after all – but it does mean I’ve had to look elsewhere for inspiration.

The obvious place to look is the London A-Z, and I’m now the proud owner of the Big London A-Z, which covers almost all of the Tube in a ring-bound format, so I can rip off the pages I need and take them with me. Indeed, the A-Z scores heavily over OS maps, not just on road names, but also footpaths. OS maps don’t show that many paths in urban London, and they’re only obvious when they’re rights of way (of which there aren’t many), so it’s often impossible to know where you can walk; the A-Z, however, shows paths everywhere, and that makes life much easier for the urban stroller.

So I’ve got my paper maps, but I designed all my routes in Google Maps, so the next stage is to get my route into a format I can take with me. The obvious answer is to get an iPhone and hook up to my website as I walk, but I’m waiting for the 3G version, due later in the summer, so until then I’m stuck with paper. Luckily Google Maps print out pretty well; using the full screen versions of my route maps, I’m able to zoom in to a reasonable level of detail, and using the ‘Map’ mode, I can print out a street map showing my route and all the points of interest I’m going to pass on the way. I’ve just added a new feature – the ‘Labels’ button – which turns on all labels in a map, but sets them to be slightly opaque so you can still see the map beneath. It’s not perfect, but it does mean you can print out route maps, complete with labels, that work well in conjunction with the A-Z (or, for the outer regions in the countryside, OS Explorer maps). Here’s the first section of my first day’s walk, ready to print out:

For fun, I’ve also added a ‘Tube’ button that toggles the display of the Tube line. If nothing else, it’s useful for demonstrating just how drunken my routes are. Here are the northern reaches of the Northern line, showing my walking route in blue and the Tube line in red, along with details of any interesting points along the way:

Now all I have to do is print them out on my cheapo colour inkjet printer, stick them in a waterproof wallet, and off I go. Let’s just hope I don’t run out of ink…

I’ve just received a very generous donation, and I can’t let it pass without a big thank you. My mate Bal has reached into his pocket – well, OK, his company’s pocket, if you’re going to be technical – and fished out five hundred notes for the cause. To say this is generous is an understatement; thank you Bal, I really appreciate it.

As the donation is on behalf of Bal’s company, Odin Solutions, I’ll be putting something suitably sycophantic on this site to make sure such generosity doesn’t go unnoticed, but in the meantime I’m happy to report that the total has reached a whopping £945, and I haven’t even started walking yet.

I guess that means I can’t cop out now, eh Bal?

I’ve just added two new features to my tubewalk website, which you might find interesting.

The first is a full screen button for my route maps. Until now, you’ve only been able to view my route maps in a rather pokey manner, like this:

But not now! Simply click on the ‘Expand map’ link to expand the map to fill your browser window, and click on ‘Shrink map’ to go back again. Here’s an example of the same route in all its full screen glory. 

The second new feature is a bit more interesting; it’s a tubewalk planner. Simply choose two Tube stations you’d like to walk between, and the planner will work out the shortest tubewalk from one to the other, showing you the distance in miles, how many stations you pass through, and a link to a route map. If you only choose one Tube station, then the planner will work out all possible routes starting (or ending) at that station. The planner is in its early stages, but it’s still fun to play with; the route above, which is from Amersham to Epping, is the kind of thing that the tubewalk planner can produce.

Oh, and for the technically minded out there, the planner uses Dijkstra’s algorithm to work out the shortest path between two points in the Tube network. I knew that computing degree would come in handy one day…

It’s taken weeks of poring over maps and avoiding sunlight, but I’ve finally finished planning my tubewalk. All my route maps now contain points of interest (or, in the quieter parts, just points); simply zoom in a little to see them magically appear. For example, here’s the map for my first day of tubewalking along the Metropolitan line, and you can see that one of the places I’ll be visiting will be the site of the 7 July London bus bomb:

I’ve added over 1350 points to my route, and here are just some of the highlights:

• World Firsts: I’ll be walking past the site of the first V2 Rocket Explosion, the site of the first ever Tesco store, the UK’s first McDonald’s and Nando’s, and the world’s very first Hard Rock Café.
• The Beatles in London: Not only will I be passing the studio where the Beatles failed their Decca audition and were told that guitar bands were ‘on the way out’, but I’ll also be wandering past Apple Corps headquarters, whose roof hosted their final live performance on 30 January 1969, and the zebra crossing on the cover of Abbey Road.
• Musical Connections: As if that wasn’t enough, I’ll be visiting the birthplace and childhood home of David Bowie at 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton, the London homes of Elton John and Freddie Mercury, and the spot where the Spice Girls made their first TV performance.
• TV and Film Landmarks: I’ll be strolling past the location of the Big Brother house from series 1 & 2, Bridget Jones’s house, the former Big Breakfast cottage and John Steed’s flat in the Avengers.
• Murder Most Foul: There’s not one, or two, but three Jack the Ripper murder sites en route, plus the Blind Beggar pub, scene of a notorious murder by the Krays.
• Miscellaneous: I’ll also be visiting Moxon Street (of course), the Bank of England printing works (a place that genuinely has a licence to print money), and the former home of the Earth’s worst poet (according to Douglas Adams, anyway).

Obviously the list isn’t complete, so if you know of any fascinating places I’m walking past and I haven’t included them on my maps, do drop me a line. Similarly, if you spot a mistake, do let me know, as I can’t guarantee my sources are totally accurate (hell, I’ve been using the Internet!).

My next plan is to add a tubewalk planner, so you can plan your own tubewalks at the click of a mouse button, but first I need to start training. Going straight from the couch to a 400-mile walk might be pushing it a bit…

There I was, minding my own business in the crush of this morning’s commute, and it struck me that in exactly a month’s time, I’ll be heading for my starting point at Aldgate East, ready to walk the Metropolitan line. Time is clearly flying by.

It’s going to be a busy month, too. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been beavering away, adding points of interest to my tubewalking database. I’ve only got the Piccadilly, Victoria and Jubilee lines to go, and then I’ll be able to publish the results here. So far I’ve collected details of over 1100 noteworthy places I’ll be walking past, and they’re really starting to bring the walk alive. It’s developing a completely different vibe to my walk from Land’s End to John o’Groats, where my chief obsessions were daily mileage and the state of my blisters; this time it feels more like an extended sightseeing trip than a back-breaking challenge, and I’m rather enjoying it.

I’m also planning to break in my new trainers, which are left over from the days when I thought I’d be working from home on a regular basis. The idea was that I’d pop out for an afternoon jog to help ward off cabin fever, but even though I bought a flash pair of trainers at the London Marathon shop, I started working away from home and the jogging fell by the wayside (as it always does – you think I’d have worked out by now that me and jogging are just not made for each other). Happily these trainers are perfect for long days trudging along on the tarmac, and I’ll be saving my more traditional walking boots for the outer regions of the Metropolitan and Central lines, which are surprisingly rural.

Oh, and I’ve got to work out how to use my GPS and digital camera, so I can record what’s going on. I’m going to need a holiday after all this preparation; a nice walk should do the trick.