181. Epping

Saturday 8th October, 12.58pm

The end of the line at the eastern end, which I probably wouldn't have visited so soon if their hadn't been a train strike - this is my nearest Tube station (74 miles, so not that near).

It's hard to see the station building itself as there's a roundabout directly in front of it, a drop off point, and a you have to go past it to get to the car park, so it doesn't really encourage loitering. There's a nice bridge over the tracks, and the platforms had flower beds so that's a nice touch. I wasn't expecting it to be so busy (although that might have been because of the train strike).

Wikipedia entry here.

170. Mile End

Wednesday 3rd October 4.25pm

Part of this station is an island platform with pillars in between which are benches. The benches are crying out for roundels on them, like lots of other places on the Tube but there aren't any - I walked the length of the platform hoping to find some but no, so we're left with modern metal ones which somehow feel a bit disappointing.

It has a surface building but it's really just an opening in a row of shops. It did have a pair of roundels sticking out from it, one with "underground" on it and the other with the name of the station on it. I'd have liked to get a picture of them but it didn't feel like the kind of street where you could stop and do that.

Wikipedia entry here.

169. Bethnal Green

Wednesday 3rd October 3.50pm

This has got the older yellowy tiles that you see elsewhere on the Tube and as a bonus has nice lettering above it, which proved too difficult to photograph in any useful way. The whole station is below ground, most of it probably under the crossroads you come up to. It was really quite when I was there and after months of failing to get there it felt like a bit of an anticlimax.

Wikipedia entry here.

148. Shepherd's Bush

Saturday 22nd October 10.00am

Surely everyone knows that when you lay tiles (and indeed brickwork) you should stagger the tiles to avoid the cross-shaped joint you can see above and below the name. Shocking workmanship.

The station was rebuilt in 2008, at the same time as the enormous Westfield shopping centre was opened beside it. It would be hard to find a more vapid building - it's literally a glass box over the top of the escalators, down to corridors and platforms that seem unchanged (apart from the bad tiling).

Wikipedia entry here.

146. Newbury Park

Saturday 22nd October 8.30am

This station has got a grade II listed bus shelter in front of it - a concrete arch with a copper roof which looks amazing in pictures. But the reality doesn't have dramatic lighting or filters, and is filled with people hanging around waiting for buses. It's also a bit smaller than the pictures suggest, so try as I might I couldn't even get a rubbish picture of it. Instead I got a picture of a big roundel on a pole outside the station:

Wikipedia entry here.

134. Ealing Broadway

Saturday 24th September 3.00pm

This is the western end of the District line, but it's also a National Rail station. It has a confusing amount of exits, or just bad signage, which meant that I ended up swiping my Oyster card in two different places before I left the station, which makes me look like a complete beginner. To add insult to injury it then throws you out into a busy shopping street, which is confusing when you have no idea where you're going.

Wikipedia entry here.

130. Holland Park

Saturday 24th September 10.10am

This has been shut for a while for refurbishment otherwise I might have visited sooner. Quite what the refurbishment was is hard to tell, although the bit of the tunnel facing the platform does have some bare plaster on it. I expect it was lifts, because it's always lifts if it's not escalators (and this has no escalators). It does have some nice old signage in it though:

The station itself is small and quiet, and is situated in possibly the fanciest row of shops I've seen, including a champagne shop. It's very posh round there.

Wikipedia entry here.

116.White City

Saturday 13th February 5.30pm

This is within sight of Wood Lane station and is so close it's a wonder they haven't found some way of combining them into one station. It's an old station that hasn't been significantly changed so there's some nice bits of old signage around it which is always interesting to see:

Wikipedia entry here.

103. Notting Hill Gate

Saturday 7th November 10.30am

This is an entirely underground station with no surface buildings, just stairs to the ticket level and platforms, and other than that it's quite an unremarkable station.

Wikipedia entry here.

That is also the last station in Zone 1 ticked off my list. It's good to final complete a sub-set of the whole Tube thing, instead of just percentages. I thought I'd probably get a line finished first, probably the Victoria line as it's the shortest, but my travels haven't been that organised. But while it's good to achieve a goal it also makes me realise that it's taken me almost three years to do what was basically the easiest bit of the challenge. Goodness knows how long it'll take me to get to Chesham!

