tubechallenge.com

Hugo - enjoyed reading your write-up of events as always, but I must say that it does sound rather disrespectful to your team-mate. If you choose to join up with somebody as a team, then a consequence of that is that you will only be able to run/do things at the maximum ability of the weakest person, and that is something that you know when you agree to join forces.

Sounds like it was an interesting twist round though, and I await the results with interest.

greatkingrat wrote:Kevin will be flattered you thought he was younger than 48!

did make me chuckle

Steeevooo wrote:Hugo - enjoyed reading your write-up of events as always, but I must say that it does sound rather disrespectful to your team-mate. If you choose to join up with somebody as a team, then a consequence of that is that you will only be able to run/do things at the maximum ability of the weakest person, and that is something that you know when you agree to join forces.

I apologise here - I did not mean to come across this way! I shall retouch my post.

Going Underground wrote:

greatkingrat wrote:Kevin will be flattered you thought he was younger than 48!

did make me chuckle

Fair enough, anyone else though? One competitor let it slip that he is not actually old enough to be allowed in a pub!

michael_churchill wrote:

Going Underground wrote:

greatkingrat wrote:Kevin will be flattered you thought he was younger than 48!

did make me chuckle

Fair enough, anyone else though? One competitor let it slip that he is not actually old enough to be allowed in a pub!

Josh?

michael_churchill wrote:I'm too embarrassed to disclose my route, which was full of rookie mistakes and a full hour slower than the winners.
I found the experience of my first Random 15... "interesting"... shall we say. Still, it hasn't completely put me off doing more.
It was nice to put faces to names, but I was shocked at how young everyone seemed. At 48, was I the oldest person there?

I'm pretty sure I've been more than an hour adrift a few times. I'm also older than 48, though not as old as GU of course.

My route:
Run/walk to Blackfriars via Temple to Victoria via Pimlico to Vauxhall NR to Waterloo via Southwark to London Bridge walk across London Bridge to Monument via Whitechapel (last 1) and Mile End (first 2) to West Ham via Canada Water to London Bridge walk across London Bridge to Monument, again! via Mansion House to Embankment Warwick Avenue Oxford Circus via Warren Street to KXSP via Caledonian Road (last 2) to Finsbury Park Highbury & Islington (first 3) Overground to Stratford West Ham Bromley-by-Bow

I did initially go down to Temple eastbound, but on seeing the wait decided to go back out and run/walk to Blackfriars. I was on the westbound platform when a train of tube challengers came into the eastbound platform.

Met xcooler at Victoria but he left me behind at Vauxhall where I just missed a Waterloo SWT.

Stopped in a shop at London Bridge for some sustenance and got stuck behind someone paying for a Mars Bar with a £50 note.

I met up with GU and A2 at Monument (I think), and I was with them for a long time (including 8 minutes or so at Warwick Avenue) before I got lost changing at KXSP.

When I got to H&I it was 1 minute for a Stratford train and 5 minutes for an ELL one, so I headed to Stratford, which I'm still not convinced was worthwhile because both Stratford and West Ham are long changes. I was with GU and A2 at KXSP but finished 9 or 10 minutes behind them.

I really liked this twist, though it could have been much tougher than it actually was.

Tube Geek wrote:

michael_churchill wrote:

Going Underground wrote:

greatkingrat wrote:Kevin will be flattered you thought he was younger than 48!

did make me chuckle

Fair enough, anyone else though? One competitor let it slip that he is not actually old enough to be allowed in a pub!

Josh?

I am allowed in a pub thank you!

At 17 the law also states that you can drink cider, perry, mead, wine or beer in a pub with an adult with a meal... however we weren't eating and I don't drink alcohol much.

Anyway you are at school still Tube Geek, you shouldn't know about alcohol

Another rookie mistake : using Oyster instead of paper tickets?

Twice I touched out and back in to avoid exceeding the maximum journey time. Checking my history the last leg, Mile End to Bromley-by-Bow, took 97 min which I believe is just 3 min less than the maximum. If it hadn't been part of my daily cap, that would have cost me £1.50!

It's probably a good thing that no human checks the history or that would look very suspicious.

michael_churchill wrote:Another rookie mistake : using Oyster instead of paper tickets?

