92 Clubs By Public Transport Alphabetically in a Calendar Month – Day 6
This is not an easy day, with Burnley, Burton Albion and Bury well separated.
I suspect I’ll end up in Manchester about 19:00 and do a quick trip out to Bury on the tram, before taking a train back to London. Or I might get ahead of myself and if there’s a suitable train get down to Cardiff for Day 7.
92 Clubs By Public Transport Alphabetically in a Calendar Month – Day 4
I’ll spend a long time on a train on this day, as although there are only two clubs to visit; Bournemouth and Bradford. But they are some way apart.
92 Clubs By Public Transport Alphabetically in a Calendar Month – Day 3
This could be one of those days, where I visit four clubs; Birmingham, Blackburn, Blackpool and Bolton. It could just be five if all things go well and I can finish off at Bournemouth.
However after checking the train times. it would appear that to get to Bournemouth is impossible, so it’ll be a return to London and my bed.
I think, I’ll have to assume I’m starting from Barnsley or Birmingham city centre, as it doesn’t look like that on Day 2, I can get home easily.
Is It Time To Get Even? – 92 Clubs By Public Transport Alphabetically in a Calendar Month
There’s an old saying about not getting mad, but getting even.
I’ve had a basketful of bad luck over the last few years, what with losing my wife of forty years and son to cancer and then suffering a couple of strokes. So perhaps now is the time to do something to wipe the slate clean and see if I can buy off the Devil who is bugging me. I had thought about perhaps doing something like riding my bicycle to Moscow, like Carol Thatcher did, but she is a lot braver and fitter than I am.
I’d much prefer to do something to raise money that for most of the time had me sitting in a comfortable chair and that at night allowed me to sleep most nights in my own bed.
The task, if I will accept it, is to visit all the 92 Premier and Football League grounds in alphabetical order in one calendar month, using only trains, trams, buses and Shanks’s pony. I thought about adding allowing bicycles and hitch-hiking, but I’m probably not up to the former yet and nobody ever does the second these days. Taxis are definitely out, except in an emergency.
I have created a spreadsheet of all the teams and it looks like it will be possible to do it in a 31-day month.
October, this year would be a good choice as on the 1st, Aldershot, who are second alphabetically, play Accrington Stanley who are first. So hopefully, I could visit the match and then get a lift back to Aldershot on a supporters coach, just in time to get a train back to London and do Arsenal on the way home.
On the other hand there are some interesting days, where several clubs are close to each other both in alphabetic order and geographically or easier to get between. There are.
- 3rd – Birmingham, Blackburn, Blackpool and Bolton
- 15th – Liverpool, Macclesfield, Manchester City, Manchester United and then on to Middlesbrough
- 17th – Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Notts County, Nottingham Forest and then on to Oldham
- 21st – Rotherham, Scunthorpe, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and then on to Shrewbury
- 23rd – Swansea, Swindon, Torquay and then back to Tottenham.
Other than the Accrington-Aldershot match, there would appear to be games on the 15th at Macclesfield, the 22nd at Stevenage and perhaps it will all end on the 29th at Yeovil.
Obviously any money I raise will go to Liverpool University to help with research into pancreatic cancer. I will be setting up a page on Just Giving soon. Hopefully there are people who might like to sponsor the odd day.
At a first glance there are a few difficult teams.
- Bournemouth
- Bradford
- Colchester
- Coventry
- Crawley Town
- Doncaster
- Oxford United
- Plymouth
- Port Vale
- Shrewsbury
- Stoke
- Swindon
- Torquay
- Yeovil
Any help on buses or walking routes for these would be appreciated. Lifts, although I’m grateful for the thought, are not allowed.
The irony is that I don’t think this would have been possible for me, until this year, as now Marks and Spencer’s now have stagetically placed pit-stops in many stations, where I can get wholesome gluten-free sandwiches to speed me on my way.
Here is a provisional schedule.
