juliann

London Crawling is a pub crawl through the West End of London on the evening of Saturday 10 May 2008. We're going to walk our 5km (hopefully, fingers crossed!) but take regular breaks to sit down, rest and perhaps have a half. (Alcohol not required, indeed not recommended for many on certain pain medications!) It's social but socially conscious all in one! We'll also be pointing out things which are hazards to the mobility impaired along our route, for those who have never had cause to notice such things before.

Hello. I went to a talk last night about cooling the London Underground. It was interesting. I took notes, and have written them up. This isn't in the exact order the talk was in; I moved some stuff around to make more sense (the speaker mentioned that his slides weren't in the optimal order, so his talk wouldn't be either).

The talk was at the Building Centre in Bloomsbury, and the speaker was the director of TfL's Cooling The Tube programme, Kevin Payne.

I have already spent way too much time on this, but I may come back later and add some supplementary links/explanations (or perhaps the other Tube obsessives and/or the engineers on my friends list will do it for me). Also, I took some photos of the Building Centre's scale model of Central London, but I haven't had a chance to sort them out yet. Edit: here they are.

(LiveJournal will only let me have twenty equidistant options.)

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publicansdecoy

I think Kake thinks the best TV series ever is...

I like taking photos, and one of the things I like taking photos of is food. I particularly like taking photos of restaurant food; the problem with this is that it impacts on the people I'm with. If I want to spend a couple of minutes taking photos of my food before I start eating it, then this means I'm not available for conversation, which some people find rude. Also, some people feel uncomfortable unless everyone starts to eat at exactly the same time.

So, if I know someone doesn't like it when I take photos in their presence, the polite thing is not to do it. But this does mean I enjoy the experience slightly less.

What do you lot think? If your answers depend on the type of restaurant, then assume the most sensible one of:

• the kind of restaurant you're most likely to eat in with me;
• the kind of restaurant you most usually eat in with other people;
• the kind of restaurant you think these questions are most relevant to.

Note also that these are tickyboxes, so feel free to choose surface-contradictory answers if you think that expresses your opinion best.

Note: the difference between I don't like to start eating unless everyone else is ready to start too and I don't like to start eating until everyone's food has arrived is that everyone else ready to start means everyone's food has arrived and, for example, nobody has popped to the loo, nobody is taking photos, nobody's gone outside for a cigarette, etc.

(The articles that got me thinking about this are this and this, but they're about something slightly different.)

Page 20 column A (the western edge of the known universe) to page 22 column B (Oakwood Station).

Did my first A-Z walk last Thursday. I couldn't have wished for a better start. Pages 20 and 21 (the first actual map pages) contain:

• at least two real ale pubs (the Sebright Arms and the Olde Monken Holt)
• two Tube termini (High Barnet and Cockfosters)
• lots of green stuff

After a dim sum lunch at the New World with various components of London.pm, I headed up to High Barnet. The station's in column D of page 20, so not quite at the edge; this meant I had to head west for a bit before I could get started. The point which I deemed to be the beginning of the walk was the point where Galley Lane joins Wood Street; I took a photo of the sign (and of the pub that happened to be there), sent commemorative SMSes to Bec, Bob, doop, and Richard, and headed towards my first landmark, the Sebright Arms.

The Sebright Arms was on the agenda because it was in last year's Good Beer Guide, and hence got added to RGL when I was doing my auto-import of all GBG pubs. Sadly, it's not in it this year; I don't know why. Equally sadly, I didn't get there until 2:50pm, and it closes at 3pm on Thursdays, so I didn't go in. Never mind; the Olde Monken Holt (on the agenda for the exact same reason) was just a short walk away, so I headed over there for a pint (for review purposes, of course), and a bowl of chips (since I forgot to eat enough food at lunchtime).

From here on, the walk was pretty much entirely countryside. I was basically walking across Monken Hadley Common from west to east. There was a very very villagey bit, and then there was woodland. I stumbled on some London Loop signs at one point, and followed them for a while. Towards the end of the walk, and the afternoon, I started to see other walkers: a young couple, hand-in-hand; an older couple, with a car and a dog; another dog-walker, alone but for his dog.

The end of the common was marked by another pub — the Cock and Dragon, which I didn't go in (but should have, since it would have meant I missed rush hour later on). Cockfosters station was just a few minutes away; I walked past it, but decided to press on to Oakwood station, since it would get me onto the next page.

Cockfosters to Oakwood was the least enjoyable bit of the entire walk. I walked along Westpole Avenue, which is basically a long, straight, tedious suburban street. And my feet hurt, because they'd just spent 45 minutes walking on nice soft ground, and now I was expecting them to put up with hard pavements (and I need new boots). If I'd realised that this part would be so dull, I'd have stopped at Cockfosters and then started the next walk with a good wander around Trent Park.

But overall it was great! Next up, Oakwood to (probably) Ponders End.

There is a photoset on Flickr, and a (rather noisy) GPS trace on Google Maps, and I've also set up a Twitter account called KakeWalk, which you can subscribe to if you'd also like to get commemorative SMSes on future walks (I only sent them to people who I knew were interested in me and/or adventures this time round, but I'm happy to share with more people) when something interesting happens, or when I find myself in a pub that I plan to stay in for more than half an hour.

Incidentally, an interesting fact I discovered while deciding how to get home is that Green Park is actually slightly to the east of Cockfosters. You would never guess this from the Tube map.

Hello Kake!