Tracking the Tube: Jubilee Line 04: Neasden to Stanmore

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Weather: Very Warm
Distance Walked: 17.01 km
Distance By Tube: 10.2 km
Stations Visited: 6
Fantastic Place: Canons Park

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Another year and finally I've completed the Jubilee line.

Guess who forgot to photograph Stanmore Station!

I wasn't looking forward to this leg. From the map it looked like a tough start finding a route next to the very busy North Circular Road and then on through a busy industrial area. This would be followed by lots of dull suburbia walking beside more roads. Now that I only do a few walks a year I'm getting more fussy about the ones I do do and in some ways I resented that this would be possibly one of my final walks of the year.

I wasn't wrong about the start! Grim walking by very busy roads with lots of pollution. At least I had scanned Google Streetview for the start and spotted the alley that took me alongside the A406. Then more walking through light and medium industrial areas, including cement works, and building site after building site. But even here there were moments of beauty, a trailing passionflower draped over a metal fence and a sculpture of a dandelion clock over the River Brent. 

Don't think I'll blow on this one!

The Brent looking rather pretty

I would have liked to get closer to Wembley Stadium but the whole area appears to be one large construction site where flats and apartments are being built in their hundreds if not thousands. I managed to glimpse the arch and had a view back along Olympic Way but that was about it. Some day I will go to a match at Wembley, I can see it from the windows of our loft bedroom and when lit up I can see it when I walk up the hill from Greenford Station, but despite living in London for 30 years I've 'not got round to it.'

The Arch

Olympic Way

New hotel going up alongside Olympic Way

Once past Wembley Park station things got a lot better, less building sites and nice front gardens. Even better was the open expanse of Fryent Country Park. A gentle climb to a ridge that overlooks this part of North London. 

Unlike Kate Bush I was not running up that hill

Damsons

This is London

Lots of mature trees and wide open spaces. At this time of year the hedgerows are full of blackberries, apples (probably from discarded cores) and damsons. Flitting round theme were lots of butterflies, moving to fast to photograph or identify though one might be a small brown. Several very happy dogs being taken for a walk seemed to be enjoying the summer sun and my spirit began to lift. After finding the way out of the park I dropped down into Kingsbury with it's busy row of shops where everyone appeared to be out. Lots of Asian and Caribbean shops with stacks of fresh fruit and vegetables, Asian sweetshops with their pyramids of golden delicacies and everything else you need on a high street. 

Continuing north towards Queensbury via the very attractive Queensbury Park where they have a set of outside exercise equipment. I think these are a good idea, shame they weren't in use. The park also had a nice wetland area with a pond nestling in the centre. The reeds and flowers were busy with dragonflies. with swifts flitting across the water hunting for insects.

Urban wetlands - a vital resource for wildlife

After Queensbury station, a smaller quieter version of Kingsbury, I continued north to Canons Park station and the park of the same name beyond it. This turned out to be the highlight of the walk even thiugh the walled George V memorial garden was closed.

Geoge V Memorial Garden

More building works around Stanmore station, this time for retirement flats, and then a handy bus home after what turned out to be a very pleasing walk.  

So another line has been completed so I'll need to give some thought to what I do next. Waterloo and City for a quick jaunt during the winter? The H&C line, most of which has been done as part of other lines? The Victoria Line which should be able to be knocked off in a couple of days? Or the more substantial PIccadilly Line where it doesn't run alongside the Met Line given that the Central line is being left last? Answers on a postcard to the usual address!

Walking The Thames Path: Section 1: Source to Cricklade

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Weather: Sunny, Very Warm
Section Length: 19.7km
Fantastic Place: Ashton Keynes

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The Route

Background
The Thames has played a large part in my life. I've lived in London for over half my life now and most of the IT projects and companies I've worked for have been on or near the Thames. My family grew up in Stroud so the Cotwolds were often a holiday destination for me as a child and I still visit there today to see some of those relations that didn't emigrate to Australia. Given that it is a bit strange that I have not formally walked any of the Thames Path. Sure I've walked part of in while going to work, visiting galleries and museums and some sections formed part of the LOOP, especially out towards the east of the city. As a supplement to my Walking the Lines project, I thought I could add the Thames Path to my list of walks. It is unlikely that I will walk it in any structured way, or in any particular order. The western sections will be done while on holiday in the Cotswolds while the London sections will be done possibly during the winter, hopefully dragging Liz along with me.
However, it seemed to make sense by starting the project with the first section while we were on holiday in Stroud.

