On the Tube

If you are anything like me you can probably get to pretty much any destination in London without too much trouble on the Tube. Thanks in no part to the brilliantly conceived Tube map, the construction of which is so delightfully easy to read.

I can count on one hand the number of times I have driven into London partly because of traffic and parking issues but also because the Tube map makes it so easy to work out where I am going and how to get there.

However, years and years of doing this has left me with a massively distorted image of how big central London actually is. I mean it’s big, don’t get me wrong but it’s not as huge as the Tube map makes it look.

It’s only been fairly recently that I have learnt that you don’t have to use the Tube to get around London. You can walk around too and all those individual attractions I have been going to and insisting on going into the nearest Tube station you can actually walk between. Stuff like walking between Leicester Square and Oxford Street or Covent Garden to Soho or Baker Street to Marylebone.

That’s why I really liked the Tube Journey Planner which really doesn’t plan your journey but just shows the Tube map overlaid on a regular map of London.

It’s just a shame they can’t add all those other extra bits of information like the Circle Line being the slowest train line in the world ever, the Northern Line being the most crowded and uncomfortable and the southern section of the Jubilee Line being the smoothest.