Tracking The Tube: District Line: 05: East Ham to Upminster

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Weather: Warm and Sunny to start, becoming cloudy and windy later
Distance Walked: 18.65km
Distance By Tube: 14.63km
Stations Visited:10
Fantastic Place: Mayesbrook Park

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This leg's stations

 I have a week off this week so I plan to get two legs of my tube walk in, as long as the weather stays fair and my two legs can cope with it. Today's walk has one of the longest journeys to and from the actual walk, zone 4 in the west to zone 6 in the east and I will be entering 'here be dragons' territory once I get past Barking (though the LOOP did pass near Upminster station). Barking I know fairly well as that is where my fair wife was living when I first met her.

The walk started by passing through rows of terraced Victorian and Edwardian houses, a theme that would recur through most of the walk, though the quality and size of the properties varied and towards the end the terraces were replaced by larger, semi-detached houses with some interesting details (arched and round windows and brick detailing).

Crossing the very busy North Circular by a footbridge with very awkward shallow steps the next stretch was through a rather unattractive light industrial estate. There were a lot of men hanging around outside Wickes (DIY suppliers) with boxes of tools and occasionally a white van would pull up and a talk to the men and some would get in. I assume that this is a known pick up point for day-labourers. Not much security of income and slightly reminiscent of the way that dock labourers used to be employed.

Barking appears to have been tidied up a bit from when I used to visit on a regular basis with new modern apartments and a vibrant street market with food and shoes being a particular strength of the bit I walked through. Barking station is not attractive, but then none of the stations on this leg were, most being the brick box with flat concrete roof. Barking and Upminster being larger interchange stations were even less attractive than that!

Past Barking Hospital and Upney station the route entered the very attractive Mayesbrook Park. Two large lakes with numerous swans, ducks and geese. It was like a mini Barnes WWT site!

Large Lake in Mayesbook Park

Grazing Goose

If I lived nearby I would spend a lot of time here, wide open spaces birds, water, everything you need in a municipal park. Very neat and tidy too.

Along the long Rugby road to Becontree station I started to notice something I've not seen very much of in London - decorative cement rendering. In the country, if it was done in plaster it would be called pargeting.  I used to see a bit of this when I lived in Norwich and it is common in Suffolk and Essex so I shouldn't be surprised to see it on houses on this leg of the walk, it just looks a bit incongruous on a thirties semi!

One of many houses with pargeting

In the same area I saw the fastest sprayer in the east! On his little buggy this guy was spraying the gullies to control weeds. The car tyres of the residents should also be proof against bindweed etc. as he was not too careful as to where his wand was spraying as he zoomed along the pavement!

Ernie and he drove the fastest sprayer in the east!

Parsloes Park is even bigger than Mayesbrook Park but has only a small formal section, the rest being playing fields and is very flat and a little dull. It is however another large green lung for London and a valuable resource for the locals.

Dagenham Heathway and Dagenham East followed with much more suburban streets before a very wild section running between high fences. To the south it looked like derelict factories while to the north empty parking lots. I assume these were linked with the Ford motor works that were based in Dagenham. After a while the fences were hidden by damson trees, elderberry, hawthorn, wild roses and blackberries. In a week or two you could come down and make a very handy wild harvest here.

The path led into the Chase Nature Reserve a wild area of hummocks, horse droppings and wild life. I almost got twizzled around in this section but found my way out and rejoined the route to Elm Park station.

After stopping for a sandwich as the wind picked up and the clouds gathered I headed along through tree lined streets and larger semi detached properties (and more pargeting) to Hornchurch and Upminster Bridge where the route briefly joined the LOOP.

The last stretch from Upminster Bridge was uphill and I passed Upminster Windmill just before reaching Upminster station and the long journey back to Greenford.

That's the end of the District Line, now for the Northern Line starting at the south end and working my way north. 

Tracking The Tube: District Line: 03: Turnham Green to Monument

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Weather: Warm and sunny
Distance Walked: 19.2km
Distance By Tube: 13.31km
Stations Visited:19
Fantastic Place: Natural History Museum

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19 Stations on this Leg

Magnolia in Bloom

Nice sunny day today and getting quite warm by the time I stepped out at Turnham Green station, which appears to be disguised as a flower stall. The flowery theme continued as I headed towards Stamford Brook with lots of Spring blossom, wisteria, Bachelor's Button and magnolia in bloom.

The route took me past the former nurses' home of the Royal Masonic Hospital, a wonderful Grade II listed building built in the 1930's with all the style and brutal grace that implies. Now converted into luxury apartments which I would imagine sell for a pretty penny.
 
