73. Bond Street

Monday 22nd December 5.20pm

For once I actually need to be at this station to go somewhere, and hadn't just come through it to ticket it off my list unlike most of the other ones I've visited lately.

It's a dreadful disappointment: Bond Street suggests glamour and expensive shopping, but the entrance is actually through a rather dated shopping centre on Oxford Street. Stations with shops are my least favourite, particularly the hell that is Hammersmith but this comes a close second. It's also been a building site recently because of the Crossrail development, and whatever they've done to it doesn't appear to have made it any nicer, which is a real shame as it could certainly do with it.

Wikipedia entry here.

72. Cannon Street

Thursday 27th November 7.10pm

This was nowhere near where I needed to be but I'm desperate to get through all the zone one stations soon so I made a detour, and was then amazed to find it's not actually where I thought it was and is in fact not in the middle of nowhere but is within site of St Pauls cathedral, and is easily within walking distance of that station, Mansion House and probably Monument too. It's funny how some bits of London are completely over-served with stations. I guess this only exists as there's a mainline rail station on top of it. And because of that it's not really very memorable - just platforms and stairs. There's something a bit seventies about the colour of those tiles though.

Wikipedia entry here.

71. Stepney Green

Wednesday 19th November 7.40pm

The first thing that surprised me when I got off the train was the number of other people who did too. I'd never heard of the area before, let alone the station, and assumed it was vaguely in the middle of nowhere, but of course somewhere with a Tube station is hardly nowhere. The second thing I noticed was that it was a bit run down and the pale yellow tiling on the stairs could do with a good clean. But then I turned a corner and saw a lovely sign:

Wikipedia entry here.

70. Lambeth North

Saturday 18th October 6.50pm

This was another one of those one-stop-from-where-I-needed-to-be stations, which I should probably stop going to in the dark as they're surprisingly hard to find. I was just about to give up hope when I literally realised I was standing outside it - those ox-blood red tiles are less distinctive in the dark, and it there's an underground sign projecting from the building I failed to see it!

It was really quiet so I shared the lift down to the platform with one man and his dog. I'm not joking. Down on the platform it's all tiled, the usual kind of station for it's period, which I feel like I take for granted and should love more as they do what they need to do really simply and practically. It's the kind of place I'd like to be my local station.

Wikipedia entry here.

69. Tower Hill

[Why oh why did I take that picture as portrait when all the others are landscape?? I'll have to go back at some point and have another go at it.]

Saturday 18th October 3.45pm

Not my favourite station this one, and I've been through it an unexpectedly high amount of times in recent years. It's just a bit tricky to get to - if you approach it from the Tower of London you go through an underpass then up a horribly steep flight of stairs, and it you approach it from the top you've go past lots of run down buildings. The station itself looks like it needs a new clean. And why on earth didn't they just call it "Tower of London" when that's exactly where it is??

Wikipedia entry here.

68. Bermondsey

Saturday 18th October 2.45pm

This is another one of those stations that seems too modern for the area it serves - it's not even in the fancy bit of Bermondsey where the White Cube is, just on an ordinary street with lots of housing. It's a deceptive station - you get out of the train and it's got those glass barriers all the way along the platform so it feels quite cramped and dingy, but then you leave the platform and it suddenly gets very light at the bottom of the escalators. They're only average height so you can see how close to the surface the tunnel actually is, and above the escalators is a huge glass roof through which streams loads of light, even on a grey day. It really is quite lovely.

Wikipedia entry here.

67.Aldgate East

Saturday 18th October 2.15pm

I was going to complain that this station appears to be old judging from the signage on the platform but only has modern entrances in two uninspiring glass offices blocks when it turns out it actually has an old above ground building right next door to the Whitechapel gallery, which I probably walked past to get to the new entrances. What a fool.

Anyway, the platform does have old tiling (which according to Wikipedia is actually completely new!) and signage on it which is nice to see, and on some of there pillars there were these smaller versions of the roundel with brass edging which were lovely (and were crying out to be taken home).

