Today we're off to the only south London suburb that starts with The, namely The Wrythe which is a significant part of Sutton. Essentially it's North Carshalton but has had a separate identity since medieval times, actual residents since Victorian times and today forms a characterful nucleus amid the sprawl of an enormous housing estate. Let's start in the heart of the old hamlet and then go for a long walk up two former country lanes that bear the Wrythe name. Don't expect to learn anything of long term consequence.
The area of Carshalton known as The Rithe was first recorded in 1229, a rithe being a small stream. Initially it was merely somewhere useful to extract gravel, then somewhere to hide a workhouse, and only after improvements in drainage at the start of the 1800s did a small hamlet grow up. All these facts I took from an information board on Wrythe Green, a bow-tie-shaped patch of common land that's still semi-recognisably the old village green. These days it doubles up as a criss-cross gyratory for cars heading in from Morden and Hackbridge, but the cottages along the northern side are still recognisably original. Waterloo Place has a plaque claiming to be 1845, Little Ferncote is adorably timbered and the newsagent has a very fine protruding gallery window. Make the most of all this heritage because there's very little where we're heading later.
Wrythe Green's not looking its best at the moment because the council are currently digging up a large chunk for drainage reasons. But the fragment with the old mulberry tree and the new community orchard is untouched, and the green wedge with the war memorial remains the most popular place to sit, probably because it's closest to the shops. The Wrythe has a very decent local parade, peaking with an M&S Food if you head round the back of the garage. Three other retail highlights are Melyvn Clarke (a proper throwback ironmongers selling six-piece brush sets and steel toe-capped wellies), Purrfect For Pets (who were celebrating their 35th birthday yesterday with a prize raffle) and Nana B's (a cafe with cloyingly pink sofas specialising in cakes and brownies). Make the most of all this aspirational consumption because there's very little where we're heading later.
Wrythe Lane, which we're about to follow north, starts with an ornate drinking fountain at the entrance to a large recreation ground. Both date to 1900, just as the hamlet was starting to grow, and the fountain is the principal remaining reference to the small stream which sprang from the ground on the site of the petrol station. All this I took from an information board on the railings, along with the additional fact that the fountain's taps are 2019 replicas. A pub and a church once stood on the next stretch, the modern highlights alas merely a kebab shop and a self-storage depot, and then the enormous spread of houses begins. 100 years ago the London County Council looked at this country lane and thought "what this really needs is hundreds of front gardens, and then some," and so the St Helier estate came to be.
As council houses go they're quite varied, a tiled pitched roof the only constant, and often bunched together in sixes rather than pairs. Nobody gets a garage but everybody gets a front garden so parking isn't hard. And homes are packed in everywhere, up umpteen interlocking sideroads, making age-old Wrythe Lane a modern busy feeder. Before the LCC descended and swallowed up 800 acres most of this was low quality farmland, mostly market gardening but dotted here and there with lavender fields and piggeries. One of the farms was originally called Pig Farm, then Hill Farm, and its timber barn was one of the last buildings to be demolished. All these facts I took from an information board on the exterior of a rotunda, indeed the estate seems keen to grasp at any scrap of history it can find.
Halfway up is a seriously traditional parade of shops where one of the barbers attracts custom by having a giant model of Superman in the window and spicy food barely gets a look in. Of the two greasy spoons, the Tudor Cafe and H's, the former must do a better fry-up judging by the crowd outside on the sun terrace. And then the houses return, so many houses, as Wrythe Lane continues its gentle ascent and peaks somewhere in the 250s. To the resident whose green recycling box was overflowing with nothing but crushed cans of Stella Artois, perhaps tone it down a bit. Ahead is the best known building hereabouts, St Helier Hospital, which would once have looked fabulously modern but now resembles a teetering stack of white boxes in urgent need of replacement. If nothing else it means the area gets a very decent bus service.
St Helier Open Space is a Green Flag park which would be a tad nicer if it didn't have pylons sailing high across it. Closest to the hospital is a Garden of Reflection recently added as a memorial to those lost in the pandemic, both staff and patients, with woody sculptures, butterfly benches and supposedly uplifting poems. And then the shops return, this time three dozen strong because this redbrick parade is the St Helier estate's chief retail hub. It says a lot for the age of the surrounding population that two of them are funeral directors. The cuisine here is more diverse, but if you want to sit in your mobility scooter and eat pancakes covered with squirty cream accompanied by a mug of tea you can. The big Lidl at the end overlooks the massive Rosehill roundabout, formerly a minor rural crossroads, and that was Wrythe Lane.
Let's rewind to The Wrythe, a mile and a half back, and walk north up Green Wrythe Lane instead. It's well named because it is indeed greener for much of its length, retaining a line of trees to one side of the road along a dandelioned grassy stripe. Its houses seem a little nicer too, more desirably right-to-buy, and this time there are over 400 of them. Everything on the right hand side of the road originally belonged to Batts Farm whose fields rolled all the way down to the River Wandle and whose farmer, George Miller, once distilled his own lavender (according to more facts from that rotunda). And where the farm track joined the lane the LCC built a roundabout called The Circle and surrounded it by a full-on neighbourhood hub. i.e. yet another parade of shops.
The Fudgecakes Bakery looked tempting until I saw they couldn't spell the word 'pasteries'. The Boujee salon lets its customers vape on the pavement with a headful of foil while their blond streaks set. The halal butcher has closed down but still has a 'Cheap Boiler' sign out front left over from the previous failed tenant. And the block of flats on the northeastern corner is where the St Helier Arms used to be, one of just three pubs provided for the estate's population of 40,000 and all now gone. Even today it's easier to buy bacon and eggs round here than a draught pint, indeed that remains impossible. The final stretch of Green Wrythe Lane passes the library, more pylons, deep undergrowth, two phone masts and of course lots and lots more houses. All these facts I got from visiting The Wrythe and exploring in person, from the old village green up its transformed lanes across those former fields.
