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.

After traipsing halfway across London, dodging travel works and closed Overground lines and carriages with malfunctioning air conditioning and all the other things that make moving around this city on a weekend in the summer such an endless joy, it's equally annoying to find that your destination is good or bad. If it's good, you will bemoan the fact that somewhere worth visiting is so bloody difficult to get to, and seethe with jealousy of those lucky locals who have such a good place on their doorstep. And if it's bad, you wish you'd spent your Saturday morning and sanity going somewhere else. Uncle Hon's isn't awful. It's not great, but it's not awful. The brisket (sorry, ox cheeks) was over-tender to the point of mush (it would definitely not pass the competition BBQ "pull-test" and a bit too sweet. Pulled lamb had a decent flavour but a rather uniform texture - the joys of the "pulled" element of a BBQ tray lie almost entirely in finding little crispy crunchy bits of fat and charred flesh; this was just a bit boring. And some cubes of pork belly were decent enough in that Cantonese roast style but was yet more sweet, syrupy, mushy meat next to two other piles of sweet, syrupy, mushy meat and the whole thing was just a bit sickly. Iberico ribs were a bit better in terms of texture - they did at least have a bit of a bite and didn't just slop off the bone as is depressingly often the case - but I feel like Iberico has become a bit of a meaningless foodie buzzword like Wagyu, ie. nowhere near the guarantee of quality it once was (if indeed it ever was). These were definitely the best things we ate though, and were pretty easily polished off. Oh I should say pickles and slaw were fine, if fairly unmemorable, and a single piece of crackling weirdly lodged vertically into a mound of rice like the sword in the stone had a pleasant enough greaseless texture but was pretty under seasoned. Look, I can see what they're trying to do at Uncle Hon's - fusion American/Chinese BBQ food, bringing a bit of a new twist to what is now fairly ubiquitous London drinking-den fare, and with a bit more thought and skill it could have been, well, if not completely worth that awful journey but at least some compensation for your efforts. But after having paid £50pp for what is an only fairly mediocre tray of food plus 3 small extra pork ribs, we were left feeling fairly unhappy, not very satisfied and more than a little ripped off. 5/10

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.