Finding the Source
A journey of 294km starts with a single step or so they say and this first step was taken in the carpark of the Thames Head pub where Liz dropped me off so she could enjoy a day of browsing and letter writing in Cricklade where I would meet her later. So the start of the walk was alongside the rather busy A433 which follows the line of the Roman Foss Way. Glad to be off the major road I was then confronted with a foot crossing across a high-speed railway line. Fortunately, views in both directions were good and I was able to cross without difficulty. During my walk along the LOOP, I occasionally had to cross busy roads at the end of a long walk and getting any sort of sprint at that stage was much harder!

The path to the source of the Thames is unclear and there was no sign of any water, just a lot of cows. Then I glimpsed in the distance a stone block that looked promising and soon I was standing at the official source of the Thames.

It's all downhill from here.

Move along, nothing to see here.

 A small depression lined with stones which occasionally after a very wet season will contain the start of the Thames. Looking back along the meadow I could just make out a small dip that would be the path of this infant stream that eventually flows out into the sea nearly 300km to the east.

After dribbling a few drops of water from my bottle onto the stones I headed off east. The meadow was full of cows and the surrounding fields golen with oil seed rape.

Spot the Thames

None Shall Pass

Liquid Gold

The path leads back to the Foss Way and on the other side the path of the Thames is better defined and you can imagine water in it if there had been a wetter winter and spring than the one we had this year.

Just a few hundred paces after the road I could see water in the stream bed. The famous Lyd Well is often the first point where water reliably bubbles up into the Thames. A bit further on the Thames had become a proper stream, shallow and wide but flowing over a pebbly bed and crossed by a bridge.

First Proper Bridge

The Infant Thames

The Lakes of Ashton Keynes
The path follows the meandering stream closely for the next few kilometres through woodland redolant with wild garlic, past ponds with flag iris lining the banks and under powerlines striding across the landscape.

The pretty village of Ashton Keynes is surrrounded by numerous lakes, created by gravel extraction and now flooded and used for fishing and other leisure activities. Some of these lakes are fringed with gated communities and there are a lot of Private signs that don't add up to a relaxing walk. Ashton Keynes itself is a small but very pretty Cotswold stone village where the Thames flows through a stone lined channel, the first sighting of the river for some time, the channel having been swallowed up by the lakes, and the last for a while as more lakes follow on the otherside of the village.

The Thames near Ashton Keynes

At this point I was getting a little tired of the zig-zagging between the lakes but I was amused to see a sign warning of quicksand!

Cricklade - Twinned with Mos Eisley
We had visited Cricklade once a couple of years before as we drove back to London from an Autumn break. When I pointed out the young Thames Liz wouldn't have it, until I pointed out a plaque on the bridge. Before this walk Liz read me a section of William Cobbett's "Rural Rides" where he described Cricklade in 1821 as "a more rascally looking place I never set my eyes on." All I can say is that he had not been out much! The approach to this small town is across a wonderful wildflower strewn meadow which has been protected as a wildlife reserve since the 1970s. Cricklade itself is quite pretty with a number of historic pubs, some useful shops and a very nice cafe where I had a welcome drink and late lunch with Liz while I considered when I'd be able to tackle the next section down to Lechlade.

Tracking the Tube: Jubilee Line 03: Neasden to Green Park

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Weather: Blooming Hot!
Distance Walked: 17.7 km
Distance By Tube: 10.2 km
Stations Visited: 11
Fantastic Place: Grunwick Mural @ Dollis Hill Station

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It's just about a year since I walked the previous leg of the Jubilee Line - as I mentioned before I now work five, sometimes six days a week so the frequency that I can walk for pleasure has gone down. The brightest amongst you will have noticed that this leg is walked the wrong way - I have been walking east to west but this one goes from west to east. Two reasons for this - I didn't thing Neasden was going to be a pleasant place to stop for lunch and I needed to pick up some emergency supplies from Games Workshop in town so those two factors suggested a switch-a-roonie of the route. I won't let it happen again!