Wikipedia entry here.

66. Whitechapel

Saturday 18th October, 12.10pm

Another station I doubt I could have found on the map. I knew it was in the East End but it turns out my idea of the East End and the actual East End are very different!

It's also another station I ended up getting lost in thanks to Crossrail - it's going to be a stop on that line (which seems unlikely and makes me think it's punching above its weight) - so there's building works going on. To exit you had to cross from the eastbound platform to the westbound platform, and the exit was at one end, but it's not obviously signposted and I ended up wandering back to where I came from like a fool. I liked the way the platforms were open to the air though.

Wikipedia entry here.

65. Chancery Lane

Saturday 11th October 4.50pm

This is one of those stations that wasn't where I thought it was. If pushed I'd have said it was further south, near the river, probably where Cannon Street is, but it isn't there at all - it's along High Holborn, within walking distance and almost in sight of Holborn station, which probably explains why I've never been there before.

It has not surface buildings, just subways from either side of the road which converge on the ticket office then down escalators to the platforms. It was almost deserted when I went through it some I'm guessing that most of the millions of people who use it do so during the week. When I was there a train left the station and stopped with the end of the last carriage just beyond the end of the platform so the next train waited with the front of the first carriage just beyond the platform at the other end. If only I had a fancy camera that did a panorama I could have got a shot of two trains at the same station at the same time.

Wikipedia entry here.

64. Farringdon

Saturday 11th October 11.50am

This was my second attempt at Farringdon this year - the first attempt failed as I couldn't actually find the entrance. To be fair the place has been a massive building site in preparation for Crossrail and I did begin to wonder if it was actually shut. But I've been through it since and people have got off so I assume it's just badly signposted and I'm an idiot. So I figured that if I actually arrived at the station I'd have to be total fool to get so lost I couldn't get out.

Turns out it's a rather lovely station, and unbelievably quiet on a Saturday lunchtime. One of the exits was shut so you had to walk along a corridor with windows along one side which blazed with sun, and there's some lovely honey-coloured brickwork too. I think it might be a bit of triumph when it's finally finished, and I'm glad I had an excuse to give it another go.

Wikipedia entry here.

63. Aldgate

Tuesday 2nd October 3pm.

I liked this station as it's the eastern terminus of the Metropolitan line, which means that the west-bound trains sit on the platform ready to depart, but seem in no rush to do so. It also meant that at the time of day I travelled it was quiet and I nearly had a whole carriage to myself. Tube travel isn't meant to be that relaxing.

Wikipedia entry here.

62. Stockwell

Wednesday 2nd October 9.10am

This is another one of those stations that was one stop away from where I needed to be, although when you get out of the centre of London they get further apart and this was a good twenty minutes walk. The Station itself is initially quite disappointing, a very boxy thing in chocolate brown brick, but actually it's got something about it which I quite like.

It's the station where the Brazilian electrician was mistaken for a terrorist suspect and shot in 2005, a tragic event which inspired a Pet Shop Boys song called We're all Criminals now which I ended up singing to myself for the rest of the day.

Wikipedia entry here.

61. Kennington

Tuesday 1st October 11pm.

The first thing that strikes me about that picture is the wooden frame around the name, which looks like the kind of thing my Dad would have knocked up out of bits of wood he had lying around but which isn't just restricted to one roundel or indeed one station - so far I've also seen it at Oval, which is the next stop, and St. James's Park, which is on a completely different line, so it must be a real thing although it hardly sees that stylish.

The rest of the station is as you'd expect it: lots of tiling, and a lift to the ticket office level. It's also situated on a corner, which is ideal for confusing you if you don't know the area or where you're going.

Wikipedia entry here.

60. North Greenwich

Tuesday 1st October 10.45pm

I actually went through this station last summer but had been drinking and forgot. This time round I had my wits about me, which you need anyway after coming out of a gig at the O2. It's another of those huge, spacious Jubilee line stations although this one seems less spacious quite quickly when you get underground, on a funny mezzanine level between the station and the platforms. Down on the platforms there are big columns covered in blue mosaic tiles, which you can see in the picture, which is an unusual splash of colour as the rest of the Jubilee line stations are almost exclusively concrete and metal.