I won't keep you long today.
It's a lovely day and you should be out enjoying it.
Let's answer a dull question.
Which London bus terminus has the most terminating routes?
See, half of you can head off already.
Probably more than half actually.
This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
It used to be easy when TfL made bus maps.
You'd open the set of maps, count the routes at each terminus and see which came out on top.
Can't do that any more.
I did start by doing exactly that with the 2016 set of maps to get a rough sense of numbers.
But those maps are now eight years old and out of date.
Wildly out of date in places.
Take Walthamstow bus station, for example.
Eight terminating routes on the 2016 map.
Since then one route scrapped, one diverted and two Superloops shoehorned in.
I make that ten now.
But ten can be beaten.
I made myself a list of likely contenders and then checked their spider maps.
Yeah, but spider maps are rubbish too these days.
Time was when they had a useful list of routes in the corner.
All you had to do was see which routes appeared only once, not twice.
Can't do that any more.
If you're the muppet at TfL who binned the list in the corner, damn you.
You made answering this question ridiculously harder.
Also not every likely contender has a spider map.
There isn't a spider map for Uxbridge, can you believe that?
There isn't a spider map for Edgware either.
Cost-cutting blinkered jobsworth muppets did this.
I ended up having to check several webpages for individual bus stops.
Even then it's not clear whether buses actually terminate there or not.
Map-scrappers be damned.
What I'm saying is I've probably counted some of this wrong.
But I hope this is right.
The bus stop with the most terminating routes is at Bromley North.
It has 12 terminating routes.
They are 61 119 138 146 227 246 269 352 354 367 SL3 SL5.
It's the Superloop that clinched it.
I won't show you a photo.
If you're interested you already know what Bromley North looks like.
Victoria station is also the terminus for 12 bus routes.
They are 3 6 13 26 38 44 52 170 185 390 C1 C10.
Unlike Bromley North, they don't all terminate in exactly the same place.
If we're being picky, most of those routes terminate outside the bus station.
I'm not being quite that picky.
The terminus in third place is Edgware with 11 routes.
They are 32 79 107 113 204 221 240 251 303 340 384.
All these routes terminate at the same bus stop outside the station.
I should say I'm not including nightbuses.
Edgware overtakes Bromley North if you include night buses.
In fact, if you include night buses Trafalgar Square wins outright.
Several bus stations have 10 terminating routes.
They are Brent Cross, Crystal Palace, Hounslow, Uxbridge and Walthamstow.
I should say I'm only counting TfL routes.
Orpington would also have 10 routes if you included the non-TfL 477.
I think Kingston's Cromwell Road bus station also normally has 10.
But it's closed at the moment.
The other terminus with 10 routes is Lewisham station.
They're 75 89 178 181 185 208 261 284 484 P4.
Five other routes terminate very nearby but still have 'Lewisham' on the front.
They're 21 108 129 380 436.
If you're happy to include Lewisham Tesco then 273 counts too.
Arguably Lewisham has 16 terminating routes.
Arguably Lewisham wins.
But if we're being pure the winner is Bromley North.
I'm aware I've probably got the finer detail of this wrong.
I'm also aware I could check all of this more carefully on Mike Harris's excellent bus map.
But I don't have the latest April 2024 map so I haven't checked it.
If you're one of the half dozen people who genuinely cares, hello.
Feel free to do your own research and tell me I'm wrong.
But quite frankly you should have stopped reading ages ago.
Most readers already have, it's a lovely day.
The National Gallery first threw open its doors 200 years ago today. It wasn't in Trafalgar Square at the time, that hadn't been built yet, but at 100 Pall Mall in a dead banker's townhouse. Here John Julius Angerstein's small collection of Old Masters was displayed, slowly growing in scale and stature as the government acquired additional bequests before the enlarged collection moved to its current home in 1838. The bicentenary is being celebrated tonight with a public lightshow across the frontage of the building and a private shindig inside hosted by Jools Holland.
I visited marginally prematurely for a good look round and an admiring wander. "I should try and walk round every room," I thought, and then I thought "I wonder how many rooms there are." This led to a more intriguing 200th birthday challenge, namely could I visit 200 rooms displaying art by branching out across London's other galleries? They all had to be free to access and ideally I wanted to go round 200 rooms in one day. How many galleries would it take? Was it even possible? Place your bets.
It's always a joy to explore the National Gallery, and feels even more special at present wih the Sainsbury Wing closed meaning you enter through the proper front doors for a change. On its walls are hung dozens of world-renowned classic canvases, and if you follow the right route they tell the story of fine art from pre-Renaissance to post-Impressionism. Helpfully for my purposes all the upstairs rooms are numbered (and the downstairs rooms lettered) so keeping a tally wasn't too onerous. I aimed initially for my favourite room where Bathers at Asnières, Sunflowers and A Wheatfield With Cypresses are on display, which is room 43, and then continued round in a sweeping sequence.
Bicentenary fact: The first painting in the National Gallery collection, which still has the catalogue reference NG1, is The Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo and you'll find it in room 32.
The day was young, which was good because the place wasn't yet packed and bad because room 17a only opens at 11am, so I had to I hang on long enough to enjoy Leonardo da Vinci's largest surviving cartoon. I also got to go into Room 46 to see The Last Caravaggio, under almost-as-dim lights, and realised that the number of rooms in the National Gallery is not always a fixed value. The closure of the Sainsbury Wing is a case in point because that would have contributed umpteen more rooms to my total, launching it into the 60s, whereas in fact I only managed to walk round 43 altogether. A decent enough start, but would it be enough to launch me towards 200?
The obvious place to go next was the gallery nextdoor, home to displays of portraiture since 1896 and very recently given a major spruce-up. It's another fabulous warren of art and also of history, indeed if you wander round in chronological order you get to meet all the makers and shakers of their day from Henry VII and Sir Thomas More to Victoria Wood and Judi Dench. Ascending the semi-ridiculous escalator launches you straight into the Tudors, which is room 1, and every room is sequentially numbered after that making cumulative tallying exceptionally easy.