 

The Stations en-route

So on one of the hottest days of one of the hottest days on record I set off to sunny Neasden. The start of the walk took me through some rather grimy industrial areas including several skip hire companies - they have to be based somewhere I suppose and the proximity to the North Circular is a probable draw. While I worked on the LUL IT systems back around the millennium I paid a visit to the Neasden depot and was shown the only level crossing on the London Underground network. Ok, it's in the depot but it is a proper level crossing with lights and barriers.

All I knew about Dollis Hill was that one of my favourite guitarists Steve Hackett and his brother John lived there for a time, it's the sort of place you flash through on the tube without looking up. Having now walked through it my opinion has been revised, it is in fact, quite attractive with the large Gladstone Park on the north side of the railway a key feature.

Just by the station is a large mural commemorating the Grunwick Strike which by one of those strange coincidences took place in 1976 the famous long hot summer of my childhood against which all other summers have been judged. Along with the Miners' strike which took place during my time studying geology in Cardiff (went down a coal mine the week before the strike and this made me realise what a hot, hard and horrendous job the miners did), has coloured my political thinking ever since.

The majority of the area is nice Edwardian terraces and semi-detached houses along quiet leafy streets seemingly populated solely by cats! Between Dollis Hill and Willesden Green, I saw at least four cats sunning themselves in gardens, on walls and even in the middle of the road. 

I had confused Willesden Green with the grotty Willesden Junction (of many a delayed journey into work fame) and was therefore pleasantly surprised again by the surroundings of this majestic station. Opposite the station was an appropriately cat themed mural.

More pleasant suburban streets stretched out between Willesden Green and Kilburn - I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as we aren't that far from Hampstead - in fact, some of the older tiled street signs still said Hampstead rather than Camden on them.

View down the tracks towards Kilburn

Bowls Club Clubhouse

The busy interchange at Kilburn stands on the A5 which is named here Shoot-Up Hill and has multiple viaducts casting welcome shadows over the station opposite which were more murals.
The next stretch along the former Roman road which is now the A5 was hot and busy even though it was only just 10am so turning off and walking through the leafy Kilburn Grange Park was a nice relief. Another cat, this one in a shady catbox on the steps outside its house, was enjoying a doze in the sun before a stretch of uphill walking brought me to West Hampstead station near which is Lillian Baylis house, the rehearsal rooms for the English National Opera.

Nice Orange Saab - Classic

Hampstead Street Art? Owl or Ironing Board?

The Swiss Cottage

The next stretch felt familiar from many days of playing D&D with my Hampstead pals and a stretch of the busy Finchley Road down to the odd Swiss Cottage. Stuck in the middle of a traffic island between the A41 and the Finchley Road it looks a bit lost and difficult to photograph.

The next stretch continued southwards through ever nicer streets towards St John's Wood which has the most totally tropical tube station I've ever seen.

The Famous Abbey Road Zebra Crossing

Continuing westward for s a stretch I saw large crowds standing by a zebra crossing and was momentarily puzzled before recognising this as the Abbey Road crossing made famous by the 1960's beat combo known as The Beatles. I'm not a fan myself but I know my sisters are (I think they may have seen them once but I am sure they will correct me if I'm wrong). If I had to drive through here on a regular basis I would get very peed off as there are always people crossing, pausing for their photo (with the photographer often standing in the middle of the road), then crossing back again! The Abbey Road studios are just a little way along the road surrounded by a white wall covered in graffiti.

 Continuing south I passed Lord's cricket ground - it is surprisingly understated combared to the red brick edifice at the Kennington Oval. The high wall prevents any glimpse of the hallowed turf (apart from a glimpse through the turnstiles) and the only hint that something lurks beyond is the modern media center that looms over the wall like one of the Martian space craft in War of the Worlds or The Tripods.