- 1st – Accrington, Aldershot and Arsenal
- 2nd – Aston Villa, Barnet and Barnsley
- 3rd – Birmingham, Blackburn, Blackpool and Bolton
- 4th – Bournemouth and Bradford
- 5th – Brentford, Brighton, Bristol City and Bristol Rovers
- 6th – Burnley, Burton Albion and Bury
- 7th – Cardiff and Carlisle
- 8th – Charlton, Chelsea, Cheltenham and Chesterfield
- 9th – Colchester, Coventry and Crawley Town
- 10th – Crewe, Crystal Palace and Dagenham and Redbridge
- 11th – Derby, Doncaster, Everton and Exeter
- 12th – Fulham, Gillingham, and Hartlepool
- 13th – Hereford, Huddersfield and Hull
- 14th – Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester and Leyton Orient
- 15th – Liverpool, Macclesfield, Manchester City, Manchester United
- 16th – Middlesbrough, Millwall and Milton Keynes
- 17th – Morecambe and Newcastle
- 18th – Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham Forest and Notts County
- 19th – Oldham, Oxford United and Peterborough
- 20th – Plymouth and Port Vale
- 21st – Portsmouth and Preston
- 22nd – QPR, Reading, Rochdale and Rotherham
- 23rd – Scunthorpe, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and Shrewsbury
- 24th – Southampton, Southend, Stevenage and Stoke
- 25th – Sunderland and Swansea
- 26th – Swindon, Torquay and Tottenham
- 27th – Tranmere, Walsall, Watford, West Brom and West Ham
- 28th – Wigan, AFC Wimbledon, Wolverhampton and Wycombe
- 29th – Yeovil
The Seventy-Free Goes Seventy-Pay
Transport for London will see an increase in revenue today, as the seventy-three bus goes non-bendy. I have sat in the back of these buses and seen that so many of the passengers don’t touch in.
A New 73 Bus
However, now the bus is a proper double-decker, they’ll have to pay.
I travelled on one to the Angel today and it was a bit crowded. But then last week on a bendy, it wouldn’t have been exactly empty. It’s just a very busy bus route.
When I rode the 73, I was able to take this picture of a bendy bus causing a traffic jam.
A Bendy Bus Causing a Jam
Try takimg a picture like this from a bendy!
Up and Down the Stairs at Hackney Downs
I went for supper to Walthamstow tonight.
The easiest way is to get a bus to Hackney Downs station and then take a Chingford train. It works well if you just catch a train.
But I just got to the top at Platform 2 to see the train disappearing out of the station. It looks like I’d have to wait for twenty minutes, but a stationman said there was another train in ten minutes on Platform 4. So it was down the dreaded staircase again and then up another one.
Surely for passenger convenience, all Chingford trains should leave Hackney Downs from the same platform. Or if for operational reasons they can’t then perhaps there should be a display at the bottom of the stairs, that lists all departures in order together with the platform. The Overground has such a display at both Highbury and Islington and Dalston Junction stations. Even the bus stop outside Hackney Downs has a display showing the details of the next few buses.
Could A Hackney Junction Station Be Created?
Today, I was returning from Stratford station and did what I often do now and that is get off the Overground at Hackney Central station and get a 38 bus to just round the corner from my house. Ideally, I would like to take the disused Eastern Curve to walk from Dalston Junction station. But this would be a difficult route to reinstate. It would also be expensive, with not much change left from a million pounds.
The change at Hackney Central only takes a few minutes, but it involves using an overbridge to cross the North London line and a U-shaped walk to get to the bus stop on Graham Road.
The other problem at Hackney is getting between the two stations of Hackney Central and Hackney Downs. I walked it at ground level and it doesn’t take too long. There are some pictrures here.
But I wouldn’t like to do it in a few years or with a child in a buggy or in a wheelchair. There used to be a walkway at track level, but this was demolished, when the North London line was truncated to Dalston in 1944.
So could anything be done to improve the station? Let’s start by looking at an aerial view of the two stations and the surrounding roads coutesy of Google.
Map of Hackney Central and Downs Stations
The first thing you will notice is that there is a surprising amount of greenery and trees, especially along the line running westwards from Hackney Central station.
There is also car parking to the north of Hackney Central on Amhurst Road, which could be developed for something more worthwhile.
Returning to ground level, I took this picture of the old station building for Hackney Central, which sits on the corner of Mare Street and Graham Road.
The Old Hackney Central Station
This is surely worth preserving and using for something better than as a prop for the railway. Note the alleyway that leads to the new station buildings at the side.
This station is very similar to Camden Road station, also on the North London line, and like that station, I suspect Hackney Central also featured an underpass to get to the line on the other side. If this could be reinstated, this would remove one of the main problems of the station and that is having to use the overbridge to get to and from the westbound platform. I can manage it OK after a stroke, but I couldn’t if I was a young mother with twins in a double buggy.