The vast majority of portraits are of straight white men, reflecting the priorities at the time, but an NPG member of staff was attempting to address the imbalance by leading a group round and pointing out the queer history behind James I and the inherent fierceness of some ladies on the floor below. This thankfully is one of the galleries least beset by hordes of schoolchildren, but it was nice to see a primary class from Watford crocodiling round with clipboards and hi-vis before focusing in on one particular canvas. Also full marks to the NPG for being the only gallery on my quest to dish out maps for free (and with a smile), because everyone else either charges £2 or invites you download a sponsored app.
I did the two Tates next, stating with the Pimlico one because that's where the pre-20th century art is. A lot of people skip it because it's not entirely central but it has a fantastic collection covering 500 years of art including a lot of Henry Moores and an entire wing of Turners. Annoyingly the long gallery down the middle is currently sealed off while the next major commission is installed so you can only negotiate the entire building by walking around the edge which gets a bit tortuous in places. But if you're trying to enter every room you want to walk through sequentially anyway so maybe it helped, plus they're also clearly numbered so you soon spot if you've missed one.
I found Ophelia, I donned my special glasses to go into the UV room and I loved the utterly incongruous decimal analogue clock in the Wolfson Gallery. But I also came up against the knotty dilemma of 'what actually is a room anyway', because the map said the numbers only went up to 39 but I think I went into more rooms than that. Specifically the Art Now gallery isn't numbered, room 7 is officially subdivided into 7a and 7b, and is it pedantically correct to include the archive gallery in the basement? Most controversially the Tate's former restaurant is currently hosting a video performance in which artist Rex Whistler (1905-1944) is torn to academic shreds for painting racial caricatures into his epicurean mural, although my dilemma was merely whether to count this as an extra room of art. I didn't in the end.
I was a bit nervous entering Tate Modern because I was still 85 rooms away from my target and that left a mountain to climb. I was even more nervous after wandering round the lower five floors of the new-ish Blatnavik Building because this only added 17 more, one of which was little more than an empty oil tank with two light bulbs in it. But the main building - the original power station - proved a lot more profitable because when they subdivided its floors they created a heck of a lot of separate internal spaces. I tried to count them all, occasionally misdirected by the meandering layout, and wondered whether it was right to count video-serving rooms-within-rooms as 1 or 2.
There's some cracking art in Tate Modern but some inexplicable modern tat too because art is in the eye of the beholder. I was also reassured that I hadn't simply seen all of it before, they do change the rooms around sometimes, so for example Yto Barrada's short film A Guide To Trees For Governors and Gardeners was a thought-provoking Thunderbirdsesque newbie. Suddenly Wham! always gets me too, even after all these years. After some very long walks I eventually reckoned there were 14 rooms on each wing, that's 28 per floor, although consulting the £2 map nudged that down slightly. It's still a whopping total though, a massive 70 rooms of free-to-view art, thankfully putting me within striking distance of hitting my goal.
I was getting tired now so I hoped this classic gallery in Marylebone would deliver me to 200. A visit is always a treat, like being invited into a grand home to admire the antique furniture and chintzy wallpaper as well as the art. The Laughing Cavalier hides amongst them if you know where to look. I started downstairs and soon upped my total to 192, having decided the armoury galleries definitely didn't count. There had better be at least eight rooms upstairs, I thought, and thankfully there were. I didn't need to count the landing or the penultimate cabinet full of miniatures, I hit my target as soon as I walked through from the Study into the Boudoir.
It is quite frankly amazing that you can enjoy 200 rooms of art in London by visiting just five galleries and without paying a penny. Admittedly the Louvre in Paris has over 400 rooms but that's only free on the first Friday evening of the month whereas London's treats are year round. Hurrah for the longstanding service of the National Gallery, now with two centuries under its belt, and which kickstarted all of this cultural bounty exactly 200 years ago. And as if to prove a point, when I stepped into my 201st room at the Wallace Collection who should I discover there but the actual Grayson Perry, fully skirted and ribboned, chatting with staff about his exhibition here next year. Even if you think you've seen it all before, London's artistic offering is always full of surprises.
As unexpected street names go, this is right up there.
And there are ten more where that came from.
We're not in London we're in Kent, on a housing estate in Dartford not far from the QE2 Bridge. We're in Dartford because that's where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards grew up, met and went on to form the Rolling Stones. And we're here because when the time came to pick street names somebody thought 'Why don't we name them after Rolling Stones records?' Hence more of this kind of thing.
The estate in question is called The Bridge, and lies to the north of the town centre on a large brownfield site backing onto Dartford Marshes. Originally this was the site of Joyce Green Hospital, a massive Edwardian institution built to confine smallpox sufferers far away from human habitation. After WW2 it became more community-focused and thus did Not Fade Away. But the opening of Darent Valley Hospital in 2000 caused services to be wound down for The Last Time, and complete demolition of the site means It's All Over Now. None of those three Rolling Stones tracks made the cut for subsequent street names, alas, but You Can't Always Get What You Want.
A former isolation hospital isn't normally the optimal location for a new community, but most people in Kent have cars so are very happy to live near a dual carriageway with excellent connections to Bluewater, the M25 and a Thames crossing. For cyclists and pedestrians it's just over a mile to Dartford town centre, and if you pick your route carefully you can pass the end of Spielman Road where Keith Richards grew up. But what planners really hoped you'll do is take the Fastrack, the segregated bus route that'll swiftly whizz you to the station, the shops or some nearby logistics-friendly workplace. Bussing out, by deliberate design, is a lot more direct than attempting to drive.