More crowds surround the entrance to the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street - the queues stretch back from the museum all the way to the tube station, many of them tourists who are probably disapointed not to experience a true pea-souper or a trip in a Hansom cab.

After a lunch stop in the busy shopping streets south of the Maylebone road I braved the heaving hordes of Oxford street for a quick glimpse of Bond Street station before detouring to the Warhammer shop on Tottenham Court Road before heading south and west once more to reach the end of this leg of my Jubilee walk at Green Park. Hopefully it won't be a yeat before I complete this line - only a few stations to go now from Neasden to Stanmore.

Bubbles at Fortnum and Masons

Tracking the Tube: Jubilee Line 02: Canary Wharf to Green Park

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Weather: Warm and pleasant
Distance Walked: 22.5km
Distance By Tube:10.77km
Stations Visited: 9
Fantastic Place: St James' Park

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It's been a while since I last did a Tube Walk. Since the last one I've found a new job - one that isn't so desk bound as the last. I now spend a lot of time walking from one end of the site to the other, visiting users and often crawling under their desks. The walk to and from work is also far more pleasant, being through very pretty suburban streets of Kew in the leafy borough of Richmond just south of the River Thames. I now do upwards of 10000 steps everyday sometimes reaching the dizzy heights of 16000. On the down side I now work five days a week instead of four which means that the Tracking the Tube project will take a lot longer to complete.

The nine stations on the walk today

Starting back at Canary Wharf I was struck again how much had changed since I worked here back in the last Millennium! In fact there was even change since the last time I walked here a year ago. I walked a slightly different route back through docklands as I headed south, following the west side of Millwall Inner Dock and the east side of Millwall Outer Dock.

These are now surrounded by offices and housing rather than the warehouses and industry that would have been there when the docks were a thriving centre of shipping and trade. Even so there were a large number of narrow boats and other house boats moored in the basins, many brightened up with flowers and vegetables growing in any available space.

On the open water of the outer dock there were small sailing dinghies and wind-surfers making the most of the sun and brisk wind that gets funnelled through the canyons formed by the tall buildings. Because of the mix of housing and office space docklands is still busy and bustling on a Saturday unlike the areas around Chancery Lane and the old financial centre of London which can resemble the setting of a post-apocalyptic wasteland at the weekend.

A little further on near Mudchute (possibly one of the least glamorous names on the DLR network)  there was a small housing development, probably late eighties early nineties) built around a set of private moorings. None were in use by boats, however there was a pair of Great Crested Grebe nesting there and on a semi submerged pontoon a family of Canada Geese). Lots of other ducks and sea birds had made their home in this peaceful little haven - which was nice.

Walking under the Thames via the foot tunnel I headed west past the Cutty Sark on the Thames Path soon coming to a very odd statue of Peter the Great. The proportions are really very odd but it makes a striking addition to an area dominated by drab modern apartments.

Continuing along the Thames path which occasionally swings some way inland I passed through a park with a old, gnarled mulberry tree. I'd love to have one of these in my garden at some point. The fruit wasn't ripe but there was a lot on the tree. I wonder if anyone comes to pick it or if it just gets eaten by birds.

Heading inland at a large marina filled with canal boats and sailing craft I left the Thames behind and headed through Rotherhithe to Canada Water station. This station, like most on the relatively new extension, is a striking modern building. This one resembles one of the vehicles that the Sand People in Star Wars travelled around in collecting scrap and selling faulty droids to moisture farmers!

Passing through Southwark Park I soon came to Bermondsey station which was quite restrained in design on a long road lined with shops and cafés. Passing under the bridge carrying the trains out of London Bridge station the smell of a local craft brewery filled the air bringing back memories of living in Cardiff and the Brains brewery that filled the air with malty goodness most days!