Wikipedia entry here.

59. Vauxhall

Tuesday 1st October, 2.45pm

I've been to Vauxhall a few times but always on foot, which is unexpected as it's a bit of a transport hub with Tube, railway and buses all converging on one place, right beside a busy road over the bridge. The Tube station is probably the least interest bit of it with no interchange and as I was with a friend I didn't really pay much attention to it as we walked through it.

Wikipedia entry here.

58. Mansion House

Saturday 20th September 11.45am

This is one of those stations in a part of the city that seems a bit overrun with stations, but I guess those business types don't like to walk too far to the office. The beauty of those business stations is that they're absolutely deserted at weekends and I was the only person on the platform waiting for the train. The platform had lots of pillars along it which would have been great for a game of hide-and-seek.

It's also got one of those labyrinth artworks. I've not really understood or being paying attention to them. Apparently there's on at every station and people are collecting the whole set. If only I'd known about them when I started this nonsense I might have done the same, but I'm not going back to the beginning now!

Wikipedia entry here.

57. Westminster

Saturday 20th September 11.00am

I do like these roundels that stand up on their own, it's nice to see them in three dimensions, and I guess there's no other way of doing it with all the glass (although I did see one in Hammersmith which was on the glass, but I forgot to photograph it).

So this is one of those stations on the fancy Jubilee line, all concrete, steel and glass. But I was coming into it on the District line and I didn't know if there was still some remnants of an old station for that line. But no, the whole this has been rebuilt although you don't get the scale of it from this line, just coming up one flight of stairs to the ticket hall and out onto the street. Rather disappointingly there isn't a big bold building above ground, just lots of entrances that give you no idea of what lies beneath.

Wikipedia entry here.

56. West Brompton

Saturday 20th September 10.45am

This was another of those next-stop-from-where-I-needed-to-be stations and turned out to be quite informative as well - I'd have expected it to be a bit further north than it was, a bit nearer Kensington, a bit posher perhaps. And I wasn't expecting Chelsea football club to be just round the corner either. I was also surprised to see the Earls Court Exhibition Centre just over the road - when I went there two years ago it was chaos on the trains at Earls Court afterwards, which it turns out could have easily been avoided by taking a side exit from the building and using this station instead. I'd remember that for another time but they're probably going to knock down the centre so that knowledge is a bit too late.

The station shares platforms with the Overground and they're all open air, which gives it something of a country feel, which is a bit unexpected in the heart of the city.

Wikipedia entry here.

55. Borough

Friday 12th September 1.15pm

The main thing to note about this station is that it isn't as close to Borough Market as its name would suggest - that's right next door to London Bridge, in fact the track runs over the top of it - but I've already been there and actually don't like it so I gave it a miss. 

It's also on the trickier half of the Northern Line, the Bank branch which comes through King's Cross but actually is no use to me as it doesn't go anywhere I want to go. There's talk of splitting the Northern Line in two at some point when it gets extended south to Battersea, but it seems like it will be fairly cosmetic and won't make any difference to the way you actually use the line.

Wikipedia entry here.

54. Hyde Park Corner

Friday September 12th 11.30am

This is one of those stations with no surface buildings, that you get to through a slightly confusing subway under the busy junction at Hyde Park Corner. Once you get into it the station itself the platforms still have some of the old tiling, which is always lovely to see:

There was also some rather lovely tiling on the other platform too, but I only noticed that as the train pulled away and I was too slow to get my phone out to take a picture.

Wikipedia entry here.

