Weather: Grey & Cold
Distance Walked: 15.1 km
Distance By Tube: 10.2 km
Stations Visited: 15
Fantastic Place: Little Venice
I'm a bit late in blogging this walk (about a month!) so my memories are not as clear as they could be. What I do remember is that walking through the centre of London including Oxford Street on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, a couple of weeks before Christmas, was perhaps not my smartest idea! Fifteen stations today on this section so plenty of stop starting which added to the lack of flow and enjoyment on this leg.
Maida vale station has an interesting mosaic roundel in the foyer above the stairs that lead down to the platforms and the streets nearby are full of what I assume to be Edwardian mansion blocks each with distinctive plasterwork or possibly moulder brick decorations, very attractive. There are a number of blue plaques on this walk including in this area one for David Ben Gurion and another for Alan Turing. After the well hidden Warwick Park station (no buildings above ground just a pair of stairwells, you reach Little Venice which to me is more Little Amsterdam as I've never been to Venice. Narrow bridges over this arm of the Grand Union canal lead to a wide basin full of attractive barges.
Leaving the canal and a modern 'urban living' quarter with shops, offices and probably very expensive flats behind there is a labyrinth of roads to negotiate before arriving at Paddington Station (another blue plaque nearby indicates where penicillin was discovered) followed by more busy streets, ugly flyovers and then Edgeware Road station. The fact that there are two Edgeware Road stations must cause endless confusion for tourists!
A stroll along Marylebone Road leads via a detour to Marylebone Station itself which is linked to a nearby hotel by a ornate glazed covered walkway. Baker Street and Regent Park follow in quick succession.
Before reaching Oxford Circus I passed Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC. It gets a lot of bad press from some quarters but I would certainly prefer to live in a country that has something like the BBC rather than one that didn't. The area around Oxford Circus was absolutely rammed with people grabbing a quick lunch and shopping for presents and it took ages to get a snap of the station that didn't have a bus in the way!
A quick stroll along Carnaby Street with its range of fashionable shops that I would never be seen
dead in (those who know me and my idiosyncratic fashion sense will understand this!) but the area is attractive with several interesting murals and mosaics.
Piccadilly circus is another station that doesn't have any above ground presence - surprising for such an important interchange. On then to Charing Cross, another terminus and then a very short walk down to Embankment station before crossing the Thames to Waterloo.
The wind along the Thames was cold and penetrating but the skies were starting to clear, but not the crowds packing the Southbank.
After Waterloo the crowds thinned slightly and the last two stations as well as the Imperial War Museum came up quickly. Got a bit lost and confused in the maze of tunnels around Elephant and Castle but eventually managed to find the right set of platforms for my journey back up the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus and thence back home.
Two lines down now, both diagonal from north west to south east. The District line follows for a more west to east alignment but with several branches to add complexity to the planning.
