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!

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 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…

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…

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…

Momentous news (well, it is for me). At the end of last week I finished mapping the last stretch of my tubewalk, and this week I hope to publish my proposed route right here, in the form of a collection of Google Maps, one for each line. The next step is to add the points of interest I’m hoping to visit en route, but I’m just relieved that the biggest chunk of planning is done and dusted.

For those who are interested, I’ll explain how I created the routes when I publish them. Non-nerds might want to look away…

How do you go about planning a walk along a huge network like the Tube? You start off with some research, and here are the books and maps I’ve found most useful over the last few months.

The good old Tube map is an obvious place to start, particularly as it was recently updated to include the London Overground, and it’s important to plan a walk like this with the most up-to-date version. I’m not walking the Overground or the Docklands Light Railway, as they aren’t part of London Underground, but if I’d used last year’s map, I’d still be walking the East London line, which was closed at the end of last year and will be incorporarated into the Overground. In this case, it pays to be current.

Second, I picked up a copy of Christian Wolmar’s The Subterranean Railway, a very readable history of the Tube that’s particularly good on the very early days of the Metropolitan and District lines, as well as the development of Metro-land along the further reaches of the Metropolitan. I finished the book feeling rather fond of the old Tube, which is a good sign.

Third, I wanted a map of central London showing points of interest and walking opportunities, and I found an excellent one by Andrew Duncan, author of a number of popular walking guides to the capital. His London Walks Map details loads of walks in and around London, all on one handy map, and where his route and mine coincide, I’ve doffed my hat and followed him with gratitude.

Along the way I’ve picked up a number of other books, including the following:

• London’s Underground by John Glover: A detailed reference book on the Tube that’s not as readable as The Subterranean Railway, but which is crammed with useful facts

• City Secrets: London by Tim Adams: This guidebook contains a number of relatively unknown attractions throughout the capital, some of which I’ve tried to visit in my route planning

• Secret London by Andrew Duncan: Contains a few walking routes, but as it’s mostly text, it has proved less useful than his excellent London Walks Map

• What’s in a Name? by Cyril M. Harris: This thin tome explains the origin of each Tube station’s name, and is more interesting than it might sound

• One Stop Short of Barking by Mecca Ibrahim: A humorous look at the Tube, unfortunately written with a sense of humour that is incompatible with mine

All of these books and maps are available through Amazon, and I can particularly recommend The Subterranean Railway and the London Walks Map. I owe them a considerable debt.

It’s typical. The day after I launch a new website, I find that my web server has been invaded by some kind of malicious robot, intent on filling my server with pages selling ring tones. How did that happen? I have no idea, but I’ve spent the last few days moving my websites to a different server, changing all the login details, and eradicating all trace of the bloody thing.

Annoyingly, this means I haven’t had time to actually do any tubewalk planning, which is a shame because I’ve got loads of it to do. If I’m to walk the entire Tube network, then if I include the new Heathrow Terminal 5 station, by my reckoning there are 309 walks between neighbouring Tube stations. I might have to omit the Heathrow stations, as they’re inaccessible by foot (particularly when you’ve got a beard and a backpack), but even so, that means I’ve got plan some 306 individual walks, complete with points of interest. Still, I like a challenge.

I’ll let you know how I get on…