One Stop Beyond: Thames Ditton In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Thames Ditton, one stop beyond Surbiton on the Hampton Court line. Obviously it's beside the Thames, in this case on the south bank (in Surrey) opposite the broad sweep of Hampton Court Park (which is in London). Thames Ditton is historic, well-off and quaint, but also post-industrial, over-private and lacking in river. If you live here, well done. Long Ditton to the east, but the two have inexorably coalesced over the years. Thames Ditton got the station which is why you're more likely to have heard of it. That's where I arrived yesterday morning to complete my challenge of visiting every station in London and its outer zones, this being zone 6 which keeps local commuters' fares down. A white-haired lady from Thames Ditton In Bloom was watering the flowerboxes and flowerwheelbarrows on the up platform, whipping open her portable stepladder as necessary, and also being thanked by passing passengers for all the work she was doing. She has horticultural competition from Thames Ditton Men In Sheds who've knocked up three wooden habitats called Bug Halt, Bug Central and Bug Junction in an elevated garden above the ramp opposite. Even before nipping into the cosy waiting room with its small mornings-only cafe and stack of local leaflets, I could tell this was a community that looks after itself with pride. The heart of Thames Ditton is its snaking high street, a cottage-lined thoroughfare that wiggles down to where the ferry used to be. A lot of weatherboarded frontage is still evident, also a couple of old pubs of which Ye Olde Swan is the real deal with a waterfront terrace and a backstory as the site of a Tudor hunting lodge, what with Henry VIII's palace being just across the water. The Red Lion, by contrast, is merely a fine free house with an obsession for hanging baskets. For groceries there's a smart Budgens, the bank has inevitably become an estate agent and for plump pastries it's got to be the Nice Buns Cafe. The top row of the newspaper rack goes 'Telegraph Mail Times Mirror', for what its worth. As for the very long building with the cupola that's a Georgian mansion built for riverside status, later sold for £5000 to an Anglican hospice fleeing from Deptford. For over a century it's been known as the Home of Compassion, even after being sold off as a luxury care home, until last year the owners decided to tone down the mortality angle and glibly rebranded it Thames View instead. Ferry Works, a former boat-building yard that diversified into marine engines in the 1880s. You can track the site's subsequent history through three plaques and a To Let sign... manufactured the revolutionary central valve steam engine, moved to Rugby, the amazing Auto-Carrier car made here, Character Riverside Offices To Let. AC Cars arrived in 1911 to build open 2-seaters, coupés and chuggy saloons, also the first British car ever to win the Monte-Carlo rally. The company spent 75 years in Thames Ditton with its motor works just off the high street, in its later years churning out the pale blue three-wheeled invalid cars that used to crawl the nation's streets. All of that's since become flats, as has the site of the foundry that forged the Quadriga that bestrides Hyde Park Corner - also suitably blue-plaqued. The one scrap of riverside still accessible is a narrow slipway that now doubles up as Ye Old Swan's car park. You can tell access is limited because one workman had chosen to sit amidst the hatchbacks to eat his lunch. This is also the landing point for the footbridge that joins Thames Ditton Island to the mainland, and no you will not be visiting because it's private and the gate has a black pad. The island is 300m long and consists of a single central track faced by 48 detached properties, each of which started out as a weekend bungalow and is now a desirable hideaway with its own individual mooring. Despite being much closer to the south side of the Thames the island had always been part of Middlesex, and only in 1970 did residents manage to be officially relocated to Surrey. Alongside are two much smaller eyots, Boyle Farm Island and Swan Island, whose sum total of two properties get their mail delivered to a red lockup box at the top of the slipway. The Church of St Nicholas has been here since the 12th century, the oldest part of its structure being its broad squat flinty tower. It also contains what may be the oldest font in Surrey, a sturdy stone bowl dating back to 1120 with a carving of the Lamb of God on one side. Above the chancel the oak panels are an even rarer survivor, these depictions of the Day of Judgement from 1520 having somehow escaped destruction during the Reformation. Today the church is very welcoming of visitors so the door will likely be unlocked, or maybe I just got lucky while the Bereavement Cafe was meeting in the church hall. A particularly attractive exterior feature is the path that wends quarter of a mile from here down to the station, known as Church Walk. It's too narrow for vehicles so of the 60 houses only two have parking spaces, which must be fun on removals day, but the Victorian semis and cutesy cottages are so desirable that residents are all too happy to suffer the inconvenience. Vera Fletcher Hall where the local amdrams occasionally put on shows, wove through occasional leftover shards of woodland and eventually found my progress halted by a 90 acre sports ground. This is Imber Court, purchased by the Metropolitan Police Service in 1919 with recreation in mind. Not only is it the home of Metropolitan Police FC, a team who've reached the first round of the FA Cup five times, but also the training centre for the Met's mounted police. Looking across a sea of tennis courts I could see floodlights and the Des Flanders Stand in the far distance... and I presume someone was also watching me. headquarters of the Milk Marketing Board, they of "drinka pinta milka day", until watered down by William Waldegrave in 1994. It's now a housing estate and the MMB's sole local legacy appears to be that they helped pay for Thames Ditton Cricket Club's snazzy pavilion. I should also mention the Thames Ditton Miniature Railway, a teeny straddled treat, but their next open day isn't until 6th July. tip the river was again fenced off and the slipway hidden within a modern boatyard. Instead the local populace are left to make do with City Wharf Open Space, a scrap of waterfront mostly shielded by trees with a brief opening where the full sweep of the main river is finally revealed. The main problem with living round here, it turns out, is rather too much Ditton and nowhere near enough Thames.

