172. Plaistow

Saturday 16 February 11.30am

While I'd heard of this because of differing ways you could pronounce its name I would have assumed it was in a bit of south London not served by the Tube. I really am rubbish at geography.

The station sits on a bridge over the tracks and is quite imposing as you walk up the street to it. It appears to be cube shaped, with the two sides I saw being identical, but then inside it feels different with the passage from two doors leading to the ticket hall and the stairs to the platform all feeling a bit unsymmetrical. I'd like another look at that.

By coincidence I was in the area for an exhibition and two of the paintings were of this station. Here's one:

Wikipedia entry here.

171. Upton Park

Saturday 16th February 11.15am

I'd never heard of this station and if pushed might have assumed it was somewhere in suburban north London, when in fact it couldn't be more East End - just a couple of stops from Bow and the nearest station to West Ham's football stadium before they moved to the Olympic park

It's a very traditional station with just two platforms with stairs to the booking hall which leads directly onto a busy high street, which is a bit of a shock really as I was expecting something quieter and more suburban.

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.

160.Bow Road

Saturday 9th September 6pm

This is a nice little red brick station that's set back from the road so I you can't see it until you're right upon it, which is a bit confusing and was making me start to worry I was lost, especially as I'd just walked under a railway bridge that looked like it was an ideal place for an elevated station, and also a DLR station. The platform is downstairs, half in a tunnel half out.

As I walked her from Bromley-by-Bow I was reminded of the thing about Bow bells and cockneys but apparently that's a different Bow, although this is still proper East End anyway. How confusing.

Wikipedia entry here.

159. Bromley-by-Bow

Saturday 9th September 5.45pm

Another outdoor platform but this one is at ground level. The station building isn't though - it's on the bridge over the tracks, and is currently being refurbished so all you can see of the front is scaffolding, not that you could probably see much anyway as it's right next to a busy main road.

Slightly confused by the name though as I thought Bromley was in Kent.

Wikipedia entry here.

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.

142. West Ham

Wednesday 12th October 12.05pm

It's nice to see some good honest brickwork on a modern station instead of concrete and steel, and it's all the more surprising as this is a Jubilee line station and the whole line is quite literally built of concrete and steel. There's the familiar large open spaces inside the building too, and I was so busy enjoying them that I completely missed the exit.

Wikipedia entry here.

129. Hammersmith

Tuesday 23rd August 6.30pm

Hammersmith has frustrated me - I've been through it twice since I started doing this and both times forgot to take pictures. In my defence I was on my way to gigs - Kate Bush, John Grant - so I had other things on my mind. But that doesn't stop me disliking this station, because you have to leave it through a shopping centre which is just about the most stupid idea ever! Except it turns out you don't have to - when I came out of it this time it was just a very short walk before I found myself in front of a statue of three naked men. As you do. Then on the return journey I was straight through the barriers and onto a train. But that was using different lines, which confuses me further - the District and Piccadilly lines come out through the shopping centre, the Hammersmith & City line is across the road in an older, more civilised building. There's no below ground connection between them - you have to go outside and cross the road, which to my mind makes them two separate stations, just like Edgware Road, but on the map they only count as one. It's mystifying. Which is a shame as there are a lot of reasons to like Hammersmith itself.

Wikipedia entry here and here - see, they think it's two stations as well!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.