tubechallenge.com

Did everyone get into this tube challenge thing?

I only heard about it cos we were looking for a sponsored event for our community group...my friend suggested a Tube Challenge...I dunno where she'd heard about it!

I'm intrigued to know how everyone developed such a fascination with this...

J.

well for me I believe that my parents are to blaim! they took me on steam trains for a LOT of our family holidays, i entertained myself by thoroughly examining the timetable. London is the very best in the world (Luton would be - but its not a city... yet) and it has a Metro system to match that. my brother (who did my third attempt with me) planned a route when I was about 8, and I took the initiative and did myself for the first time when i was 15 (5 years ago). so there we go! NEXT!

Errrrrmmmm....... I found it through the sublime Going Underground blog at london-underground.blogspot.com, which made Geoff's homepage apparent to me, so I browsed that (it is great) and came across the tube pages, and the obsession escalated from there.

I haven't tried to do ALL the stations yet. That would be silly.

PS. Luton is rubbish. Dunstable is at least tolerable, but Luton has no redeeming features. So there.

For some reason, I was reading http://www.thetube.com and the story of Geoff Marshall vs Jack Welsby came up. I followed the link to Geoff's site, and got hooked. It's his fault.

Luton rubbish?! interesting. being that we are on a transport forum I'd like to point out that Luton has 3 stations and Dunstable has none, so even if Dunstable was better then I'd have no way of getting there (buses dont count). Luton has a certain charm, maybe a nasty one, but at least it has a charm of sorts!

I suppose the fact that it has stations is a redeeming feature - but these are, of course, only there to help people get to Dunstable.

And Dunstable has nasty charm too!!!

Whih reminds me, I saw some adverts on the Tube a while ago, advertising Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes!! Nice shopping centre, shame about the town.

dont even get me started about Milton Keynes! As a season ticket holder with AFC Wimbledon I have to state that Milton Keynes is a dump - with or without the MK Scum. It's all roundabouts, concrete jungles and pikeys. and they have a franchised football club that dont belong in the community and now doesnt belong in Wimbledon either. The ONLY good thing about MK is the train station and its good links.

It was only by sheer luck I flicked throught some TV channels and found Geoff's second TV programme Race Around the Underground starting watched it loved it and decided it was something I wanted to do. I subsequenty practiced nearly every weekend my route and in Feburary 2004 broke the long standing Jack Welsby's record by 30 mins only to be beaten 3 months later by Geoff and Neil by 12mins.

joy54 wrote:It was only by sheer luck I flicked throught some TV channels and found Geoff's second TV programme Race Around the Underground starting watched it loved it and decided it was something I wanted to do. I subsequenty practiced nearly every weekend my route and in Feburary 2004 broke the long standing Jack Welsby's record by 30 mins only to be beaten 3 months later by Geoff and Neil by 12months.

We beat you by 12 months?

I knew our route was good ........

Very sharp, Neil - he just edited it!

That pesky edit button! Someone re-post what he wrote originally please!

So it's "all my fault" then, is it? LOL. Well thank you (everyone) for your nice compliments. Genuinely appreciated.

Ok, when I was about 8 years old, one of my older cousins took me out (to get me out from under my mums feet) on the Underground one day - and I have vague memories of going all the way to Ongar to get a bus that ran once every four hours - only to just miss it and have to get the train all the way back again.

A few weeks later, we went to Chesham just for the hell of, "because we'd been to the top right corner, so let's go to the top left".

My grandad had a large collection of London A to Z maps as well, and whilst they were initially fascinating, I became more fascinated in the tube map on the back.

So when I got old enough and rich enough to buy my own travelcards, I started exploring it a bit myself.

I'd heard of the Bob Robinson record, and had always thought about doing it, but it wasn't until I split with my girlfriend back in 2001 that I suddenly had a lot of spare time on my hands ... and also I read "Tunnel Visions" (Keith Lowe) at the same time, and I just thought "I'm going to do this!", and that was it. Hence starteth the obsession.

geofftech wrote:That pesky edit button! Someone re-post what he wrote originally please!

If you look at his quote in MY post, you will see what he originally typed

i got into tube challenges when i was browsing the internet for a blank tube map so that i could make my own version of that great bear thing, and found geoff's website. i was going through a lot of confusing shit at the time (last summer), and planning routes is so damn mind blowing it takes your mind off everything if you think about it too much. kinda fitted that i spent most of last summer getting lost on purpose in london to get to know the place better aswell.

hahahaha... nice language filter there

good one geoff! you've gone and got 13 year old boys addicted to the tube and now they're not concentrating on their studies! I think we shall see the consequences of your actions in about 10 years time when certain 23 year olds will be obsessed with the Tube and not on matters involving the running of the country! I hope you're pleased with yourself geoff !