'The Long And Winding Road'

Day 2

 

Alperton - Amersham

 

Only two stations on today's itinerary as the route between them is so convoluted that it could easily take me the whole day to do the round trip.

 

Getting to Alperton in the first place means a half-hour walk (it really isn't worth walking to Ealing Broadway to get the tube, as there's no direct Underground link from there to Alperton.)

After that, (and I do hope you're following all of this on your maps, children) the route will take me north west on the Piccadilly Line (which on the tube map looks like due north, and on the platform sign is called 'Westbound') to Rayner's Lane, where I'll change to the southbound (heading vaguely north east) Metropolitan Line to Harrow-on-the-Hill. At Harrow-on-the-Hill it's a quick hop over to the opposite platform to catch the Northbound Metropolitan Line (which naturally heads north west) out to Amersham.

Then I'll reverse the whole process to get back home.

***
 

To digress for a few moments - it's sometimes worth comparing the Tube Map with a geographically accurate map of the same area, just to see how much our perception of London has gradually been skewed by the admirable work of Mr Harry Beck (who designed the present tube map back in 1931). The map is a wonderful thing - it does everything it needs to do and does so in a clear, concise and aesthetically pleasing way. But just you try walking above ground from, say, Waterloo to Green park via Westminster, with nothing but a compass and a copy of the tube map, and you'll soon find yourself veering way off course.

***

However, let's get back to our sheep (as the French would have it)...

So, I start at about 10am walking to Alperton. This takes me, via a subway, beneath the ever-busy A40. Here I spot some graffiti whose message means absolutely nothing to me, and instead seems, as far as I can tell, to be a random collection of unconnected words. (If I've missed something, and by posting this image inadvertently cause offence, I apologise.)

 

What does this mean? Answers on a postcard...

I understand all the words. They each make sense on their own, and can even be made to make a sort of sense in groups of two or three. But all four of them together? No - sorry - you've lost me there...

Comparing this graffiti with a quotation from Plato, written on a playground wall a few hundred feet further on, it seems we're exploring the gamut of the Human Condition this morning...

This is why I'm (a) an actor and (b) a fan of board games.

'Compare and contrast' seems to be the order of the day today, as I also pass two very different stretches of water along my way. The first is the River Brent, which snakes it's way southwards from North London to the Thames at Brentford. Looking over a small bridge it appears as grotty and be-shopping-trolleyed as the words "disused canal" could hope to suggest. By contrast, the actual canal that runs through Alperton (the Paddington Branch of the Grand Union Canal), and which is found a few hundred yards further along, looks positively pastoral. There are narrow-boats moored up, walkers on the tow-path, and swans idling in the water. I almost expect Mr Toad to come poop-pooping over the bridge in his motor car...

***

 

A short while later, I round the corner and reach Alperton Tube Station. Something familiar about the red brick and the layout of the windows reminds me of the photo I took of Acton Town, and when I get home later my good friend Mr Google confirms that both stations (as well as many others) were designed by the same man - a Mr Charles Holden.

Alperton - Another Holden triumph 

After designing several stations for what was later to become part of the Northern Line, Charles Holden spent some time on an architectural tour of Germany and Scandinavia. This seems to have been where he got the idea of using very simple geometric shapes such as the rectangular 'blocks' of Acton Town and Alperton, and the cylindrical drums of Arnos Grove and Southgate.

However, this is also the man who designed the plinth for the tomb of Oscar Wilde in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. What flamboyant flights of fancy could he possibly have imagined to adequately celebrate this exuberant and scintillating Victorian wit, you might ask?

Well, the dictionary definition of the word plinth is 'a square block at the base of a column or serving as a pedestal' and from the online pictures I've managed to find of the tomb, I think Mr Holden must have taken the definition to heart, and been pleased not to have to deviate from his love of all things square and blocky.

***

Before entering the station and heading off to the wilds of Amersham, I walk a little further on along the road on which Alperton station stands.

This road is called Ealing Road, and is pretty much a straight line between Wembley and Ealing. Why it was named Ealing Road rather than Wembley Road, I have no idea, and I wonder idly whether, like the bit of water that separates the UK from Europe, which is either the English Channel or La Manche depending on whether you are English or French, the Wembley folk call it something completely different...

A spectacular Hindu temple just round the corner from the station is an indicator of the large Asian community in this area of London. The temple is huge and ornate, and the detailed stonework is impressive enough, even before you realise that every single piece of it has been imported from India.



Shree Sanatan Hindu Temple - knocks Alperton
tube station into a cocked hat really.

I have to admit, as I wander back past the Sari shops and Asian markets, to feeling a little saddened (though not in the least surprised) that we haven't yet managed, even in the twenty-first century, to work out how to avoid these pockets of 'ghetto-isation' in our society, where one particular ethnic group seems to outnumber all others, and wish we could all just "mix things up" a bit more. I realise there's a feeling of 'safety in numbers' and being 'birds of a feather' and so on - and it could be said that I myself live in a kind of white middle-class 'ghetto' (where neatly-trimmed privet hedges and Skinny Lattes take the place of temples and garam masala). But all I can think is that it prolongs and encourages the sense of separation and failure to communicate that is the root of so much trouble.

Idealism was always my downfall.

***

I walk back to the tube station and climb the steps up to the platform. I've mentioned before how much of the so-called "Underground" network isn't actually any such thing, and that the platforms and tracks are to all intents and purposes at street level. However there are also sections where it might perhaps be more accurate to describe it as an "Elevated" Railway. The station entrances may be at street level, but the trains leave from platforms much higher up, crossing bridges over the roads below, rather than burrowing invisibly beneath them.