So, 54 stations, that's 20% of them done then. Not bad going for 21 months, especially as I don't live in London and haven't really gone out of my way to visit stations that I wasn't near anyway. It has made me realise though just how hard this task is going to be to complete - I'm going to have no reason to be at the ends of the Central line other than to visit the stations, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. In the meantime I had to address the problem of how to keep track of where I've been. Yes I realise that's what this is for, but I also needed something more practical, that I could hold in my hand so I could see what I needed to do next. Basically what I needed was an A3 copy of the Tube map and a highlighting pen:

53. Earls Court

Friday 12th September 9.15am

The outside of this is rather lovely, with the name of the railway company across the top of the front of the older part of the station, but there was roadworks going on which made it tricky to photograph. There was also an old-fashioned police box outside the front which is how this picture came about:

Inside it's rather lovely - you walk up some stairs to a sort of mezzanine level which looks over the track, down the station and in the distance you can see the Earl's Court concert hall/exhibition centre through the end of the platform. Stupidly I didn't get a picture of it, which is a shame as there's a lot of talk of knocking that building down. Apparently there's a much more modern station building at that end, but I've only used it once and didn't notice as it was so crowded.

The Piccadilly line platforms are only accessible by lifts and they're your standard tiled platform, just as you'd expect to find on this part of the line.

Wikipedia entry here.

52. Gloucester Road

Friday 11th September 6.30pm.

My first Tube picture with an actual train in it, thanks to the island platform arrangement rather than separate platforms in separate tunnels.

This is probably a more interesting station than you realise as you walk through it, especially as you leave the building which is dwarfed somewhat by an ugly arcade with a Waitrose in it.

Wikipedia entry here

51. Mornington Crescent

Saturday 6th September 6.15pm

This station is most famous for the fact that it was closed for years. I remember staying with a friend who was house-sitting in Camden in the 90s and having to walk past it to the busier Camden Town tube as it was shut and nobody seemed to know if it would ever open again. It's also the name of some game on radio 4 but I've never heard of it as those comedy things often aren't as funny as I'd hope.

The station itself is fairly classic: tiled platform, oxblood red tiled building above ground. It does have lifts instead of stairs (the cause of the endless closure) and as I waited for one I enjoyed eavesdropping on two women, one of whom was talking about someone she'd been dating for two months before the whole thing fizzled out. It's actually a very civilised way of arriving in Camden as it's on a quiet street and there's a nice walk up Camden High Street before it gets really busier, and surely anywhere is preferable to the horror of Camden Town tube?

Wikipedia entry here.

50. Bayswater

Saturday 6th September 6pm

I had no reason to be at this station other than to tick it off my list - I walked from Paddington to get there! I assumed it would be in a residential area, not really being familiar with Bayswater, but it's on a street full of shops and restaurants and as soon as I turned onto it I remembered I'd been there before.

The station building is one of those single storey ones that they probably hoped someone would build offices on top of but it never happened. Down on the platform it's more of that lovely brickwork that this part of the line is made up of and at the end of platform it's open so you can see how it was made and also just how close to the surface it is, which is rather beautiful.

Wikipedia entry here.

49. Paddington

Saturday 6th September 10.45am

This is my second go at this station - the last time I was there they were building on the platforms or something and it was too crowded to stop and take a picture, and of course if there's no picture it doesn't count. I recently saw a show at the Edinburgh Fringe by the man who currently holds the world record for getting round the whole Tube network in the quickest time and he seemed to suggest that Paddington was two separate stations, which confuses me as it's only shown as one on the map and all the lines seem interconnected even if there are a confusing amounts of entrances, including one outside the station on the other side of the road. But it's the same at King's Cross and that only counts as one. So I might be back here from another line, or I might not, who knows!

It is a bit of charmless maze of tunnels which is a pity as the mainline station above it has got quite a lot of character if you look hard enough, I have a fondness for it which it probably doesn't deserve as I associate it with a friend from Wales, and also Paddington Bear (yes I know that's the mainline station but they are inextricably linked).

Wikipedia entry here.

