Second Attempt, First Completion.

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chrisco
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Joined: 26 Oct 2015, 12:45

Second Attempt, First Completion.

Post by chrisco »

As part of the 2015 alumni for GeoffTech's #WalkTheTube, my cousin James and I were had very mixed emotions as we could only do 266 on the day. We decided we would make another attempt later in the year with the aim to complete using the original #WalkTheTube route.

We set off from T4 last Friday (23rd October) making the first change at T123 with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately we were slightly delayed getting into Hammersmith which meant we saw the District line train we wanted to get pull away as the Piccadilly doors opened. We had a very uncomfortable wait for the next eastbound train which eventually got us into West Kensington at 06:07 making it a very quick run to Olympia for the 06:15. Unfortunately we didn't make it and seeing it pull away as we sprinted through the barriers was painful. We ended up getting the 06:25 out and decided to tick off Sloane Square which worked out well as we got a very good interchange on a returning train. We also had a fantastic interchange at South Kensington making it to a Picc train in arround 40 seconds. We were able to tick off the eastern end of the central line pretty early but had anytime we gained wipped out by a slow stop start Victoria line train back into the city.
We were thrown a bone in the form of a Mill Hill East train at Tottenham Court Road which made us change plan and do the High Barnet/Cockfosters side first. We didn't have too much luck with the busses as we missed one and had a 10 minute wait.

On the way up the Jubilee, we decided to kill off Preston Road as we noticed we were being closely followed by a met line train. This saved us some valuable time later on.

On our way out to West Ruislip we were kindly joined by Geoff who brought us tea and stayed with us for a bit to provide advice and motivation. We decided to try our luck with a quick detour to West Harrow which we mucked up by missing the return train by seconds. This now put us about half an hour behind and running on the same time as the previous WalkTheTube event. This wasn't good as last time we had to miss out the whole Richmond branch.
We decided we would attempt Richmond anyway and we were kindly joined by Tom (one of the WalkTheTube support team) for a bit. We had a slow journey down and a bit of a wait for a return train, it was at this point I began to resign myself to the fact we probably weren't going to complete.
We ended up getting up to Edgware Road quicker than we expected and we're able to get the same Wimbledon train as we did for WalkTheTube. We were suddenly back in the game a little. We lost a little time arround south London but were able to feel a lot more confident when we got the same C2C from Upminster as before. We had already nailed Preston Road so it was a relatively stress free home run up to Amersham, although our Watford train was about 10 minutes late.

We were joined by David (@dcbrett) for the last leg who supplied us with much needed drink and Oreos, he stayed with us right till the end where we completed with a time of 18:56:23.

It's by no means a good time, but James and I had a great time running arround the tube. Roll on the next attempt!

Thanks to @geofftech @molecrochip @theTomKell @dcbrett for all your support throughout the day.
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