The estate was built in stages, each a separate residential wedge and each with a different rationale for naming its streets. Those in the first phase all got named after doctors and nurses who worked at the original hospital, or (in one case) aboard the hospital ships that previously moored in the estuary. The second phase had an engineering bent, for example Vickers Lane and Vimy Drive which both commemorate the Vickers Vimy bomber which made its maiden flight from RAF Joyce Green in 1917. But for the third phase the housing developers suggested something more unusual, naming the spine road after the local world famous rock group and the adjacent spurs after some of their biggest hits. Dartford council leapt at the idea and that's how Stones Avenue was born.
It's only a short walk from the bus stop by the Nisa supermarket, but this requires crossing a narrow green strip which doubles up as a scrubby residential buffer. The houses on the far side are compact but often with a third storey to make up for it, i.e. typically post-millennial, and many face directly onto a path with a parking space provided nearby. Front gardens plainly weren't deemed a necessity, hence most homes are blessed with little more than a stripe of gravel, loose slate or low shrubbery. It all feels pretty quiet, at least when the kids are in school and the estate's gardening squad isn't busy mowing the interstitials. But nothing quite prepares you for the street signs, the world of '60s and '70s pop writ large in a municipal typeface, like someone ran their finger down the Guinness Book of Hit Singles and thought hell yes, let's use that.
Tumbling Dice Mews is probably the weirdest, a Top 5 single from Exile on Main St which references a philandering gambler. Sympathy Vale is pretty odd too, although a lot better than the full Sympathy For The Devil Vale might have been. Rainbow Gardens sounds meteorological, as does Cloud Close, but musically speaking they follows She's A.... and Hey You Get Off Of My... respectively. Angie Mews and Lady Jane Place look the most mainstream, although some reckon at least one of those names is a codename for marijuana. Ruby Tuesday Drive was always a better bet than its alternative A side, Let's Spend the Night Together. Silver Train Gardens is actually a reference to a song about prostitutes, and imagine moving into Rambler Lane only to discover that your street commemorates the Boston Strangler. You wouldn't have got any of this dark nuance with the Beatles.
I'd been expecting to find all of the aforementioned street names because they're all on Open Street Map, but Little Red Walk came as a surprise. It's only six houses long, faces off against the community campus and originally looked like it ought to be part of Lady Jane Place. Good grief, I thought, who scans down a list of Rolling Stones records and chops off the Rooster in favour of the Little Red? It's still better than Honky Tonk Mews, Sticky Fingers Road or Nervous Breakdown Avenue might have been, although I do question the inexplicable absence of a Satisfaction Street. I apologise to the owner of number 1 Little Red Walk for zooming in on their kitchen blind when taking my photo.
But all credit to the estate's developers, specifically Jason Stokes the sales and marketing manager for Taylor Wimpey's south east region, for having the nerve to name an entire tranche of streets after local icons of popular culture. A musical slant is hugely more interesting than the usual tedious fallback of picking the names of trees, flowers, towns, girls' names or distant battlefields. Imagine the smiles if swathes of newbuild Acton were named after songs by The Who, streets in Catford after Status Quo or chunks of Watford after Wham! And in Dartford's case, because these choices actually enticed me to visit, I can bring you this exclusive Rolling Stones discography based entirely on local street names.
If you can't be bothered to hike out the edge of Dartford to see somesignage, rest assured you can always enjoy two new bronze statues of Mick and Keith in the centre of town instead.
Wed 1: While I was touring City churches I came across this, the Lost London Churches Project. They've printed a little colour card for every church in the City of London - current and former - and the idea is to collect them all and stick them in a special pack. It's a bit like collecting Brooke Bond tea cards (I still have the full set of The Race Into Space) but with churches. Each card has an illustration on the front and a list of dates on the back (a bit like Top Trumps except you couldn't play this as a game). There's also a collectors pack to slot your cards into, a book of background information and a very colourful map showing all the former parishes. Well this is lovely, I thought, as I searched through the stack of cards for a St Magnus The Martyr.
Except I couldn't get my head round how it all worked, even though I'd read Ian Visits' post about it last month. I think you're supposed to go round various City churches to complete your collection, although I'm not sure how many you're supposed to swipe in one go because the stack contained dozens of cards. It also said 'suggested donation £2', but was that for one card or several because there are 110 altogether so that could be ruinously expensive. Rest assured you don't have to go to the right church to get the right card, it's more random than that, but most City churches are closed most of the time so the cards are going to be hard to source,. Also they don't do swaps on the website only a random set of 10 for £2, or bafflingly you can buy the full set of 110 in two lots of £5. The more I look at the bundling and the pricing the less it makes sense, and I still think they're lovely but I just don't know why you would.
Thu 2: I went to my local polling station without photo ID. I knew very well I needed it, I've known for five years ever since this bastard government put it in their manifesto. But I went without photo ID anyway just to make a point. Someone somewhere will be collecting statistics about this, I thought, and every incremental tiny percentage helps. I decided not to be outright belligerent, instead I played dumb and claimed not to have realised photo ID was necessary. They said I could use a driving licence and I told them I didn't have a car, which was true but deceptive. They said I could use a passport and I said I wasn't in the habit of carrying my passport round with me. Thankfully they didn't say I could use an old person's travel pass because I'm not there yet. I left the polling station without voting.
I came back later with my passport, and the policeman on the door gave me a wry nod of recognition on the way in. I felt the expected rush of embarrassed disappointment as the scrutineer checked my photo, then looked up to check my face and then looked down again. They duly gave me my papers and I went away to vote, awarding none of my crosses to the party which had installed this unnecessarily high hurdle in the first place. I realise I'll only be in the statistics under 'turned away first time but came back and voted', which is less damning than 'turned away and never came back', so more an inconvenience than a barrier. But the real statistic that matters is 'never bothered trying to vote because they already knew they couldn't' and sadly nobody's counting that. Ultimately it didn't matter in London this time, but every vote counts and somewhere sometime photo ID's going to change the outcome.