This part of London on the run up to London Bridge station has a large number of very nice streets lined with Georgian and Victorian terraces and old schools turned into flats. Very attractive, if small, front gardens added to the ambience. The nearer I got to the station the more hip the area got with lots of small coffee shops, including one called "Fuckoffee." The National Fasion and Textile Museum is here as are a number of small galleries and craft workshops. London Bridge station is rather large and sprawling but is dominated by the glass and steel of Isengard the Shard that towers over it.

After a quick stop at Hotel Chocolat for some 'emergency supplies my path led back to the Thames and a visit to one of my old workplaces on the South Bank opposite St Paul's. A Quick stop for lunch at Eat reinvigorated me for the second half of the walk, briefly along the Thames before turning off by the reconstructed Globe theatre (well worth going to see a performance there) and heading south to Southwark station. The route I took went behind the Tate Modern gallery at Bankside. This opened soon after Liz and I moved to London and was part of the flowering of art and culture in London around the Millennium. London has always had great art spaces but it just seems to have got better and better. The new gallery space at the Tate is housed in a stunning building which sits well beside the old power station.

The area between Southwark, Waterloo and Westminster stations is horrendously busy especially on a sunny Saturday during the summer holidays. It makes walking at a normal pace almost impossible. The area between the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament is particularly bad with tourists sitting on the steps and waving their selfie-sticks around. It was quite a relief therefore to break out of the congestion and walk through the, still busy but more peaceful surroundings, of St James' Park. I don't think I've even spent much time in this large green lung in the centre of London which runs from the political heart of London right up to the gates of Buckingham Palace. At the heart of the park is a long lake surrounded by flower beds and despite the large number of visitors it still has a peaceful air. The lake has lots of wildfowl (a theme of today!) including some pelicans which you are warned not to feed. This may be why!

After waving at the queen I turned north through another of London's large parks, Green Park to the station of the same name. As a geologist I like what the designers have done with the walls of this station. They have used fossiliferous limestone in which you can see the calcified remains of ammonites and other extinct see creatures. The designers have then carved larger stylised versions in the walls.

The last stretch from Green Park to Bond Street station is one that I've walked many, many times with my wife when we visit the Royal Academy of Arts and you pass many swanky shops and galleries before arriving in the throbbing heart of Oxford Street with all it's department stores and other shops.

That was enough for today and I could feel that I hadn't done a long walk for a while in the backs of my legs. It was however one of my favourite tube walks of the project so far. It was a transect through time and space showing the various parts of London. It started in the new heart of financial London, moves through the old dockland and commercial centre, through art and culture, political London, Royal London and finally shopping London. All of these areas have their own flavour and architecture and the route is well worth a walk if you have half a day to spare.

New tower looms over a floating restaurant

Interesting sculpture near Canary Wharf station

Standing tall

Parts look more like Amsterdam than London!

Great Crested Grebe at Mudchute

Philip the Great and Small Friend

Storm Clouds over the City

The Shard

The new galleries at Tate Modern

Tracking the Tube: Jubilee Line 01: Stratford to Canary Wharf

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Weather: Scorchio! Wall to wall sunshine, blue skies and little wind
Distance Walked: 28.3km
Distance By Tube:6.54km
Stations Visited: 5
Fantastic Place: Cutty Sark, Greenwich

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The Jubilee Line it is then. This walk will take me back to one of the first places I worked after leaving teaching and starting in the IT industry as well as visiting one of my favourite parts of London.







I decided to walk the line from East to West as I had just finished the Northern Line walk in the rather drab north west suburbs and I fancied a change to somewhere more dynamic hence the long Central Line trip from west London all the way out to the Stratford.

Just 5 Stations this time

This area has seen a lot of developments in the past decade with the London Olympics being held nearby in 2012 and so transport links and other infrastructure was upgraded. Stratford station is buried underneath a huge shopping centre and it took me a while to work out which way to go eventually crossing the sub-urban rail lines via a steal and glass bridge which offered views of some of the Olympic buildings.

