My Parks Challenge went much better than last year (mind you doing it blindfolded hopping on one leg would have been more successful than last year!) but I still had my usual dose of bad luck going round. There were some positives this year including much better weather (bit windy but predominantly dry and sunny), much less awful Winter Wonderland scenario (its still a truly terrible event though!) and some route changes along the way doing stuff I have never done before!
Starting at
Chiswick Park, I headed out to knock off
Ravenscourt Park and doubled back to head out to
Park Royal. Ran to Hanger Lane and headed towards
Holland Park. No 228 bus in sight so ran to Ladbroke Grove to catch a H&C train to
Westbourne Park. My bad luck with buses here finally came to and end when I caught a 328 bus to
Kilburn Park. Worked my way up the Bakerloo line to tick off
Queen's Park and
Stonebridge Park. The trains were out of sequence so I lost a bit of time but eventually made it to Kenton. Ran to
Northwick Park and found a train at the platform. Great I thought, until I realised everyone who was on that train was now standing on the platform thanks to a signal failure at Harrow-on-the-Hill
Some quick re-planning meant me going south towards
Wembley Park and then to
Canons Park. Back to Wembley Park where there were finally trains heading towards
Moor Park, did that and headed further south. Got off at Finchley Road and ran to
Belsize Park where I headed down to Camden Town and back up to
Woodside Park. A swift photo, toilet stop and change before heading south again to
Tufnell Park. Ran out of there to find the rarest thing for me on Parks - a 4 bus! It whisked me away to
Finsbury Park where a Victoria line train took me down to Warren Street. Ran to
Regent's Park and headed down to Piccadilly Circus. Managed to get my correct door position ready for the horror shows of
Hyde Park Corner... which was empty on arrival! So a nice clean exit and run to
Green Park followed by
St. James's Park. Hopped on a District line train to Earl's Court to change for a Wimbledon service. Headed down to
Wimbledon Park where I double backed and headed to Westminster. Changed for the Jubilee line to head out for Stratford - whilst on my way there we were being informed that West Ham had been evacuated due to a fire alert. This announcement would help a decision shortly after when I caught my train at Stratford to
Newbury Park. I arrived at Newbury Park to an 8 minute wait for the next southbound train and combined with potentially having to sort out West Ham, I elected to the thing I'd never done before and catch the 66 bus which had just arrived to Romford. Arrived there to pick up a 365 bus to take me to
Elm Park and finally made it to
Upton Park to finish in a time of
07:59:50.