There are a wide range of styles of station building on this part of the district line. From the humble, warm, red brick ones like Ravenscourt Park (one of my favourite Tube Station Charades that I am for some reason asked to do each Christmas Games) through to the modern glass construction of Bishopsgate via the granite fronted, almost hidden entrances of Mansion House. Not sure why this line doesn't have a consistent style like some of the other lines.

Ravenscourt Park itself is another of the great green spaces that I've come across on my various London walks (and fortunately there are far more of these and far less golf courses this far into the city) and it was thronged with children on half term and mothers with prams taking in the balmy spring weather. A very nice garden centre lies near the exit of the park and the entrance to the station which will do brisk business over the next couple of of Bank Holiday weekends no doubt.

Passing under the elevated section of the A4 took me past one of three venues at which I have seen

It will always be the Hammersmith Odeon to me!

gigs at in the past. In this case the Hammersmith Odeon, I'm struggling to remember who I saw here but most recently it was probably Steve Hackett the former Genesis guitarist on one of his solo tours a couple of years ago, I'll have to dig my old programmes and tickets out to see who else I've seen here. Hammersmith station is another of these that are buried inside a shopping centre.

It seems a theme of my walks recently have been hospitals and again on this leg I passed one, Charing Cross to be precise which is right up against the large Margravine Cemetery and the Queens Club tennis court. Barons Court station is one of the more attractive stations, warm soft orange sandstone with ornate lettering. An area of mansion flats follow including the former residence of Mahatma Gandhi before West Kensington station arrives, a small building on the bridge over the tracks.

Passing Earls Court Exhibition Centre (second gig venue of the leg - saw Pink Floyd there) via a very attractive crescent of buildings with pollarded  limes and London Planes before arriving at the other end of Earls Court station from the previous leg.

A stretch of very attractive squares with fenced in communal gardens all full of attractive trees and shrubs, gravel paths and neatly tended bedding follow before Gloucester Road station appears. This is another attractive building built in two styles, a ox-blood red one more reminiscent of the Metropolitan line and a taller yellow brick built building with mosaic lettering below the roof line.

Natural History Museum - London

 The area between Gloucester Road and South Kensington is one of my favourite parts of London and I have probably visited it more times than most areas of London. The Natural History Museum is one of my favourite places and we visit it several times a year. I used to be brought here by one of my big sisters for a birthday treat and I have a photo of me standing in the main doorway when I was about seven. Since then it has been cleaned thoroughly showing off the artfully coloured stone and the detailed carvings of animals, birds and plants. Just beyond it is the Science Museum and the Geological Museum two more frequently visited places and we have continued the tradition by taking two of our young 'god-children' to the Science Museum to educate them in the way to handle long queues! On the other side of the road is the Victoria and Albert Museum which is another treasure trove of delightful objects.

No time to stop today however and so after South Kensington station (with its ornate ironwork entrance), not using the Museum Tunnel this time, there is a longish stretch towards Sloane Square. This included a very attractive stretch around Sprimont Place which includes Grade II listed buildings (Arts and Crafts?) and a lovely village like feel with small shops (including nice looking cheese and fish shops).

Cadogan Hall

Near Sloane Square is Cadogan Hall where I've seen Marillion and Show of Hands. A cracking venue with great acoustics and a good atmosphere for a seated gig.

Sloane Square is best seen around Christmas at night where the trees are all decorated with balls of light. During a bright day the place is a bit like a busy island in the middle of a roundabout despite the upmarket shops and restaurants (and Peter Jones!) that line the streets around the station.

Its a return to quiet residential streets after leaving the hustle and bustle of Slone Square but only for a while. The area around Victoria station is a mass of building sites and busy roads (hence the rubbish picture of the tube station - the street is very narrow there with lots of big lorries going back and forth delivering and taking away materials.

Passing the stripy edifice that is Westminster Cathedral (not to be mistaken for Westminster Abbey which comes up shortly)  the busy Victoria Street leads to the heart of political London as it passes St James Park Station and the now sold off New Scotland Yard (not sure if the next base of the Metropolitan Police Force will be called Brand Spanking new Scotland Yard or not) with the Palace of Westminster, Portcullis House and Westminster Abbey all in close proximity. In fact despite living in London for over half my life I hadn't realised that Westminster Abbey was quite so close to the Houses of Parliament! The place was heaving with tourists and Westminster Station itself, though interesting inside being one of the modern ones for the Jubilee Line extension is rather drab on the outside.

Oliver Cromwell

The Elizabeth Tower

Westminster Cathedral

Arthur Sullivan Bust in Victoria Embankment Gardens

The next stretch was through the very attractive gardens that occupy the ground between the government offices and the Thames on what is the Victoria Embankment. Under this Joseph Bazalgette created the main sewer that cured the 'Great Stink' and due to his foresight in the scale of the sewers means that for thee most part London is rather more fragrant than it would be. Yet all the statues along the gardens tend to be, apart from some rather well designed War Memorials, to be government worthies. Bazalgette just gets a small bust and plaque at a busy road junction near Embankment station.

