Here is the challenge. I am going to cycle from the centre of London (traditionally Charing Cross but I'm gonna start at my office nearby on the Strand) to each terminus station of the London Underground. With all the branch lines, there are by my count 34 of these.
The reasons are as follows:
1. I need to fit in some bike training as I have (perhaps foolishly) agreed to cycle from Oxford to Cambridge (or was it the other way around - reminder to check that) with my father-in-law in September.
2. I like watching the city peel away.
3. And so I figured this would be a good way to get some bike time after work and see a lot of places I wouldn't normally get to.
Today I started by going east, out to the ends of the Docklands Light Railway. Not underground I know, and some may dispute its status - but I figure, if it's in colour on the Underground map, it's part the underground.
After crossing over to the south side I followed National Cycle routes 4 and 1 through south-east London. I've gone this way before, on a ride down to Kent (rain, flat tyre, getting lost too much stuff - all bad). Those routes tend to shove you off the main roads which can be kind of annoying if you're in a hurry. But I like the neighbourhoods around there, a hodgepodge of houses and buildings, no apparent plan, usually an old boozer down a side street keeping open against all odds. And sometimes, just sometimes, you get some great river views.
Let's not get too excited. On either side of Greenwich things can get pretty grim. So I sped down the Woolwich Road towards the first stop, in fact the newest terminus terminal, Woolwich Arsenal.
It's a bright and shiny new station in a dusty square with weird chalk lines on the pavement, as if cars or buildings died and their corpses were outlined right there.
After bagging the first one I moved with haste towards the ferry terminal. I had a thought to take the foot tunnel but the rule is: if possible, always take a ferry. I recall an incident in a car with a certain friend who shall remain nameless, driving 40 miles out of the way: 'Um ... that's not a bridge; that's a ferry.' This is the peril of being so far down river: If you're stuck in Woolwich with any sort of vehicle larger than a bike, you have to go all the way back to Zone 1 if you want to get back north.
So here it is. The ferry takes about five minutes and is free and is run by a bunch of cockneys who, lacking entertainment, have made up a lot of rules that they can enforce for a bit of fun. They must be the last cockneys still working on boats.
Past City Airport and I soon come to the second DLR terminus, Beckton. Small, quiet. Doesn't look like an endpoint and that's because National Rail continues east.
There's a short path past the station that is leafy and lulls the bike rider into a sense of complacency before the realisation that in order to continue you have to go alongside a huge highway aka the A11. At this point I overshoot somewhat and have to backtrack to get to Barking, which is closing for the evening.
Barking's somehow not as sad as Woolwich, despite the boarded up houses and the fight breaking out in the station. But there's all sorts of folks milling around, getting home, waiting for a Hammersmith and City line train that takes half an hour to show up - and tonight I'm one of them.
I never thought about Marble Arch the same way after I learned it was the site of the Tyburn gallows, and thus one of the most grisly places in London.
No one in their right mind would call Edgware Road station a terminus, but as a lame flange of the District Line stops here, it fits my criteria. Picture taken.