Heading south towards West Ham station I took care not to retrace too many of my steps that I had trodden on my District Line walk but this was fairly easy as the two lines are pretty much perpendicular at this point. Continuing south the walk follows the DLR line for this part of the walk. When I first started working in the Canary Wharf area back in the mid 90s there was no Jubilee Line and the DLR only ran until about 6pm and then only from Bank or Tower Gateway to Canary Wharf. We in the office joked that DLR stood for Doesn't Like Rain as it seemed to stop working in the lightest shower. Other people called it the Toytown Railway and although when it started it appeared unreliable and infrequent it now is a major part of the tube network.

The Orbit Tower

I read somewhere that the DLR journey through Docklands is one of the top-ten rail journeys in the world! Not sure about that but my young god-twins like pretending to drive the train by sitting at the front. Ok so do I when I get the chance.

Canning Town interchange  is a sprawling unremarkable building sharing facilities with buses and the DLR. Lots of busy roads in the area as well making it a bit unpleasant to walk through.

I could have followed the lines of the old docks eastward here out to the University of East London and City Airport but I'd already walked that way on the LOOP and I may go back there again if I walk the DLR as a line. Instead I treated myself to a flight on the Dangleway or as it is more properly known the Emirates Air Line cable car that crosses the Thames from near the Royal Victoria Dock to North Greenwich near the O² centre.

I've been on the cable car at sunset and in some ways that is better as the more attractive bits of the view are lit up while the scrap yards and waste recycling areas are dark. However on a crystal clear day like today the view was splendid.

View down towards City airport with a boat docked near the ExCel centre.

 I've not explored the North Greenwich peninsula before - never had the need to go to a gig at the O²  for example - and it is a strange mix. The area around the station and the former Millennium Dome is all very modern, clean and tidy with shops, bars and places to eat.

But is it art?

Move a short distance away to the west and things change. Here the area is still a work in progress with areas of fenced off wasteland and piles of broken up stone and gravel. There are also some art installations including this odd electricity pylon.

In places along the Thames Path the trail is blocked as large blocks of flats are being flung up to make the most of the views from the waterside location. This caused some annoyance as I missed a sign saying that the path was diverted while building was going on and ended up having to retrace my steps for some distance and then had to walk along the busy arterial roads instead. However I did come across the Meantime Brewery which does tours and has a tasting room. Hmm might have to pay a visit at some point so the diversion was all bad news!

The next section of the walk took me through Greenwich, one of my favourite bits of London especially the older part with the Maritime Museum, the Observatory on the Hill and some nice shopping and eating places.
After a break for lunch (a very nice burger and shake at GBK in Greenwich - very friendly staff and great food as normal) a stroll around the outside of the Cutty Sark followed. I've been on-board and underneath the old tea-clipper in the past and if you are in the area it is well worth the visit.

Cutty Sark

Then under the river via the Greewnwich Foot Tunnel built at the turn of the twentieth century, with the curvature of the tunnel as it descends then ascends again on the northern side of the Thames it feels a bit like the inside of a space-station (a damp and slightly tatty one it has to be said).

On the north side of the big bend in the Thames is the Isle of Dogs. Walking up past Island Gardens through a nice park where an enthusiastic cricket game was being played, then up along tree lined streets with towering glass and steel monoliths behind in Mudchute then over some of the old docks into what is now one of the financial hubs of London and Europe. This is where I worked for about a decade supporting the IT systems of one of the major suppliers of metropolitan subterranean transport. So much has changed in the ten years since I left that project. Some of the buildings that were new then have been knocked down and replaced by newer ones, sometimes offices but more appear to be hotels and housing (not sure how much is affordable for the people who lived and worked in the area before the finance houses moved in). Our old office building looked deserted and due to be pulled down. The pub we went to after work (and where I had an unscheduled stag night a couple of days before my wedding) has long gone.

There are still buildings going up in the high-rise core of the area and the streets and shops in the shopping complex under and around One Canada Square were busy. I was planning to walk along the eastern side of the Isle of Dogs return through the foot tunnel and then on to Canada Water but with the high temperatures and the long detour on the Thames Path earlier I decided to end here do a bit of shopping at Waitrose (of course!) and then start the next leg of the walk here.

Old and new meet at the water's edge

Thames wherry

More Dallas than Isle of Dogs