Twice I touched out and back in to avoid exceeding the maximum journey time. Checking my history the last leg, Mile End to Bromley-by-Bow, took 97 min which I believe is just 3 min less than the maximum. If it hadn't been part of my daily cap, that would have cost me £1.50!

It's probably a good thing that no human checks the history or that would look very suspicious.

Is there actually anything at all wrong, legally, with making a circuitous journey using Oyster?

tractakid wrote:

michael_churchill wrote:Another rookie mistake : using Oyster instead of paper tickets?

Twice I touched out and back in to avoid exceeding the maximum journey time. Checking my history the last leg, Mile End to Bromley-by-Bow, took 97 min which I believe is just 3 min less than the maximum. If it hadn't been part of my daily cap, that would have cost me £1.50!

It's probably a good thing that no human checks the history or that would look very suspicious.

Is there actually anything at all wrong, legally, with making a circuitous journey using Oyster?

No. But I suspect there is a problem with not paying for the zones that you travel through - and going from Mile End to Bromley-by-Bow via Zone 1 stations but only paying for Zone 2 would fall under that. It's not as if anything can be done about it though!

When having to fix two maximum fares with a member of staff when travelling from Upminster to Warren Street, it's very awkward to explain you went via Mill Hill East, as I can attest.

"You should have touched out at Mill Hill East."
"But I didn't leave the station!"
"Why did you go there then? Mill Hill East is not between Upminster and Warren Street."
"...erm..."
"This is an underground railway system, not a joyride for inquisitive teenagers! Don't do it again."

This was a very real exchange a few years back, and the lesson was learnt well. Never incur a maximum fare charge, or touch in and out at the same station, because explaining yourself is humiliating at best.

Of course, you went from Upminster to Mile End, TCR, then on to the Northern Line, where you promptly fell asleep on a rare through service to MHE and didn't wake up until it had terminated....

The Orange One wrote:

tractakid wrote:

michael_churchill wrote:Another rookie mistake : using Oyster instead of paper tickets?

Twice I touched out and back in to avoid exceeding the maximum journey time. Checking my history the last leg, Mile End to Bromley-by-Bow, took 97 min which I believe is just 3 min less than the maximum. If it hadn't been part of my daily cap, that would have cost me £1.50!

It's probably a good thing that no human checks the history or that would look very suspicious.

Is there actually anything at all wrong, legally, with making a circuitous journey using Oyster?

No. But I suspect there is a problem with not paying for the zones that you travel through - and going from Mile End to Bromley-by-Bow via Zone 1 stations but only paying for Zone 2 would fall under that. It's not as if anything can be done about it though!

When having to fix two maximum fares with a member of staff when travelling from Upminster to Warren Street, it's very awkward to explain you went via Mill Hill East, as I can attest.

"You should have touched out at Mill Hill East."
"But I didn't leave the station!"
"Why did you go there then? Mill Hill East is not between Upminster and Warren Street."
"...erm..."
"This is an underground railway system, not a joyride for inquisitive teenagers! Don't do it again."

This was a very real exchange a few years back, and the lesson was learnt well. Never incur a maximum fare charge, or touch in and out at the same station, because explaining yourself is humiliating at best.

Of course, the intention is to allow a decent amount of time more the expected journey time for serious delays like signal failures, but there is absolutely no way to tell if the direct route has been taken. I've double-checked at the excellent oyster-rail.org.uk and in zones 1 and 2 on a Saturday, the maximum journey time is at least 100 minutes. If it is between zones 1 and 2, it is 110 minutes.

As I'm sure you know, the other thing to take into account are Out of Station Interchanges (OSIs). For example, touching out at Waterloo (NR) and touching in at Waterloo (LU) is recognised as part of a single journey when the system calculates the fare, but also for calculating the maximum journey time. On Saturday, I actually used a second Oyster to break an OSI, touching out at Vauxhall (NR) then touching in at Vauxhall (LU) with the other, starting a new allowance of 100 minutes and swapping back to the first Oyster by touching out and in at Mile End.

Even if you meet a ticket inspector, I believe that all that their device checks is that the flag has been set on your Oyster to say that you've touched in, nothing about where or when.

So a Z1 oyster card lasts long enough to do the Mouse, but not quite long enough to do the Bottle...

If you travel into London by train (and go back) on the day, you can buy a Z1-2 travelcard (I think) or a Z1-6, which is what I get when I go to London, but I don't have a oyster card at all!

That's what I always do too.