147. Latimer Road

Saturday 22nd October 9.40am

I like the painted boards the roundel is mounted on.

This is one of those stations that is peculiar to this part of west London where the track is actually elevated so the entrance is at ground level with a small ticket hall and stairs up to rather windswept platforms. These are becoming a personal favourite, despite the fact that they're the very antithesis of the undergound!

Wikipedia entry here.

That was the final station I needed to visit to tick off every single station on the Circle line. Sooner or later I was going to complete a whole line but I'm surprised to find it was the Circle first, because although it's central it's not that central - it goes round the centre, not through it, and when do I ever need to be around Shepherd's Bush! I was fully expecting to complete the Victoria line first as it's the shortest, but the stations at the northern end of it are proving elusive. Must try harder.

115. Wood Lane

Saturday 13th February 5.25pm

This is a modern station so it's got that Jubilee line look that has become the default look for anything new: steel, glass, concrete. And despite usually similar materials they all end up looking different. I like the fact that this one has an elevated platform so when you get down to ground level there are old brick railway arches which are a nice mix of old with the new. At the turn in the stairs, behind the big window is this:

It's the old logo as a mosaic, which I thought was a really nice touch. It's a really nice little station.

Wikipedia entry here.

114. Westbourne Park

Saturday 13th February 11.15am

I like the wooden building the roundel is attached to - very simple and straightforward, like the station really. The building itself is a single storey thing on top of a bridge and has nothing remotely fancy about it at all.

Wikipedia entry here.

113. Ladbroke Grove

Saturday 13th February 11.05am

I took an instance dislike to this station when I saw the roundel - it's one of those with a horrid addition to help tourists find their way. You don't see them very often which is probably what makes them so appalling when you do. It just seems to go against all the Tube branding and spoils the look too. I hate it.

On the plus side it's one of those elevated station with open air platforms, with stairs down to a ground level ticket office, which are common in this part of west London and which I think might be my preferred type of station if I had to pick a fantasy local one. The building itself is nothing special at all squeezed in between some shops.

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!

102.High Street Kensington

Saturday 7th November 10.10am

I'm not sure I really like the big fat strip of blue across the middle to accommodate the name of the station - it messes with the proportions. 

This is one of those stations where the train randomly stops and you have to switch to another service on the opposite platform which then doesn't seem to go anywhere very quickly. That's the charm of the District and Circle lines for you!

I liked this old labelling over a noticeboard:

Above ground you exit the station through a shopping arcade, which has a fancy domed roof over a cross-shaped layout, which is all as fancy as you'd expect from Kensington.

Wikipedia entry here.

84. Moorgate

Sunday 26th April 10.40am

I'm not sure I'd have been able to find this part of London before I started obsessively looking at the Tube map as there's nothing there to tempt me to visit. Perhaps that's why I found the station so unmemorable. The surface buildings are overwhelmed by the offices built beside and on top of them, and inside it's all tiled - there's nothing really old or really new about it to distinguish it at all. It's one of those stations whose history (and therefore Wikipedia entry) is more interesting than the station itself.

Wikipedia entry here.

78. Royal Oak

Saturday 14th February 10.00am

This was another one of those one-stop-from-where-I-needed-to-be stations, and as I had time to kill and because it was a sunny day -which is why the top half of the sign is in the shade - I decided to take a detour.

There's not much to it - just an island platform with wooden stairs to a small ticket office, which was unmanned and so underused on a Saturday morning that the barriers were open. It's built onto a bridge and as you come out there's a big barrier stopping you wandering into the traffic, but also stopping you getting a good look at the station itself.

Disappointingly it's not named after a great big tree that was cut down to make way for the railway, but after a pub.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.