Next up is Temple Station which serves the Inns of

St George and the Dragon

Court, a rather strange place which I walked through with some trepidation as I wasn't at first sure if it was a public way or not (it was). Blackfriars station is next, a horrible modern, oversized, glass monstrosity out of keeping with the buildings around it and on a busy road junction around it. Next to it is the Blackfriars inn which is in the art nouveau style and is an oasis of peace in this hectic part of London.

Cannon Street and Monument come up quickly and are again modern buildings with little grace or style, the latter being very close to the Monument which marks the start of the Great Fire of London. I've climbed it once and the views are spectacular. I also did a walk that went from the Monument to the furthest edge of the Great Fire taking in many interesting places on the way.

That marked the end of this leg of the walk as it was only a short distance to Bank station for a simple journey back to Greenford on the Central Line. The tube was crowded with an odd mix of suited businessmen and costumed children who had just come from a performance of  Frozen!

Tracking The Tube: District Line: 02: Edgeware Road to Wimbledon

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Weather: Nice and sunny but with a bit of a lazy wind
Distance Walked: 20.8
Distance By Tube: 15.09
Stations Visited:15
Fantastic Place: West Brompton Cemetery

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15 Tube Stations on the leg of the walk

For the second leg of my District Line walk I skipped a bit eastward so I could do the other north-south branch from Edgeware Road to Wimbledon, fifteen stations including a detour to take in Kensington Olympia on it's seldom used branch line from Earl's Court.

There are two Edgeware Road stations, this is the more attractive of the two and has what appears to be the standard, for this part of the line, pale cream glazed brickwork frontage. Interestingly this station was originally part of the Metropolitan railway but now serves the District, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines. Just outside the station was the first of two interesting pieces of public sculpture I was to see on this section of the line.

 The stretch down to Paddington Station passes through the sprawling buildings of one of London's teaching hospitals, St Mary's, very useful if you are playing a game of Pointless in your head trying to find words beginning with a vowel and ending with 'ology'.

Another sculpture outside of the hospital of a cyclist checking his shoe. Odd.

Through the seemingly endless streets of Bayswater lined with stylish mansion flats and squares filled with spring bulbs and early cherry blossom in shades of pink and white and on the corner of one of these streets, the rather fine bust of George Kastrioti-Skandburg.

Bayswater station followed soon after and I was soon in little Athens with a domed Greek Orthadox cathedral and lots of Greek grocery shops.

After Notting Hill Gate station my path took me along Kensington Palace Gardens, part of the Crown Estate, and signs told me in no uncertain terms not to take any photos. Again this was useful practice for Pointless as I tried to guess the embassy from the flag flying outside. Some were simple, Japan, Finland, Russia, others less so, Nepal for example. Israel's was probably the easiest to identify as it was the only one with two Met police officers armed with semi-automatic weapons standing outside.

I moved swiftly on...

High Street Kensington was busy as lunchtime was approaching and there were plenty of interesting buildings in the Art Deco style to admire as I headed back west towards Kensington Olympia. The most striking building was probably Barkers.

The old Commonwealth Institute is being knocked down / refurbished to become part of the design museum. It was one of the first museums I went to when I moved to London, an interesting building but prone to leaks if I recall correctly. 

Kensington Olympia doesn't have a proper sign so I included in the montage the sign that gives it's original name Kensington Addison Road instead.

Heading south east the streets are busier and everything appears a little more shabbier as I arrived at Earl's Court. This was where I saw my first gig, Pink Floyd performing "The Wall." Now the whole exhibition centre is being knocked down to provide non-affordable housing. Shame, many great memories have seeped into the concrete walls of that edifice.

West Brompton is the next station, from the top floors of the nearby Empress State Building (a former client was based there for  time) you have a great view down onto the pitch of Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club.

The next stretch takes you through the slightly wild and overgrown West Brompton Cemetery. Lots of  family tombs, vaults and mini-mausoleums line the main route including the grave of Emmeline  Pankhurst. Some of the tombs would make great entrances for a Dungeons and Dragons game!

After leaving the cemetery you walk round the perimeter of the football ground which sprawls around a bit. The outside of the complex itself is rather an ugly monstrosity at ground level and looks better from above.

The original Fulham Broadway station was a grand brown stone building but this is now closed and the station is buried within a steel and glass shopping centre. Ho hum.

Passing over the interestingly named Eel Brook Common open space, past Parson's Green station and then Parson's Green itself I felt a little deja vu as this reminded me of the Turnham Green and Chiswick Park section with small common areas with the tube line running on an embankment close by.