Fri 3: The retail units under the Capital Towers skyscraper at the Bow Roundabout are slowly filling up. A mini supermarket came first, then a hair salon and a nigh invisible barbers, now finally the unit closest to the canal has its first tenant. It's only taken seven years. The new shop is called Gold Dry Cleaner, a name announced in red letters stuck somewhat wonkily above the door, and appears to consist of a bloke and a few machines in a mostly empty room. Nothing especially golden is evident. And if you look closer at the signage it doesn't exactly scream quality.
They do 'Cortains and Carpets', apparently. They also do 'Repair and Altrations'. Also their Shirt Offer is '5 Shirt only 7£' which suggests the owner isn't familiar with how UK currency works. Maybe spellings and convention don't matter, maybe it's all about balancing low prices with a high quality service, but I do wonder how many people will ever be tempted inside in the first place. Good luck to Gold Dry Cleaner, I think they're going to need it.
Sat 4: Today is Star Wars Day, at least in the English-speaking calendar, and has been for almost 50 years. So I was very excited when I saw that Flickr, the actual company Flickr, had added my photo of Stormtroopers on the DLR to their May The 4th Be With You gallery. That's quite an honour, I thought, and waited for the adulation to come piling in. But no, apparently the official Flickr gallery had fewer than 200 visitors in total and my photo only scraped an extra 100 views. That's a bit odd, I thought, because it really was a very striking photo I stumbled upon entirely by accident.
Only later did I discover that Flickr had also appropriated my stormtrooper photo to their own photostream, appropriately credited, where it's received over 50,000 views and 450 faves. That makes it my most-viewed and most-faved Flickr photo of all time, which is nice, although without a tipoff I'd have seen none of it. Such are the benefits of a Creative Commons Licence.
Sun 5: I saw this advert at Camden Town station and did a doubletake. "55% of the UK only use SPF when it's sunny" didn't worry me because I can believe that. "You even need to wear sunscreen in cloudy London" made sense because I'm well aware that clouds still let some UV through. But the startling claim underneath that we all need to wear SPF every day of the year looked jarringly unlikely. On a dull day in mid-January, why bother? At the winter solstice with the sun low in the sky, why bother? On a day you're not going to be outdoors more than a few minutes, why bother? But it seemed to have the backing of a skin cancer charity underneath, so was this a lesson I urgently needed to learn or pseudoscientific bolx?
I went to the website which turned out to be that of a suncream manufacturer, and was encouraged to 'make a daily pledge' to SPF. Apparently only 22% of us do this (and only 8% re-apply SPF later in the day), according to a survey YouGov did in February. And I thought hang on, this is just a devious marketing campaign to sell more tubes of gloop, because the more people they can persuade to daub sunscreen daily the more money they'll make. Also nowhere does it say that daily application is medically necessary, the entire text is slyly worded to make insinuations and leave gullible consumers to jump to their own conclusions. Those of us who scrutinise the weather forecast will know that the UV risk never rises above 'Low' between October and March, not here in the UK, indeed we've only recently entered the 'sunscreen would be a seriously good idea' season. So this campaign can sod off because, face facts, 366 days of SPF just isn't necessary.
Mon 6: While I was at Canalway Cavalcade, the annual narrowboat extravaganza at Little Venice, I became overly intrigued by the prices being charged for ice cream. Two vans from 'The Royal Whip' had turned up and were attempting to sell swirly chilled treats to an increasingly bedraggled audience. I always like to check the price of a 99 - here described as a Single With Flake - and this van was somehow charging a whopping £4.50. If a family of four turned up they were effectively looking at forking out almost £20, and that's assuming nobody wanted to upgrade to a Marshmallow Waffle Flake.
They were also selling a Double With Flake for a breathtaking £6.50, i.e. an extra £2 for merely another squirt of ice cream, not an extra flake. I then looked to see what a single cornet without flake cost, to help determine the full scale of the mark-up, and was amazed to see this wasn't displayed on the side of the van at all. I'm sure they'd have served you a plain cornet if you'd asked but I bet they were hoping nobody would, in a classic piece of misdirection and upselling. I learned two things. One is that ice cream vans offer increasingly appalling value for money. And the other is that selling ice cream during a cost of living crisis means screwing the folk who can afford it for as much as you can get.
Tue 7: I turned up to use the Woolwich Ferry because I needed to cross the river and it's free, which are two good reasons. I smiled when I saw it was operating a two-boat service again, but I didn't realise this was a new thing because I hadn't seen today's press release yet. London'smediaoutlets were all over the story today, plainly delighted because TfL don't fire off press releases during a Mayoral campaign so they've really missed the opportunity to regurgitate a news story with minimal editorial effort. I boarded the ferry, as did umpteen vehicles, and we waited and we waited and we waited. I'd already spotted the cruise ship way upstream at the Thames Barrier, negotiating gingerly through, but I assumed we'd have plenty of time to chug across before it arrived. Seemingly not, and when it arrived alongside it was bloody enormous.
We waved, they waved. It was the Viking Sky, a nine deck monster setting off on a fortnight's cruise around the British Isles and back to Norway. Its sister ship Viking Neptune is off on a similar journey this Friday, should you want a megaboat fix of your own, and nine more cruise ships are due in London before the end of June. That'll give the local tugboats a bit more work. Incidentally it turns out the Thames Barrier was opened exactly 40 years ago on 8th May 1984, and as part of the celebrations they'll be closing the gates from 8am to 10.30am (preceded by a flotilla of narrowboats passing through for good measure). You never know what you might see from the Woolwich Ferry, now twice as frequently as before.
