One of my worst ever days on Tube Challenge, I felt. I was a little bit of an idiot with the route planning, which is harder to take than not being fast enough on foot, as I know I could have and should have done a lot better.
As with almost everyone else, I piled into the Westbound Central at
Stratford - the "envelope first, train later" plan working sufficiently well as usual - and got out at
Bethnal Green (Cen) with everyone else. I had no idea there was a bus between Hackney Central and Bethnal Green so I followed David to Bethnal Green (NR) which was a mistake, since none of us knew where we were going. I had a departure board that said it was either a 2-minute or 8-minute connection, so as soon as it got to 12:41 I stopped running, not fully aware of quite how long there was to go. David, I felt, had a decent chance of making the 12:41, so thankfully I saw him at the platform and he was not a train up.
Again, once I saw an indicator board I didn't feel the need to run between Hackney Downs and
Hackney Central, and instead used up 4 minutes to look at some rather crippling NLL/GOBLIN delays. My next problem was trying to work out how to do St Paul's, Cannon Street, Stockwell, Tufnell Park, Belsize Park, and Hampstead Heath. Was it too much of a detour to do the Bank bits and then come back up to North London? I, rather stupidly, thought it was. Although, frankly, I ought not to have done.
RJSRdg wrote: ↑11 Jan 2020, 21:39We all headed west along the NLL towards
Hampstead Heath although Jenny and one other got off earlier.
That's me.
I got off at Camden Road to do
Tufnell Park first, hoping to do Archway -> Upper Holloway (hope the GOBLIN was working again now) and then pick up the following NLL train at Gospel Oak. Although my progress to Camden Town isn't that first - just missed a train - I made it up to Archway, stop. With my phone telling me no trains were running from Upper Holloway it was time to improvise. I started looking up bus routes and got the C11 to Gospel Oak. Luckily, I picked up a train, which was running slightly late, but by no means a particularly slow change. At
Hampstead Heath, getting PTSD of the last R15 I did, I wimped out of the run and instead waited for a 168 Boris bus. It was very nice, I must say.
Belsize Park offered up some very slow lifts (didn't fancy a 15-storey building
) and instead made the platform just as a Kennington via Charing X train was pulling in. That was a win, as it allowed me to do Warren Street -> Euston Square (I've stopped doing Euston -> Euston Square now, exiting Euston is far too long). The 3-minute wait for a Circle Line train wasn't too bad, but in the most bizarre thing I did all day I forgot S Stocks have 7 cars. So I was one door too far down at
Baker Street. I ran down to the Bakerloo Line, which I'd already had enough of given I'd been sat on it from Kenton all morning to get to the challenge, and then got out at Edgware Road, and promptly got lost looking for
Edgware Road (Cir). I eventually did make - just - a Slammersmith and Pity line train and then casually sauntered through
Paddington (H&C) to Paddington Praed Street, as I was aware no train was due. That was until a Parsons Green terminator arrived after several minutes that had David and Andrew on it!
In one of my lesser-well-done moments I decided to try a little gambit by opting to run to Queensway at
Bayswater, and then resurrecting the tube challengers' old favourite which of course hasn't been done since Wood Lane was open: Shepherd's Bush to
Shepherd's Bush Market. However, two pieces of utterly bad luck combined here to make sure the gamble was a waste of time in both ways. First, I had double cramp in both calves simultaneously. And the service pattern was completely irregular anyway, so I would never have been able to gain anything. Oh well. I ended up on the same train as David and Andrew, and the train glided into Hammersmith so quickly that none of us were ready for it and ended up sprinting down the train.
I back myself to run over a short distance and keeping within touching distance of these two between the two Hammersmiths was probably the best thing I did all day. It was then hop onto the District Line to
Stamford Brook.
Where they finished.
And I was nowhere near finishing.
I still had all the South London bits to do, and whilst studying the timetables for Cannon Street and indeed London Bridge (07, 09, 37, 39 - seriously?!) I considered going off to St Paul's and then finishing at Stockwell, but too late, I was already on the District Line - I felt David and Andrew's schadenfreude ended up with a bit of karma when I made the double back at Stamford Brook running and they had to wait for the next train - but after Victoria followed by
Stockwell followed by London Bridge (where a connection was a little bit tighter than I anticipated), I made it to
Cannon Street (NR) before disembarking, running to Bank, then to
St Paul's, and finish. Very, very slowly.