Putney Bridge station followed soon after and then up a flight of steps to a footpath that runs alongside the train tracks across the Thames, the tide was out, with great views down the river.

South of the river the stations change in style, becoming quaint brick built buildings with the logo of the London and South West Railway above the entrance in carved brickwork along with the date of opening (around 1889-1890) the same date as the building of the railway bridge. Past Southfields the route enters Wimbledon Park which I visited on the Capital Ring walk. The pond was full of ducks and swans being fed by young children well wrapped up against the wind that blew unobstructed across the water. But with the sun reflecting off the ripples and the bulbs and blossom on the trees this was a very enjoyable respite from the suburban streets surrounding it.


Somehow the rod climbs steeply from Wimbledon Park station up Arthur Road to the last stop on this leg of the walk Wimbledon Station.

Next I will return to Turnham Green and explore the District Line as it follows the line of the Thames through the city and out the other side into the lesser known, to me anyway, reaches of Dagenham and Upminster.

Tracking The Tube: District Line: 01 Ealing Broadway to Richmond

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Weather: Cold and grey to start with then brightening up.
Distance Walked:16.2 km
Distance By Tube: 10.14 km
Stations Visited:8
Fantastic Place: The Thames near Richmond

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Third line of my Tracking the Tube project and the first that runs East - West rather than diagonally across London. I think this one will take me the furthest east of all my journeys into places where I would normally write - "here be dragons".

Conversely the walk started in the part of London I know best. Our first flat was a short walk from Ealing Broadway station and it Ealing is still the default setting for when we want to go shopping (which is strange as we are closer to Harrow yet apart from my walking projects we have never been there).

As I didn't walk to spend too much time on streets I knew well I stayed away from the busy Broadway shopping centre, the interesting area around Ealing Studios and the very pleasant Walpole Park instead taking a route through streets lined with tall Edwardian mansions before crossing Ealing Common. The common is bounded on all sides by roads some of which are very busy, so it doesn't have the bucolic air that the name suggests. 

There is a strange bunker like building by Ealing Common station which I assume is a disused and closed up public lavatory. Before long some enterprising soul will convert it into a bijou dwelling with the good transport links into the city close by.

More attractive suburban streets follow the railways including the large sidings outside Acton Town. A short stretch of Carbery Avenue has three houses with what appear to be stone circles in the front gardens. Odd. 

Obelix lives here...

Acton Town station comes up swiftly. I have probably spent several days here changing trains and yet have never until now been outside. It is one of the classic Charles Holden designs of which I will be seeing more as I travel across the network. This example has a massively high ceiling with tall windows and once inside it feels more like a cathedral than a station.
The next section is typical 1930's light industry including several engineering works belonging to London Underground, names I was familiar with from my time supporting their IT systems. After a wait at a level crossing (you go for months without seeing one and then cross two in the space of a hundred paces) I reached Chiswick Park station another Holden design but this one circular and less tall.
After all the light industrial grime of the previous section the short section through to Turnham Green was more pleasant with interesting buildings, some attractive open space including an information panel describing the Battle of Turnham Green which took place there in 1642.

Turnham Green station itself is a small unprepossessing building almost hidden behind a flower stall. Here I turned back on myself to head south of the river towards Richmond rather than carrying on east towards Earl's Court.

The next station, Gunnersbury is almost hidden down a narrow alley between houses as you approach from the east and all that is visible above ground is a tunnel with the name above it.

Heading south towards the Thames I passed a most unexpected sight, a Russian Orthodox church with a splendid blue onion dome.

The picture is a little wonky as I had to climb up a muddy earth bank covered in brambles to get a shot over the chain link fencing that was protecting the tracks..

After passing under the Great West Road the pretty village of Strand on the Green leads on to the Thames itself and a short stretch towards Kew Bridge follows. The river was flowing fast today and there were many swans and other river birds floating along with it.

Kew Bridge

My wife and I are members of Kew Gardens and we have spent many a happy day wandering through them (many a cold Boxing Day walking off the previous day's turkey) but the membership is in her name so instead I took to some of the side-streets. There must be some pressure on the inhabitants of these houses to have pristine front gardens with Kew so close by. Kew Gardens station itself has a pub next door and a range of nice shops (including a good butcher and an independent bookshop). I have suggested on several occasions that the pub (which has windows that look out onto the station platform) should have a serving hatch so people waiting for a train or tube (the line is shared with Overground services) could have a cheeky half!

A short stroll from Kew brought me to Richmond, which I had visited on one of my earlier Capital Ring walks, and the end of this leg of the walk.

With the complexity of the various branches I need to consider carefully how to break up the rest of the line heading east from Turnham Green.