(and dont't worry, I've saved seven other Unblogged things for the end of the month)
These, I hope, are all the waymarked walks in London. (i.e. they have signs showing you the way to go)
All walks are clickable. (n.b. fabulous Londonwide map here)
The Premier League (i.e. important enough to be listed on the TfL website)
Capital Ring: 75 miles, 15 sections [blogged✔]
A circular route approximately 4–8 miles from Charing Cross, starting and finishing at Woolwich. The quintessential London hike, first waymarked in 2005. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
London Loop: 150 miles, 24 sections [blogged✔]
A larger more rural circuit, often hugging the Greater London boundary, starting at Erith and finishing in Purfleet. Opened sequentially between 1996 and 2001. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
Thames Path: 29 miles [blogged✘]
Officially starts at the Thames Barrier and goes all the way to the source in Gloucestershire. The London section is special because it (generally) exists along both sides of the river. Regularly walked by people who don't realise they're walking it.
Lea Valley Path: 17 miles, 6 sections [blogged✔]
Officially starts near Luton, entering London at the M25. Simple riverside walking. Quite a lot of reservoirs and pylons. Ends at Trinity Buoy Wharf.
Jubilee Walkway: 15 miles, 5 loops [blogged✘]
The original waymarked walk, conjured up for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 and opened by the Queen. Its five bespoke loops link multiple central London sights and attractions. No walking boots required.
Jubilee Greenway: 37 miles, 10 sections [blogged✔]
A 2012 invention, hence links lots of Olympic venues. A Diamond Jubilee commemoration, hence 60km long. Starts at Buckingham Palace. Spends a lot of time on the Regent's Canal, Greenway and Thames Path. Not especially original and mostly overlooked.
Green Chain: 50 miles, 12 sections [blogged✔]
A locally-concocted web of trails across southeast London, impossible to walk sequentially but perfect for prolonged exploration. 11 sections are signed (the 12th never quite was). Ever-surprising. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
Green Link Walk: 15 miles, 4 sections [blogged✔]
New this year. A fully-accessible urban trail on an unlikely trajectory from Epping Forest to Peckham via St Paul's. I've already been back and walked some of it twice. Full directions courtesy of the Inner London Ramblers.
River walks (starting in north London and going clockwise)
Dollis Valley Greenwalk: 10 miles [blogged✔]
Starts near the A1 and ends near the North Circular, but the intervening riverside stroll is much better than it sounds. Essentially a grand tour of the borough of Barnet. Mostly all-weather.
Pymmes Brook Trail: 13 miles [blogged✔]
Crosses Enfield from Hadley Green to Tottenham Hale, although the river mostly disappears from view in the second half.
New RiverPath: 28 miles [blogged✔]
From Hertford to the Angel Islington alongside a 400 year-old manmade river which still supplies the capital with water. The London bit starts at the M25. Follows contours so often a bit quirky.
Roding Valley WayPath: 6 miles [blogged✔]
Tracks the M11 and the North Circular from Woodford to Manor Park. Should go further but nobody's ever cleared the Ilford→Barking stretch. Rarely glamorous.
Shuttle Riverway: 5 miles [blogged✔]
From Avery Park in Greenwich to Hall Place Gardens in Bexley following a tributary of the Cray. Gets pleasantly minor in places.
Waterlink Way: 8 miles [blogged✔]
Follows the Pool River and the River Ravensbourne to the Thames, specifically from Sydenham to the Cutty Sark. Also cyclable. A borough of Lewisham production.
Wandle Trail: 11 miles [blogged✔]
A well-established walk from Croydon/Waddon/Carshalton/wherever to Wandsworth. Follows one of London's first industrialised rivers. Intermittently sylvan.
Beverley Brook Walk: 7 miles [blogged✔]
Starts in New Malden, fringes Wimbledon Common, skirts Richmond Park, ends at Putney Embankment. You might see deer. You might get muddy.
Colne Valley Trail: 20 miles [blogged✘]
A greeny-blue trek from Rickmansworth to Staines via Uxbridge, much of it along the towpath of the Grand Union Canal. London Loop sections 11 and 12 cover a fair chunk.
Celandine Route: 12 miles [blogged✔]
Follows the River Pinn from Harrow Weald to Cowley. Unsurprisingly passes through Pinner. The London borough of Hillingdon delivers very good long walks...
Willow Tree Wander: 5 miles [blogged✘]
Follows the Yeading Brook from North Harrow to Ickenham. A properly offbeat route which I can't believe I haven't blogged yet. Follow the catkins.
The start of something bigger
England Coast Path: 2700 miles [blogged✔]
It's not yet complete all the way round the coast but Woolwich to Erith is signed with acorns throughout. The Isle of Grain is 49 miles away if you're up for it.
Vanguard Way: 66 miles [blogged✘]
An impressively non-urban downland/wealdland trail, roughly due south from Croydon to Newhaven. Marvellously well described. The first section to Chelsham Common is 7 miles. I must do this one day.
Other waymarked walks
» Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk(7 miles): Figure-of-eight loop round four Royal Parks. Hugely accessible.
» Hillingdon Trail(20 miles): Top to bottom across the borough, often impressively remote. On my 'I really should walk this' list.
» Parkland Walk(3 miles): Former railway trackbed from Alexandra Palace to Finsbury Park, Mostly covered by Capital Ring section 12.
» Tamsin Trail(7 miles): A circuit around the edge of Richmond Park. Bike-friendly. Deer-adjacent.
» Bromley circular walks: 14 rural loops that are as get-away-from-it-all as London gets. Properly waymarked and perfectly described, thanks to a borough that still cares about rambling.
» North Downs Link(15 miles): Connects the Thames Path at Kingston to the North Downs Way at Box Hill. Within London as far as Chessington.
» That waymarked walk I've missed:
(I think I've walked 20 of these, well done me)
If it's not waymarked it's not in the list
If it's short and local it's not in the list
If it's not in London it's not in the list.
