31. Stratford

Sunday 16th February 12.30pm

No roundel picture? Well if there was one on the eastbound Central Line platform I'm buggered if I could find it! I wondered if it might have been because the station serves so many other types of trains: Overground, DLR, national (to Cambridge according to a platform map, which seemed useful but weird as I'd never seen any listed when I'd been at Cambridge - turns out they go via King's Cross and Liverpool Street, then you swap to something else - cheats!), and international (Eurostar obviously - how I love the announcement as you pull into King's Cross for international departures). But that would mean different types of train turning up on different platforms every day which is a rubbish way to run a railway, so it shows what I know! Perhaps they forgot the signs? I bet the Jubilee line platform has them as it's fancy and modern.

The platforms are all above ground and it's a bit characterless but practical. There's a stunning new entrance that looks a bit like an airport but because I was nipping into the Westfield shopping centre I didn't go through it. I imagine it's one of those stations that seems well connected but the reality of using it is a hideous nightmare. At least the mainline stations in the centre of London have the sense to separate the trains and Tube.

Wikipedia entry here.

Updated 10th January:

As I expected, the roundel was on the Jubilee line platforms:

30. Leyton

Saturday 1st February 6.30pm

Apart from a couple of trips into zone 2 all my travels so far have mostly been confined to zone 1, although obviously if I'm ever going to get anywhere near completing this thing I'm going to have to spread my wings a lot further. This then was my first trip into zone 3, thanks to a friend who has just moved to the area.

Someone noted on Wikipedia that most of the roundels on the walls are small, which is true and rather surprising as they're not exactly short of wall space.

It's your standard suburban station: two platforms, above ground, stairs to a ticket office. All perfectly practical and not in the least decorative.

Wikipedia entry here.

29. Oval

Saturday 1st February 3.30pm

The first thing that strikes me about this is the frame around the blue bit across the centre - it's made of wood and looks like the stuff you make picture frames from. It's basically what your Dad would do if you wanted him to make something and he didn't have the stuff to do it properly. But it wasn't just this one roundel, and it wasn't just this station - it was the same at the previous stop (Kennington, where I only changed trains so it doesn't get a mention on here yet).

It also has - like Bank - the shortest name of any Tube station, although it took me an evening if absent-minded wondering to work out if that was true or not, with both Bow and Kew turning out to be abbreviations of their proper names.

In the ticket office the tiling has a cricket theme, with white figures against an oval-shaped green background doing something cricket-y. If they'd have been remotely kitsch I'd have taken a picture, but alas, just like cricket, they were a bit dull.

Wikipedia entry here.

28. Monument

Saturday 1st February 12.45pm.

The stretch of District & Circle line that runs beside the river north of the Thames seems to have so many stations along it that you wonder how they all get used as they're all a reasonably short distance from each other, but it's only when you realise that there are no corresponding stations south of the river but lots of bridges crossing it that this makes sense. And that's how I ended up there, thanks to a Jubilee line closure.

It's got one of those slightly confusing exits with too many options that relies on you knowing the name of the street you want to exit to, which I'm sure works well for locals and regular users, but for tourists and people finding themselves there unexpectedly it's very confusing. Thanks goodness for those local area maps, although I do with they'd reach some consensus about where to put them in the station so it was less like a game of hide & seek.

Wikipedia entry here (although it has to share it with Bank station).

27. St. James's Park

Saturday 18th January 3.00pm

Blimey that's a punctuation nightmare isn't it? Now I've read Eats, Shoots and Leaves and thought I had a handle on the whole apostrophe business but this 's' followed by another 's' thing still catches me out and I'd have put money on this being St. James' Park. But no.

The station itself is build underneath 55 Broadway, which is the headquarters of the Tube company - a stunning building which according to Wikipedia they are vacating next year and turning into flats, so I've got a couple of years to win the lottery/find myself a sugar Daddy to buy me one.

The above ground bits of the station include shops and lots of marble, and it works unlike Picadilly Circus where you used to be able to get into Tower Records but it was all a bit of a nightmare. And somehow this reminds me of Grand Central Station, although obviously it's actually nothing like it.

Wikipedia entry here.

And with that I have visited one-tenth of the Tube stations in just over a year. I realise things are going to get a lot more difficult as I leave Zone 1 but it's been fun so far and has completely changed the way I think about the Tube - if you see me waiting for a train I'm likely to be lost in contemplation of the tiling. I love the Tube!

26. Temple

Saturday 18th January 2.45pm

Turns out this isn't where I thought it was. I knew it was on the Embankment but thought it was opposite Cleopatra's Needle - somehow I muddled it's religious name with the whole Cleopatra business and assumed they were connected. So I could never understand why anyone would use it when it was right next door to Embankment and Charing Cross stations. As I walked and walked along the Embankment, past Somerset House and beyond I realised my mistake.

It does feel like it's in the middle of nowhere though, and why would anyone use it? It's the quietest Tube station I've been though - I was the only person in the ticket hall as I went through the barriers. Disappointingly the rather lovely station building is now a Walkabout pub. But I guess it will get a new lease of life if Thomas Hetherwick's bridge gets built. Fingers crossed then.

Wikipedia entry here.

25. Barbican

Saturday 11th January 12.45pm

I love that picture! Now the underground has smartened its act up it feels quite rare to see anything looking tatty. Of course there are bits of it that are a mess because they're being rebuilt, and lots of it is going to look scuffed from use, but this is the first thing like this I've seen and it's right there on platform 1 as the train pulls into the station. Something about that makes me really happy.

The station itself is small with the platforms hardly below ground level, and open to the elements although I guess at one point they had a roof to keep you dry. It only serves one route and I'm starting to think that this type of station: small, no escalators, no endless corridors, just getting local people to where they need to go, is becoming my favourite kind of station.

Wikipedia entry here.