I have been to all the stations in London. It's a lot of stations. I'm including tube, DLR, Overground, Crossrail and all National Rail services, even trams, and that's why it's quite so many stations. Also when I say 'been to' I mean properly used, not just passed through on a train. At each station I either touched in or touched out, sometimes both. » What precisely counts as a station is a moot point. Is Canary Wharf one station or three? Is Marylebone one station or a rail terminus plus the tube? I got round this pedantry by going to both of them, just to be sure, also both halves of Shepherd's Bush, both sides of Mitcham Junction and the two Heathrow Terminal 5s. Don't nitpick, just do the lot. It's not easy to visit all the stations in London, and also not easy to know you have. You need a list and you need excellent record keeping, also patience, drive and time. Are you absolutely certain you've been to Albany Park, Eden Park and Grange Park? Have you really been to West Drayton, Drayton Park and Drayton Green? I'm certain because I made a spreadsheet and ticked everywhere off. I wonder how many others can say the same. this year. I broke down the challenge into two halves. All the stations in London z1-3tramsz4-6 about 350 stations39 tram stopsabout 230 stations JanuaryFebruarymid-March-mid-June It turns out visiting all the z4-6 stations is harder than visiting all the z1-3 stations, even though there are fewer of them. That's because they're spread across a much wider area, usually further apart and because train frequencies in outer London aren't so good. There are a lot of half hourly services in zones 4-6 so you can end up waiting for a while, also the next station may be too far to walk, also there may not be a decent bus service connecting the two. The optimum solution is often to bounce back and forth, first two stations forward then one back, but sometimes the timetable conspires not to make that work. Ticking off the ten stations in Bexley took over three hours, for example. Yes I do have a lot of time on my hands. I was impressed by the community heritage on the Enfield Chase line where posters and artworks give the place a lift. I was surprised by the masses of nigh empty carriages rattling through the suburbs of Bexley and Bromley. I was amazed by the number of staffed ticket offices in backwaters with even fewer annual passengers than the lowliest tube station. I was mighty glad I don't live on the Hounslow Loop because that is one miserably infrequent service. I discovered that catching a bus is usually quicker than waiting for a train down some of the south Croydon valleys. I checked out the crumbling platforms at Berrylands, the nexus that is Bickley and the massive gap in the middle of Cheam. Basically I caught up on all the outer station knowledge I should have gained over the last quarter century but didn't because I had the wrong ticket. I've visited every tube station since the start of the year including the 16 that are outside London. I finished off the tube by exiting Rickmansworth last week. I have in fact been visiting every station in zones 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, even the 41 that are outside London, because my 60+ Oyster card permits that too. Even Swanley and Dartford in Kent, even Elstree & Borehamwood in Herts, also the two Ewells in Surrey, I've done the lot. I didn't just whizz round the Banstead Loop for a laugh, I was station-ticking all the way. (some time after ten o'clock) which will also mark the final completion of my Visit Every Station challenge. All the stations accessible with a 60+ Oyster card z1-3tramsz4-6beyond z6 350 stations39 stops230 stations41 stations JanuaryFebruarymid-March-mid-June The rest of the year is looking brighter already.