This brief Victorian sideroad was once well known across much of south London, indeed you may even have been born here. It's to be found in Thornton Heath (the pond bit rather than the station bit) and bears off London Road about a mile north of Croydon town centre. Look for Coughlans bakery at the end of the street, or else the faded peeling Saints and Sinners pub (which you can tell closed three years ago because it's still advertising a pint for £2.99). Perhaps dodge the ambulances. And here you'll find Mayday Road, the 300m-long street which juggles A&E with an implausibly broad collection of housing types. [map 1897][map 1954][map 2024]
The story of the hospital starts with an overflowing workhouse, specifically when the Guardians of the Croydon Union purchased land off May-Day Road in 1876 to expand their small infirmary. The new hospital consisted of four pavilions spaced out along a corridor a quarter of a mile long and could accommodate over 400 patients. In 1923 it was renamed the Mayday Road Hospital and continued to expand, adding surgical wings, maternity services, outpatients, clinics, specialist blocks, the whole shebang, until today it's one of the largest hospitals in south London. It was however renamed Croydon University Hospital in 2002, perhaps because someone decided 'Mayday' was an appalling brand choice, although the old name still lingers in the mindset of the populace.
The most recent addition is an enlarged A&E department, the only significant part of the sprawling mishmash complex still accessed from Mayday Road. It's evidently from the 'build a whopping grey cuboid' school of architecture, indeed could easily be mistaken for a multi-storey car park, although the rows of ambulances and police cars parked out front ought to be a big clue. Further up the street a clinical block is fronted with a frankly creepy photo of a headless sister under the caption 'could you be a Croydon nurse?', while the chest clinic can be found on the corner in a redbrick building which originated as the Offices of the Croydon Union so is likely suboptimal for modern NHS purposes. You don't have to look far to spot a masked orderly nipping out for a smoke or an elderly patient manoeuvring out of a minicab, even on a Sunday.
The last surviving business on the street is a car repair shop, formerly Thornton Heath Motors but now the considerably more appropriate Mayday Service Centre, based in a former coach house with a convenient central arch. Apparently they still have an 081 phone number. I thought there was a cafe opposite the hospital elusively called nys, which seemed proud to offer cocoa, ristretto, pizza and a Full English, but closer inspection of the front door revealed piles of litter outside and piles of undelivered mail within. It turns out much-loved Mannys is long gone, as is the Afro-Caribbean grocery nextdoor (whose demise is confirmed by a rotting mattress), as is Boydens Tiles (who've scarpered to Purley Road). In tough economic times, Mayday Road proved a sadly inauspicious location.
The remainder of the street boasts a ridiculously wide assortment of houses spanning 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. You'll find a brief prim Victorian terrace, a quartet of interwar semis and a tall timber-fronted villa. You'll find a single postwar eight-storey block of flats, a solid wall of 79 millennial apartments and a small brick-panelled lump of infill. You'll find a private close of bungalows whose front gardens are dotted with twee ornamental affectations and emblazoned with unfriendly signs. And if you walk up one particular alleyway you'll find 33 pastel-painted flats squeezed onto a former brownfield site hemmed in by umpteen cars their tenants cannot live without. Boydens Tiles is due to go the same way soon, reborn as 57 mostly unaffordable dwellings, as the diversity of tenure extends even further.
All human life is here on Mayday Road, either permanently in residence or visiting temporarily aboard a neenawing ambulance. Indeed if you're a TV documentary maker seeking to focus on a complete cross section of national issues you could do worse than base yourself here... and maybe call the series Mayday Mayday for good measure.
London's second Mayday Something lies in one of the more unsung corners of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, namely the unredeveloped end of Kidbrooke close to the foot of Shooters Hill, coincidentally behind another Victorian restorative institution. Most passers-by only see the front of the former Royal Herbert Hospital, now an imposing enclave of luxury flats, but if you head round the back you'll find a long residential street called Broad Walk. This was once a stripe of open fields roughly following the line of the Lower Kid Brook, bounded by the aforementioned hospital and Greenwich Cemetery, then inevitably succumbed to residential development. Mayday Gardens was added off Broad Walk on the cemetery side, sometime during the interwar period when pebbledash was inexplicably popular, and is lined by 100-or-so spacious semis along its sweeping crescent. [map 1897][map 1954][map 2024]
So wide are these semis that the bedrooms must actually be a decent size, and even then a few residents have had the builders in to add an asymmetrical loft extension. The chief design affectation is that the shared gable is half-timbered, although on some plots the architects went for horizontal boards instead. Porches allow more scope to display one's personality, be that minimalist bootrack shelter or full-on ebony makeover, while a few bay windows up the ante with small stained glass motifs. At the halfway point a brief green traffic island splits the roadway in two, and one lucky corner is blessed with a larger wedge of grass where fruit trees are currently in blossom. But the front gardens in Mayday Gardens have almost all been paved over for parking, alas, which along with an absence of street trees means the 'Gardens' label is now mostly fictional.
Most of the crescent is pretty quiet, the kind of place where an inquisitive pedestrian will raise suspicions. The only noise is residents jetwashing the crazy paving, mowing unseen lawns or driving off somewhere, and the majority of any action is car-related, be that loading, unloading or giving the Qashqai a jolly good Sunday polish. But the western end is rather livelier, in part thanks to a cut-through footpath and the passage of London Cycle Network route 25a, but mostly because it's the only entrance to Shootershill Sports & Social Club. They recently rebranded as The Venue on the Green because they'd really love you to hold your wedding reception here, even a wake, and the gin of the week is always £4 for locals who'd rather not be seen dead in an actual pub.
I'm obliged to journalistPeter Watts for providing the only interesting story I've found about Mayday Gardens, which is that it took a direct hit from an errant parachute mine during the Blitz damaging 27 houses, most of which remained derelict for years. 10 year-old Alan Lee Williams, who later became MP for Hornchurch, remembers his roof being blown off and the fire service plonking a large water tank in the blast zone which he and his brother used to swim in. What's unusual is that all the damaged houses in Mayday Gardens were later rebuilt exactly as they had been before, indeed I never guessed these weren't anything other than the originals, in sharp contrast to more working class parts of London where bombsites generally re-emerged as something new and different. This Mayday disaster, it turns out, had a happy ending.
