A Walk the Lines walk

Sunday April 8th - Central Line from Bank to Chancery Lane

Fancy a stroll along a Tube line? At street level, that is. The idea comes from my book ‘Walk the Lines', in which I walked the whole London Underground system overground. Some very kind people have told me how much they liked the book, and one or two have even responded favourably to the notion of me leading a stroll along a short section of one of the lines. So here goes - we're off and walking.

A Walk the Lines walk

The stretch I've chosen - Bank to Chancery Lane - was very near the start of my second day on the Central Line. By that evening I'd done 27 miles out to West Ruislip (having completed 35 miles in from Epping the day before) - but don't worry, we won't be that ambitious. Just a pleasant 90-minute meander, taking in trivia and oddities from 2000 years of London history. Obviously there'll be plenty of Tube stuff in there (such as why Chancery Lane has the shortest escalators on the network) - but we'll also learn how far the sound of the Bow Bells travelled ... see a pub where a WWI soldier's bayonet left an unusual mark ... and discover a secret oasis of calm right in the middle of the Square Mile.

More details on the Walks page - but the essentials are:

 

Sunday April 8th, 2.30pm (Easter Sunday)

Meet outside exit 3 of Bank Tube station (by the statue of Wellington)

£8 (£6 for over-65s and under-16s)

 

Any questions? Do email me. Otherwise - look forward to seeing you there.

 

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p. bloomberg
Posts: 8
Comment
hackney
Reply #2 on : Fri March 08, 2013, 22:04:02
JUST ORDERED YOUR SUBWAY BOOK. DO YOU EVER DO A WALKING TOUR OF HACKNEY?


p. bloomberg
old man
glendale, ca
Chris Fickling
Posts: 8
Comment
Great Idea
Reply #1 on : Thu March 22, 2012, 17:57:13
Really like the sound of this

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Content

Big Ben

On a visit to Big Ben, I was told that if you stand at the bottom of the tower with a portable radio and listen to the chimes on Radio 4 (they still transmit them live), you hear them on the radio before you hear them ‘for real’. I couldn’t believe it – but was intrigued enough to try it for myself. And you know what? It’s absolutely true. The bongs come out of the radio a fraction of a second before they reach your ears from the top of the tower. It’s something so silly, so counter-intuitive, that you have to tell people. (Well, I did.) Researching the explanation, I found that it’s because radio waves travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) rather than the 700 or so miles per hour at which sound waves travel. The signal travelling down the wire from the microphone to the BBC goes at the speed of light too. Hence the radio version overtaking the real one.

I realised that this would be the perfect way to teach the principle in school physics lessons. Instead of a boring teacher droning on that ‘radio waves travel at the speed of light’, illustrate it with this beautiful and quirky little fact. The kids will remember it then. I certainly would have done if my physics teacher had taken this approach. As it was I had to wait until I heard a piece of so-called ‘trivia’ in my thirties.