I’m no architect, but I feel that a good one, with an understanding of structures could create an imposing station at the Hackney Central end of the combined station. As I said before there is space to the north of the station, which could be used as either a bus interchange, a square with cafes and other meeting places or niche retail. Or perhaps all three to create somewhere you might go to meet someone before walking the Lea Valley, going shopping at Eastfield or to the football at White Hart Lane.
The Hackney Downs end on the other hand doesn’t offer such a good collection of buildings on which to create a statement as you could at Central. So perhaps you just do something with the staircases and give it a good or as I said earlier, a wild coat of paint.
To connect the two stations you have three options.
- The simplest would probably be to signpost a preferred route, perhaps cutting the current distance slightly by sneaking in at the back of Hackney Downs.
- You could also put controlled crossing in at the two stations, so that the bus routes that served both stations could be used to bridge the gap.
- Or you could create a Hackney Skywalk alongside the two railways, above the streets below. Whether this could be done meeting all of the safety regulations, I do not know, but it would be a statement of intent of two rail lines and one station.
Finally, the buses in the area need a bit of reorganisation, especially if the North London Line continues to carry more and more passengers and the stations get full step-free access.
- Some buses for instance, like the 30 and the 277 almost parallel the line from Hackney Wick to Highbury and Islington, so perhaps some simplification could be envisaged.
- The 38 goes all the way to Victoria from Hackney, as does the 73 from Stoke Newington, so perhaps if Hackney had better connections to the Victoria line, some passengers might take that route.
- The new North London Line has shown that if you provide good east-west links in North London, they’ll get used. So perhaps, there is a need for a bus from somewhere like Archway to Walthamstow.
If nothing with this ramble, I’ve proved one thing. There are endless possibilities about what can be done to improve public transport in Hackney and up the Lea Valley.
To be fair to, to the Council, they have a lot of useful information and alternative plans on their web site.
Avoid Changing At Bank
For some time now, changing from one tube line to another at Bank has been something to avoid according to Transport for London.
I have advised people coming to see me to change at Bank onto a 76, 21 or 141 bus to go north to Dalston. But now CrossRail works and putting in a new water main seem to mean that finding a bus at certain times at Bank, is like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.
Coming back from Oxford Circus at around four this afternoon, took me nearly an hour, when normally in the rush hour, I can do it on a 73 bus in about thirty-five minutes.
So where were the seventy-frees this afternoon? Stuck in the jams at Bond Street caused by Sunday afternoon shoppers and the CrossRail works at Bond Street. I couldn’t tak the Victoria line to Highbury and Islington, as that was closed for engineering work.
The problems will sort themselves out in the next few weeks, as the summer will be over and a lot of the weekend engineering work will be suspended until the Christmas period.
It is now though, that one of the major faults of the Overground is starting to show itself. And that is the lack of a link to the Central line in the east of London. You have to remember too, that the Central line is actually under Shoreditch High Street station. But then the cost of a new tube station there would probably have doubled the cost of the East London line.
I suppose the planners felt that when CrossRail is finished, then this will solve the problem with the interchange at Whitechapel.
The Edinburgh Tram Fiasco Continues
Over the last few years, there have been several local transport prjects in the UK. Most like the London Overground have been completed on time and on budget, with one in London the DLR Extension to Stratford International being a year late.
Two major projects though have gone seriously over budget; the Cambridge Busway and the Edinburgh Tram.
The former is now up and running and most of the reports are positive. Extra buses are supposedly being ordered to cope with demand. But it will be easier to sort out the problems of the cost overruns for a success than a failure.
But the Edinburgh Tram fiasco continues according to this report on the BBC. So for a large cost overrun, Edinburgh will get what half they originally ordered. When what they are now getting is completed, passengers arriving at the airport will be unable to take the tram to the City Centre to see the similarly half-finished National Monument. But at least the tram will serve the headquarters of the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers at Gogar!
At least it has given a lot of work for consultants and material for comedians at the Festival.
Double Busing
It is easy for me to get to IKEA at Edmonton, as I just get a 341 from the Balls Pond Road. However lately, when I go that way I get a 141 from a stop closer to my house. I find that the two routes seem to race themselves up through Manor House and if you time it right you can change to a 341 without delay. I cuts a couple of minutes off the journey and avoids a few minutes walking to the stop.
This is the great advantage of very frequent buses.
I believe Transport for london are going to allow bus tracking over the Internet. This will mean, I can choose the route before I leave to meet a bus at the stop.
The Anonymous Widower 