48. Marylebone

Saturday 6th September 10.30am

This is one of those stations that I forget exists and would find hard to place on a map, if pushed probably thinking it was a bit further round near Shepherd's Bush. I've never been as it's not near anywhere I've needed to go and the mainline station it's attached to doesn't go places I would need to go either. Like most of the Tube stations attached to mainline stations it's a bit of a horror, with too many people millinground not knowing where to go, but thankfully as it only serves one line it's easy to get round. It's probably a lot more interesting and historic than you get a sense of when you're in it.

Wikipedia entry here.

47. Baker Street

Saturday 6th September 10.10am

I have bad memories of this station from my early twenties, changing here from a Tube from Wembley and trying to find the platform to get back to King's Cross after gigs in Wembley Arena. The layout of the station doesn't help - too many lines on too many levels, and I just remember frantically running through it and crossing my fingers I was about to jump on the right train. Thankfully yesterday I wasn't changing so a repeat of that was avoided, although it does seem overly complicated to get out of.

I was on another of those lovely old brick platforms that really do give you a sense of how the Tube looked when it was first built, but it does mean I didn't get to take a picture of the tiles with the head of Sherlock Holmes on them that some of the other platforms have. But I did hum Gerry Rafferty's song of the same name to myself, even though it's about the street more than the station.

Wikipedia entry here.

46. Great Portland Street

Saturday 6th September 10.00am

Another station on that section of Euston Road near to Euston station which has more stations than is strictly necessary. I have a fondness for this one as I once went on a date in Regents Park and we bought a picnic from the Pret a Manger that is part of the station, but until yesterday I'd never been in it. It's a nice building - what's that shape called when it's a square with a semi-circle on either end? Well it's that, on a roundabout in a load of traffic, and although the shops that form part of the building are nothing glamorous I still rather like it.

Down on the platform it's all brick and arches, like the other stations on this section of the Tube, which makes me think it's one of those cut-and-cover ones from before they invented methods of tunnelling. I like the fact that the roundel I took a picture of was a bit dirty and not all new and shiny.

Wikipedia entry here.

45. St. Pauls

Sunday 8th June 9.45pm

The station has no above ground buildings, just two sets of stairs on either side of the road down to the subway. I was in such a rush to get to my train that I didn't pause to pay any attention to it, and nearly fell down the escalator in my haste. It's just a small station serving only one line, so that's just two platforms and not much else to say about it. It's all very tidy looking though, which I guess is what happens when you're near the financial institutions.

Wikipedia entry here.

44. Warren Street

Saturday 10th May 5.15pm

This is another stop that is just a couple of stops away from where I needed to be. It's on that odd part of Euston Road that has more stations than seems necessary: this, Euston and Euston Square, as well as King's Cross being just a five minute walk away, which makes me realise that Euston is a much more important station than its rather grim exterior suggests.

This is quite an unremarkable station although apparently it was the first one on the network to have wifi, although surely by the time you've gone through all the fuss of logging in your train has arrived and you can't use it any more?

Wikipedia entry here.

43. Pimlico

Saturday 10th May 5pm

I actually went through this station last summer on the way to Tate Britain but I was with a friend who I thought might be sarcastic about this kind of thing, and also was so excited about being in London with someone else that I forgot to take a picture.

I actually had no reason to be there but had time to kill and wanted to add another station to my list, so decided to walk one stop away from where I should have got on. Strictly speaking one stop away would have been South Kensington or Victoria, both of which I've already been through, so instead I walked a mile in the rain and sun to get here.

It's in a funny area, mostly residential but not as fancy as it thinks it is. Apart from visiting Tate Modern I can't think what I'd ever use it for again. I do like the backlit roundel, haven't seen that anywhere else yet.

Wikipedia entry here.

42. Sloane Square

Saturday 10th May 1.45pm

I quite like the tiling, even if it is an attempt to make the station feel fancier than it is. Considering the area it serves is nice and has lots of expensive shops the Tube station is a bit ordinary, and the platforms are open to the air. Even the station building itself has got a horrid office block sat on top of it, the least lovely building on Sloane Square.