Route 241: Royal Wharf to Hackney Wick (Here East) Location: London east, cross-Newham Length of bus journey: 8 miles, 50 minutes route 241 was extended from Stratford City into the Olympic Park. No fuss was made, no hordes descended. Buses which would normally have terminated outside Westfield instead continued via a wilfully tortuous route to the multi-storey at Here East, inevitably rammed with empty seats. The extension is designed to deliver a bus service to the East Bank, the cultural waterfront whose landmark buildings are currently half open. It also delivers a bus service to Sweetwater, one of the five post-Olympic neighbourhoods where currently nobody lives because not a single flat has been built. Arguably it's still too early for the extension to be useful and yet the change has been in the offing for well over a decade waiting for the right moment to launch. I first blogged that route 241 might be extended across the Olympic Park way back in July 2010 when the idea appeared in planning documents for the Orbit. Instead when Westfield opened in 2011 the 241 was merely extended across the railway to Stratford City bus station, leaving the 388 to take responsibility for travel to the top of the park. A specific extension to Here East first appeared in a consultation in December 2012, at this stage an aspirational change waiting for the Olympic Media Centre to be reopened. A firmer proposition appeared in July 2017 as part of a wide-ranging review of routes connecting to Crossrail, but bosses ultimately decided not to proceed. The emergence of a free shuttle bus for Here East employees in May 2017 likely delayed things somewhat, and a proper 241 extension consultation only emerged in May 2024 when Carpenters Road reopened. And now finally here we are, 15 years on, mostly needlessly. entire route, not just the extension, all the way from flat-stacked Royal Wharf. It wasn't terribly busy at that end either, this being another extension circa 2022 on a much-tweaked route. If the Thames-side incomers want to go to Stratford they take the DLR rather than slum it through Custom House and Plaistow, and only on reaching these parts do passenger numbers really start ramping up. I'm pleased to report that timetables at bus stops all appear to have been updated, or at least I never spotted one that hadn't. A yellow poster has also been added explaining the extension into the Olympic Park, not that I can imagine anyone in south Newham ever wanting to make use of it. Our accumulated load started disembarking at Stratford Broadway, poured off at the station and fully emptied out at Westfield, this being where the 241 formerly stopped. The twisty-turny extension starts here. ridiculously twisty, this the fault of the post-Olympic road network which never quite links up in an optimal way. Crossing from one side of the station to the other has already taken 7 minutes and now we face another loop to get from 'up here' to 'down there'. The first stop on the new extension is outside the Aquatics Centre, a stop in use since 2013 and now served by three different routes. It might feel like overkill to serve a swimming pool and a skatepark, but the opening of a whopping university campus alongside in 2022 means that 16 buses an hour is sometimes justified. OK, now the new bit. a grimy backroad lined by mucky businesses nowhere else wanted. Originally the 276 ran along it, mainly as a quick route to Hackney Wick, but was diverted through Bow instead in 2007 when all this was sealed off to build the Olympic Park. After the Games Carpenters Road reopened as little more than a service road, this time with the 339 wending its way through, this until December 2018 when the road closed again to enable the construction of the East Bank. Neither the 276 nor the 339 have ever returned and the backroad is now the province of the 241, whisking students and punters to all things cultural. A pair of brand new bus stops await. Onwards. map in the recent consultation, only two more round the corner that don't yet exist. 339 remains the better option if you're heading canalside. And when the bus finally climbs up to Marshgate Lane the really stupid thing is that construction teams painted BUS STOP on the road back in 2021 in readiness for this weekend, but no bus stop has been added. They even added an annoying kink in the adjacent cycle lane in readiness for a shelter, squishing the pedestrian gap to a bare minimum, but it turns out they needn't have bothered. next stop is a longstanding one, immediately outside the Copper Box on the main drag of Westfield Avenue. This time there are flats nearby, also flats under construction, also regular sporting events, a large food court and a shortcut across the river to Hackney Wick station. The 388 stops here and what's more it takes the direct 4 minute route to and from Stratford, not the circuitous 8 minute safari we've just endured. There's then no further stop until the terminus at Here East, even though it might be useful to fill the 600m gap to serve for example the new V&A Storehouse and adjacent facilities. Instead it's all the way or nothing, turfed out kerbside between yet another university and a multi-storey car park. Was it really worth it? It will be worth it one day, when the East Bank is finished and 1500 unstarted flats along the extension are complete. This is just TfL getting in early, while simultaneously getting in 13 years later than they first suggested. A fine balance needs to be struck, and somebody has judged that now is the time to push things further with three extra vehicles on the route, even if initially they carry mostly empty seats. In the meantime the 241 extension is a round-the houses route that doesn't yet go round any houses, thus generally unnecessary, and you're unlikely to be riding it any time soon.