See also
• Maypole(a hamlet in Bromley)
• Mayfair(a neighbourhood in Westminster)
Lost their £10,000 deposit: 9 of the 13 candidates
Electorate = 6.1 million Voted for Sadiq = 18% of the electorate Voted for Susan = 13% of the electorate Didn't vote for Sadiq = 82% of the electorate Couldn't be arsed to vote at all = 59% of the electorate
Lowest turnout: 31% in City & East (Tower Hamlets, Newham, B&D) Highest turnout: 48% in Bexley & Bromley
Number of rejected papers 2021: 114,201 (Single transferable vote) Number of rejected papers 2024: 11,127 (First past the post)
Most Laboury constituency: North East (Islington, Hackney & Waltham Forest) Most Conservativey constituency: Bexley & Bromley Most Greeny constituency: North East (Islington, Hackney & Waltham Forest) Most Libdemmy constituency: South West (Hounslow, Kingston & Richmond) Most Binfacey constituency: South West (Hounslow, Kingston & Richmond) Most Cockwombly constituency: Bexley & Bromley
Tightest Sadiq/Susan contest: Ealing & Hillingdon
London AssemblyMembership: Lab 11, Con 8, Green 3, LD 2, Reform 1 Gaining one seat: Reform Losing one seat: Conservative Number of votes required to block the Mayor's Budget: 17
Failed to become Mayor but became Assembly member: Susan, Zoë Failed to become Mayor or Assembly member: Rob, Howard Failed: Laurence
Referendum on ULEZ: Yes
Next Mayoral election: Thursday 4th May 2028 (we're back to four year terms again)
10 Centuries In 1 Day may not have been a very good walk.
But can we do it properly and pick one London building from each of 10 centuries?
In fact, given London's a Roman city, can we do 20 centuries?
Let's give it a try...
16th-21st century
This is the easy bit.
Far too many buildings to choose from.
So I've just chosen one big one.
21st century
Tons of London buildings are from this century. To be representative and iconic I want to pick something tall, so whereas I'd have preferred the Gherkin (2004) I'm going to pick The Shard (2013). It's still the tallest building in western Europe.
20th century
Again ridiculously spoiled for choice. We had the Barbican yesterday so let's go elsewhere. I was tempted by Battersea Power Station (1933), the Post Office Tower (1965) and the Lloyd's Building (1986), but let's go with the South Bank (1951) because you get more concrete bang for your buck there.
19th century
Two world-class icons here - the Houses of Parliament (1860) and Tower Bridge (1894), but I'm plumping for the former because of the additional frisson of Big Ben.
18th century
The Hawksmoor churches are tempting and Chiswick House (1729) is splendid but Buckingham Palace (1705) is the strongest contender, not necessarily for its architecture but for its global pre-eminence.
17th century Kensington Palace is early 17th century as is Ham House in Richmond, with the UNESCO cluster at Greenwich and 10 Downing Street appearing a little later. But I think it has to be St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's masterpiece, where building started in 1675 and the first service was held in 1697 (even if tools-down wasn't until 1710).
13th century
Will you let me pick Westminster Abbey? The current abbey was consecrated in 1269, although it does contain elements of the 11th century Norman church, for example the Pyx Chapel. If not then it might have to be Southwark Cathedral (1220), St Etheldreda's (1290) in Holborn or St Martin's (1245) in Ruislip.
11th century
London has an embarrassment of Norman riches, which is why I kicked Westminster Abbey into the 13th century. Westminster Hall (1097) is unequivocally 11th but it has to be the Tower of London, specifically the White Tower (1078).
6th-10th century
It's much harder pre-1066.
I'm looking for any structure you can still see today.
10th century
A bit ropey this. The Coronation Stone in Kingston is reputed to have seen the consecration of three kings - Æthelstan (925), Eadred (946) and Æthelred the Unready (979). But there's no guarantee the stone block recovered from the ruins of St Mary's church in 1730 is really the one, or was even there.
9th century
There's a plaque to King Alfred at Queenhithe commemorating his resettlement of the Roman city in 886, but it's not a proper leftover and this is my first Dark Ages blank.
8th century
Erm.
7th century
The remains of Barking Abbey belong to a monastery founded in 666. All-Hallows-by-the-Tower dates back to 675 and retains a Saxon arch, date unknown. Meanwhile some archaeologists found some 7th century remnants of the town of Lundenwic earlier this year. Take your pick.
6th century St Brides is on the site of one of England's oldest churches which was supposedly founded by St Bridget (or Irish missionaries) in the 6th century, but the current church is at least the seventh on the site and is over a millennium younger so doesn't count here.
1st-5th century
The Romans were around for this bit.
So we may have more luck.
5th century
Unfortunately at this stage Londinium was in decline and the Romans were skedaddling, so nothing to see here.
4th century
London's Roman wall is s 2nd/3rd century construction, but additional towers were built on the eastern side in the 4th. It's also thought a large church was built on Tower Hill at this time but nothing remains.
3rd century
We could pick the walls again, but the amazing Temple of Mithras (rediscovered in 1954) is probably a better choice.
2nd century
We could pick the walls again, or alternatively there's Crofton Roman Villa in Orpington, but a true survivor is the Roman House and Baths at Billingsgate.
1st century
London's Roman amphitheatre was built in AD70, which is really really early, but that was made of wood and the stone version you can see in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery is from the early 2nd century instead (so yes, we could pick that for the 2nd century, and we don't actually need a 1st century building to tick off 20 centuries so let's do that).
21st century The Shard
20th century South Bank
19th century Houses of Parliament
18th century Buckingham Palace
17th century St Paul's Cathedral
16th century Hampton Court
15th century Guildhall
14th century Jewel Tower
13th century Westminster Abbey
12th century Temple Church
11th century Tower of London
10th century Coronation Stone?
9th century
8th century
7th century Barking Abbey
6th century
5th century
4th century City Wall towers?
3rd century Temple of Mithras
2nd century Roman amphitheatre