The Wikipedia entry reminds me that the man who was one of the boys who inspired J M Barrie's Peter Pan committed suicide at this station and when I saw the play Peter & Alice about how it had affected his life it was just about the only line in the whole thing that moved me to tears.

Wikipedia entry here.

41. Holloway Road

Friday 2nd May 7pm

I had no reason at all to be on the Holloway Road, but it was one stop away from where I needed to be and I had time to kill so I thought I'd tick off another station on the list. Turns out it was a rather lovely station with some gorgeous brown tiling:

I can't help thinking this is how all Tube stations should be. It's also got lifts, which it turns out I don't really like in a station, and the outside is one of those gorgeous ox blood red tiled fronts - pretty much your classic Tube station.

Wikipedia entry here.

40. Goodge Street

Friday 18th April 6.30pm

I didn't actually need to be here but of course I'd have to go through it at some point and a sunny Easter evening was as good a time as any to go out of my way. Turns out that with the Crossrail works going on at Tottenham Court Road for another two years it might actually be a useful alternative. Not that I really need to be in that part of London.

It's not that special a station, just serving one line, but it's actually a good example of this kind of thing, with some nice plain cream tiling and above ground it's clad in those ox blood red tiles that are so distinctive (not that you can tell from all the scaffolding up the front of it). And it has lifts, which is rare enough to still feel like a treat.

Wikipedia entry here.

39. Highbury & Islington

Friday April 11th 10.30pm

When I looked this up on Google maps to see where I was going it looked like it had a really old station building but it turns out that's closed and instead there's a modern building over the road which serves the Tube, the Overground and trains. It's a bland building although it does have one of those lovely blue station names across the front of it.

With all those different services going through it there are a lot of different platforms. The Tube ones are fairly unremarkable - no patterned tiling, not station name in tiles - but I do like the way the roundel sign is in a little alcove and lit up.

Wikipedia entry here.

38. Euston Square

Monday 7th April 6pm

Another station that has a similar name to one nearby but no interchange between them, just to confuse people who aren't locals or who haven't read the Tube map. I was neither, I just got out here because it's within walking distance of King's Cross. Apparently there's a fancy new station on the south side of Euston Road but somehow I ended up on the north side, which to be fair is where I needed to be, where the entrance is a small set of stairs that looks like the entrance to a public lavatory.

Wikipedia entry here.

37. Edgware Road (Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines)

Monday 7th April 5.45pm

So just round the corner from the other Edgware Road station is this one, which turns out to be the original, and it's interesting how two similar things so close together can be so different. It's a stone building, which makes it seem grander, although that impression doesn't last long when you find yourself in a crowded corridor to the barrier. Then it opens up as you find yourself at the top of two flights of stairs, each going to two platforms, but the signage isn't as obvious as it could be and relies on you remembering whether you want to head east or west. I nearly fell down the stairs as I stood pondering it, and I'm sure I must have got in a lot of peoples way. It doesn't help that it serves three lines, even if they do all seem to cover the same ground.

The platforms are all open to the air, and have lines either side of them rather than being either side of the lines, if that makes any sense. Like the other stations on this line they feel crowded and the trains seems less frequent. But then the train arrives and it's one of those new ones that has no doors so you can walk the length of it.

Wikipedia entry here.

36. Edgware Road (Bakerloo Line)

Monday 7th April 5.30pm

I needed to change from the Bakerloo line to something that would get me back to Kings Cross and the other options were all going to be too busy, so I thought I'd investigate the two stations at Edgware Road instead. They're not connected in anyway which is why they're separate stations on the map, and why they count as two separate stations towards the total number. But they are quite close together - just along the road, under a flyover and round the corner. They're probably actually closer than the interchanges between lines at some of the bigger stations (Paddington and Kings Cross spring to mind).

The station itself is a bit run down, just like the area itself. It's obviously used a lot and being right next to a flyover doesn't help. It feels very urban, but in a realistic way, in an every day kind of way. There's no glamour in the city really.

Wikipedia entry here.