The news from Watford Here's some news from Watford in insufficient detail, some of which I could have written more about, one of which I might return to and one of which I definitely will. • Watford has a new website encouraging you to visit Watford, live in Watford and move your business to Watford. It's called Watford Actually. I only laughed occasionally. "Watford offers the perfect blend of vibrancy and comfort" was one such occasion. "A lively town brimming with attractions for every interest!" was another, especially because they had to admit the Harry Potter Studio Tour isn't (quite) in Watford. • If you were planning to book tickets for the Harry Potter Studio Tour this month you can't, it's sold out. The next available date (at time of writing) is 31st July on the last tour of the day at 6.30pm. If you want a tour before 5pm the earliest date is 17th August. If you want a tour before 3pm try September after the schools go back. The cheapest no-frills tour is £56, since you ask. You should see the queue at the bus stop outside Watford Junction station. • In exciting news Watford's big shopping centre is being renamed The Harlequin Centre. I thought it already had been but when I reread last month's news story it actually said the change would happen "in the summer". For now it's still atria Watford, a rubbish name based on the fact the roof has a lot of glass. Before 2021 it was intu Watford, the rubbish name of a company destined to go bust. But before 2013 it was always the Harlequin Centre, a name suggested in a newspaper competition in 1992 when the place opened, which everybody in Watford's always loved so they're delighted it's coming back. n.b. The Harlequin name is believed to have been inspired by the Harlequin line, which in 1988 became the official nickname for the railway line serving Watford High Street station (this because it passed through Harlesden and Queen's Park). • I saw these bins in Cassiobury Park Avenue and I worried Watford Council had changed their logo again to some awful sunshine thing. Then I checked and it turns out the awful sunshine thing was the town's logo between 1997 and 2003, at which point the new Liberal Democrat administration sighed deeply and restored the traditional coat of arms. Then in 2016 they tweaked the shield and changed the town's motto from Audentior to Be Bold. That means these three bins are in fact showing three Watford logos in chronological order, first sunburst (1997-2003), then Audentior (2003-2016), then Be Bold (2016-now). Design agency Fresh Lemon gave the Watford council brand a jazzy revamp earlier this year but mainly only changed the backgrounds. • Watford has a new orbital path called the Watford Green Loop. It's 6½ miles long and designed to be walked or wheeled for a decent bit of exercise. The route crosses Cassiobury Park (pictured), then follows the River Gade and (cough) crosses an industrial estate to the Ebury Way, a longstanding cycle path along a former railway line, then ticks off Oxhey Park before (cough) crossing a retail park and following a bit of the River Colne, finally looping round the top of the town centre and back to Cassiobury Park. If you live in North Watford it's not exactly convenient but needs must. The Watford Green Loop won the 2025 Local Government Chronicle ‘Future Places’ award earlier this week and the council are well chuffed. I'm very tempted to do a circuit. • Watford also has a newish Heritage Trail in the town centre, complete with downloadable leaflet and snazzy information boards. Essentially it's a walk from the Town Hall to the Hornet statue - nothing too taxing - via some properly old buildings round the back of the church. It's nice to see Watford Museum staff doing something visible while they wait to reopen inside the Town Hall in 2027. • If you ever danced the night away in the nightclub by The Pond, it closed on New Year's Day 2024 and was put up for sale with a £6m price tag. In its final days it was Pryzm but before that the 2500-capacity venue's been known as Top Rank, Bailey's, Paradise Lost, Kudos, Destiny and Oceana. A plan to replace it with 147 flats failed so it's still on the market, now for £4m, which means you can enjoy a short fly-through video here and get all nostalgic. • Watford's Art Deco Colosseum, formerly the Assembly Halls, is said to have some of the best acoustics in the country. The production of Captain Pugwash I enjoyed as a birthday treat in 1974 was certainly top notch. However the concert hall's been closed since 2020 for (very) significant refurbishment, and is finally due to reopen on 29th August. The first event, unexpectedly, is a gig by Ocean Colour Scene supported by PP Arnold (followed in September by Jake Bugg, David Essex and The Stranglers). • Not Watford, but The Sportsman pub in Croxley Green sadly closed at the end of February. It's currently To Let, like anyone is going to want to reopen a pub in a village that still boasts four pubs and a Harvester, but was also designated an Asset of Community Value last month which might save it. • Not Watford, but Scotsbridge House at the foot of Scots Hill has been completely demolished. I was totally taken aback. I remember it as a crowded cluster of old buildings, and the sign outside for the British Friesian Cattle Society always had me intrigued. Alas it seems the farming organisation couldn't financially justify 40 employees rattling around in lovely premises by the River Chess so sold the site in 2023 and scarpered to Telford, and now every last bit of it is rubble. Coming soon are 59 flats, which I see come with 160 parking spaces which tells you all you need to know about the intended residents. Thankfully Three Rivers Museum made a lovely 10 minute video about the place back in 2015 so we'll always have that. • Not Watford, but the Croxley Revels are on 28th June this year, and haven't you always wanted to go ever since you saw John Betjeman gently mocking it in his Metro-land documentary?