91. Marble Arch

Saturday 4th July 3.50pm

I wanted this station to be grander. Despite being at the tale end of Oxford Street, the tattier end, it is obviously near Marble Arch which is of course a great big arch and I somehow thought it might reflect that. But no - its got a tiny entrance next to a Bureau de Change and near a MacDonalds. It -couldn't be less glamorous.

Down on the platform bits of the walls are clad with metal rather than tiles onto which are painted representations of arches. They look dated and cluttered, but as they were fitted in the 80s they're now thirty years old and have acquired value through age and survived a recent refit, which is a pity.

Wikipedia entry here.

90. Queensway

Saturday 4th July 12.10pm

There's something very familiar about this although I've never been to it before, mostly I think because it has lifts and is opposite a park so just reminds me of Lancaster Gate, which is the next station to it on the Central Line. There are lifts to the street level, but even when you get out of the lift there's an odd maze like passage to follow to get to the ticket office which makes no sense at all.

Wikipedia entry here.

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.

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.

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.

33. Bank

Thursday 13th March 12.05pm

This is another one of those stations that has too many things going on and ends up making you want to weep: three tube lines plus a connection to the DLR, and it's joined up to Monument station (which I've already been to). It has a confusing amount of exits and as I wandered round trying to work out which one I wanted I was afraid I was going to get trapped in it forever. Ninth busiest station on the network, which is hardly surprising as it's right outside the Bank of England and near all that type of stuff, but I'd happily never go there again.

It shares with Oval the honour of having the shortest name, and it seems both blunt and arrogant, as if there was only one bank and why would you be so stupid as to think there'd be another? Funny what feeling you get from a name.

Wikipedia entry here.

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.

20. Holborn

Sunday 24th November 4.45pm.

I figured that a Sunday afternoon in the weeks before Christmas was exactly the kind of peak time Transport for London suggest you avoid using Covent Garden station so despite being on the Plaza I opted to walk to Holborn instead. It's only two stops from King's Cross, neither of them very long, and on another day I might have been tempted just to walk the whole way instead.

The outside is one of those grand but quite restrained entrances, but inside is the usual rabbit warren of tunnels and stairs to get you down to platform level, with so many twists and turns it's hard to know quite where you've ended up. But the platforms for the Piccadilly line at least have been smartened up with metal cladding on the walls instead of tiling, with pictures inspired by the British Museum (which is very nearby), including wrestling naked Greeks which I stupidly forgot to take a picture of.

Wikipedia entry here.

16. Lancaster Gate

Tuesday 18th June 1pm.

There's not much to say about this station really. It's small and doesn't connect with anything so it's only useful if you want to go to Hyde Park (which I did) or if you're staying in one of the hotels in the area. But it does mean that on a weekday it's really quiet so there's nobody getting in the way when you're trying to take a picture of the station's name. It's one of those stations with lifts although there are only 70-odd steps to the street so it would hardly be a nightmare if you had to climb them (I didn't). And it's one of those old stations with a tiny ticket office, and just three exit barriers onto the street.

Wikipedia entry here.

15. Liverpool Street

Thursday 30th May 1.10pm

Way back in the days of slam-door trains and every seat having a table - the 80s, surprisingly - trains from my part of Norfolk used to arrive in London at Liverpool Street. So for a few years, while friends were at college in London, this station would be the one we'd would end up running through in an attempt to catch a train we had no chance of catching. It was also the place where we would dodge fares, although I have no idea how and to be honest the idea makes me shudder with shame! But then the trains switched to King's Cross and I rarely find myself in Liverpool Street any more.

While the train station has been updated with marble and space the Tube station hasn't really and is as pokey and crowded as you'd expect from somewhere serving four different Tube lines. More excitingly I made my journey on one of the new Hammersmith & City trains (I'm resisting the urge to use the phrase "rolling stock" as it's beyond trainspottery) - they're far more spacious than the old trains and instead of having doors at either end of the carriage which you can't actually use they're open to the next carriage so you can see all the way down the train if it gets on a straight bit - this is beyond exciting! (The trains are like this in the Barcelona metro, so we're finally catching up.) They've done something clever inside the carriage so there's a lovely big gap between the seat and I think they're air-conditioned too! Disappointingly the only thing they don't do is tell you which side of the train the doors will open on, which they do on the older Victoria line trains, and which is really useful, although I'm note entirely sure why.

Wikipedia entry here.