A busy week....

On 12th September, I headed up to London. My destination was the Shaftesbury theatre in London, home of & Juliet, and my plan was to attend a backstage tour of the theatre. All was going well until I was sat in the five guys burger restaurant at Covent Garden having lunch, 5 minutes on foot from the theatre, and I realised I was a week too early. Check out next week's post for my post about that.

By that point, I'd already paid for a London travelcard, so decided to have some fun. Meridian Water station had opened whilst I was at university, and I'd wanted to go and take a look. So, i got my phone up to look at the timetable. I decided to go there via tube and bus because the timetable meant that I'd have a long wait to head there directly by train (because I'd have arrived at Stratford just after one had left). And so I headed for the tube. I walked the short distance to Leicester Square tube station, which is just around the corner from where I'd had lunch, where I boarded a Piccadilly line train, changing for the Victoria line at Warren Street. At Tottenham hale, I headed to the bus station and boarded a bus, alighting outside the Tesco and Ikea which are across the road from the station. I quickly nipped into Tesco to pick up a drink before heading to the station. 

Making my way up the stairs towards the ticket barriers, I noticed that the bridge had been left open, enabling people who will be living in the new Meridian Water development to walk over to the shops without needing an additional bridge to be built. The station had minimal facilities however I wasn't there long, instead boarding a train to Stratford, from where I headed back into central London to head home. All in all, a good day, albeit not the plan I'd had for the day.

And then, a few days later, I was offered a job. It was in a local secondary school, and I was starting just over a week later, so I decided to make a few trips out over the last week to try and get some more stations ticked off before I started.

And so, on the Friday, I headed to Moorgate to tick off the stations on the northern city line up to Finsbury Park. It was an uneventful journey however it was my first ride on the class 717 trains. As a regular class 700 user, they were of course very similar, but they were nice nonetheless.

Arriving at Finsbury Park I made a quick trip outside to buy lunch  before I went and tried out another bit of railway I'd never used before: the canal tunnels between Finsbury Park and St Pancras. From there, I boarded the tube, making a quick stop at Westfield London to nip into a couple of shops, before heading back to Hammersmith. I made the now obligatory stop at Hammersmith's branch of Ben's Cookies (well, it would be rude not to whilst I'm walking past!) before heading back to Victoria and then home.

That's all for this week, however next week I'll be talking about my first trip back to a theatre since lockdown, with the tour I attended at the Shaftesbury theatre in London.