As a result of this, Alperton was once one of only two stations on the entire network to use escalators to take passengers up to the platforms rather than down. The other station to share this distinction is Greenford, (which is still a long way off on my list of stations to visit), and the escalators there are still very much a feature. Here, however, the one escalator that used to serve the Eastbound platform, has long been hidden behind a brick wall.

***

Having Piccadillied my way up to Rayner's Lane and then gone all Metropolitan to get me to Harrow-on the-Hill, I find myself with a bit of time on my hands.

So far, both on Day 1 and today, I've been remarkably lucky with the waiting time between trains. There's  been no "engineering work" or "person under a train" to hold things up, and the first train to arrive at every platform has been going to the destination I want, rather than those on any of the alternative branches.

Anyone who has spent any time as an every-day commuter on the London Underground will appreciate the novelty of this experience.

However, my luck deserts me today at Harrow-on-the-Hill.

It's not surprising - this is the last station before the Metropolitan line branches into two - one branch heading towards Uxbridge, while the other branches into three further sub-divisions which go to either Watford, Chesham or Amersham. That's four destinations from one platform - I suppose Amersham will just have to wait its turn.

Twenty minutes elapse, as I watch trains to every destination except Amersham go merrily by. And with not much else to occupy my mind as I wait, I sit for a bit, then get up and stroll up and down the platform. It's on my way back to my seat that I notice a poster on the platform across the tracks.

It's a black and white maze, or labyrinth, and I've seen posters like this in a few stations over the last year or two. Looking it up later, the Transport For London website tells me that the posters are part of the "Art On the Underground" scheme, and consist of "a unique artwork at every station to celebrate 150 years on the tube". The link is here, should you be interested...

https://art.tfl.gov.uk/labyrinth/

Each poster has a different design of labyrinth and each one is numbered out of 270. Now, I'm sure that not a second ago we were told that these pieces of art were located "at every station" - but you and I both know, dear reader, that there are some 360-odd stations on the tube. You know because I told you so, and I know because I'm planning to visit them all.

So if Transport For London can only be bothered to put artwork up in 270 of them, that makes them not only liars, but also a bunch of amateurs in my book, and I laugh with derision at their puny effort!

They go on, inviting the viewer to "trace the route with a finger, and to understand the labyrinth as a single meandering path into the centre and back out again – a route reminiscent of the Tube traveller’s journey."

Well, they got that bit right at least, I've never meandered so much in my life...

***

Eventually my train arrives and my initial reaction is one of amazement at how swish and modern it looks compared with what I remember from my last venture onto the Metropolitan line. I can't remember when that was, but I suspect it must have been a good ten to fifteen years ago, when the trains were all rattling old nicotine and chewing-gum stained jobs, which even then looked to be a good thirty years too old to be still in use. Now the trains are so bright, airy and above all clean that I could be forgiven for thinking I was in the wrong city.

Given that my entire journey today is above ground, I had already taken the opportunity to see what sort of views the route afforded me. For the first stretch, as far as Rayner's Lane and Harrow-on-the-Hill, it had been a familiar vista of terraces and their back-gardens, and for a while the journey to Amersham is more of the same. However, once past Moor Park, the outlook becomes a lot greener, woodier, and wide-open-spacier.

It's probably about here that, for the first time, I get a real sense of being outside of London.

By no stretch of cartography could Amersham, or the other stations along this section of the route, be said to be within the boundaries of London, (Greater or otherwise). Nor, I'm sure, would they want to be.

We haven't talked much about  "zones" yet, but put simply, the tube map is divided up into several ring-like zones radiating out from a central "Zone 1", and which are basically the boundaries between different fare prices. The more zones you travel through, the more it costs you.

The bulk of the Underground system can be found in zones 1-3 (or 4 at a push), with most of the outlying suburbs being content to chill out in zones 5 and 6.

Amersham is in zone 9.

In fact zones 7, 8 and 9 are reserved exclusively for the benefit of those stations in the top left hand corner of the London Underground map - or in other words, the posh bits.



Amersham - not everywhere gets to be in Zone 9 you know

Amersham is a reasonably pleasant Market Town with a reasonably pleasant main street, on which there is the usual selection of reasonably pleasant High Street shops. There's a W.H.Smiths, a Waterstones, a Robert Dyas, a Marks & Spencer, and a smattering of coffee shops.

Avoiding the Costa Coffee on my left and the Caffe Nero on my right, I plump instead for the Harris & Hoole ahead of me. This 'mini-chain' will no doubt soon be as prevalent as the others, but for now it makes a welcome change.

After a spot of lunch I continue my walk in a circuit back to the station, but the shops peter out very quickly and I soon find myself on the outskirts of an anonymous looking Business Park. I'm mildly disappointed that a town situated in what I've always assumed was a pretty rural area has so easily become just another part of the commuter belt.

The disappointment is marginally assuaged by when I pass a sign outside one of the companies in the Business Park, which does at least appear to have a sense of humour.

The company must have something to do with IT, and I have no idea what they were actually called, but they seem to have taken it upon themselves to give their little corner of the business park a street name - they've called it "Decimal Place".

Well, I found it amusing...

***

Another 20 minute wait at Amersham station for the train to take me back home, during which I toy briefly with the idea of continuing to the next stop on my list - Anerley. However, this would take me at least an hour to reach from here, and I'd end up heading back home slap bang in the middle of the rush hour, so I quit while I'm ahead and retrace my steps of this morning back to the comfort of home.