London: a random Tube journey, part II

At the end of my last post,¹ we left me as I wandered back to Harlesden station.  This was the point at which my Day Travelcard started to give up the ghost, which meant asking station staff to let me in and out.  This was annoying because: firstly, it’s slightly embarrassing returning to a station five minutes after leaving it, because it looks like you’ve just got off at the wrong stop; and, secondly, it left me particularly vulnerable to just missing trains, which I immediately did (if I’d been a bit braver at jumping through closing doors, I wouldn’t have).  Hence I cheated and used an Overground train on the same tracks, and then added the second clause of Rule 5 so that I wasn’t cheating at all.

Date of trip: Tuesday 30th October 2018
Journey time: 1h10ish from Oxford to Marylebone
Fare: £20.55 (Off-Peak, with 16–25 Railcard, including Zones 1–6 Travelcard)

Harlesden

Bakerloo, one stop northbound, to

Stonebridge Park

Stonebridge Park station is sited where an important railway crosses an important road. Here, the North Circular road (in both new and old versions, so it’s pretty damn wide) passes under the many tracks of the West Coast Main Line, which crosses the road on two separate viaducts (the Tube has a third).  So an important location, but mostly because a lot of people pass through.

It’s probably not surprising, then, that the point of interest here started life as a simple transport café.  The Ace Cafe opened in 1938 as an open-all-hours rest stop for motorists. Because of its nighttime opening, it attracted motorcyclists, and especially members of the motorbike subculture: particularly rockers (perhaps most famous for supposedly feuding with mods), who were initially known as “ton-up boys”.²  The café closed in the sixties when Scratchwood services on the M1 took its non-motorcyclist trade, but eventually reopened in the nineties when, apparently, the “rocker revival” took place.

A better blogger than I would have gone inside the cafe and ordered a drink or something.  A more practical traveller than I would have at least done so to use the bathroom, instead of spend the next hour or so desperately waiting for my dice rolls to bring me to somewhere where I’d find one.  I, however, was intimidated by the fact that I am very much not part of motorcycle culture, and also by the signs outside warning patrons not to engage in any more anti-social behaviour or the police would shut them down.  So I took a photo from the outside and moved on.³

Bakerloo, one stop southbound, to

Harlesden

No.  Despite the fact that this move would finally take me in the opposite direction, there’s only so much I can write about the McVitie’s factory.  This was when the remainder of Rule 5 was written, so I didn’t have to go back there.

Bakerloo, three stops northbound, to

North Wembley

Wembley Central might have been interesting.  Wembley Central might have had a toilet.  But no, I had to ride past Wembley Central all the way to North Wembley, where there is absolutely naff all.  No, I mean it.  I could have written more about a second visit to Harlesden.  I found a Seventh-day Adventist church, which doesn’t seem to be more remarkable than any other Seventh-day Adventist church.  I found an internet café that was also a barber’s, which I guess is a bit weird.  I found a high school whose most notable alumnus, according to Google, is a former DJ who competed in Celebrity Big Brother last year.  And I found a petrol station which I hoped would contain a toilet, but as far as I could tell didn’t.  I then went back to the Tube to await, for ten bladder-straining minutes, a train that would take me somewhere I could relieve myself.

Bakerloo, three stops northbound, to

Willesden Junction

I was pleased, on my journey to the next stop, to confirm on the Tube toilet map that Willesden Junction was indeed one of the three stations on this branch of the Bakerloo that lived up to the line’s last syllable.  Took me a while to find the damn thing—or maybe it just felt like that.

As I mentioned last week, Willesden Junction is the closest station to Harlesden town centre.  I walked through it, noting the marked contrast from Queen’s Park just two stops down the line: Harlesden is much more cosmopolitan, much busier, and, from what I could tell, much poorer.  The place had a slightly run-down air to it, reminding me of parts of inner-city Bradford.  The only chain store I saw was a branch of Costa, and even there the paint seemed to be peeling a bit.⁴

What I was looking for was the Jubilee Clock.  Apparently, during the reign of Queen Victoria, it was a noted phenomenon for significant milestones since her accession to be commemorated by the building of a clock, to the extent that there’s a whole Wikipedia article about it.  Harlesden’s was for her Golden Jubilee.  The Wikipedia article doesn’t have a picture of it, so I was intrigued to see what it would look like.  I should have predicted that it would be underwhelming from the lack of a picture on the Wikipedia page.  Moving on.

Bakerloo, one stop southbound, to

Kensal Green

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

from G.K. Chesterton, “The Rolling English Road”

I’ve known the last line of this poem for a long time, and have therefore wanted to visit.⁵  See, what it refers to is that Kensal Green is home to one of London’s largest cemeteries.  The cemetery was inspired by Père Lachaise in Paris, and, having been to both, I can say you can see the resemblance.  The whole site is divided into numbered squares, with the paths through given names like “Centre Avenue” and “South Branch Avenue”.  The exceptions are Oxford and Cambridge Avenues, because even in the realm of the dead the influence of Oxbridge is never far away.

Many famous people are buried here, including a large number of Fellows of the Royal Society.  There’s a list on Wikipedia, but I didn’t have time to find more than one: I chose to go see Charles Babbage’s tombstone.  One of the FRSes, he’s one of the fathers of computing, along with his lifelong friend, Ada Lovelace.  The tomb was, perhaps, simpler than you’d expect for a man of his stature, but then that was true at Père Lachaise as well.  When I visited the Parisian cemetery my friend and I spent a couple of fascinating hours seeking out the graves of the great and the good, as a sort of macabre scavenger hunt.  Someday I should go back to Kensal Green and do likewise.

I decided to end my random journey here.  Partly, this was because I was running out of time; partly, because it felt fitting that my literal journey’s end came at a place where a more metaphorical journey ends.  But partly it was because my next step would have been…

Bakerloo, two stops northbound, to

Harlesden

STOP SENDING ME TO HARLESDEN RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR I REALLY CAN’T SAY ANY MORE ABOUT THE SODDING BISCUIT FACTORY

¹ Which phrasing reminds me that today is the centenary of the Armistice.  If I’d planned this better I’d have tried to find something relevant to reflect on.  Apologies that I didn’t.

² It’s a silly name, isn’t it?  Apparently it comes from the fact that “doing a ton” was slang for riding at 100mph.

³ Incidentally, pinned to the railings outside the Tube station was an advert for a service called “Oxtute”, if anyone fancies one of those.

⁴ One of the independent shops was called “Tangier”, and I couldn’t work out if that was “tan-jeer”, like the city in Morocco, or “tang-i-er”, as in more tangy.  Answers on a postcard.

⁵ Also, the London Game has a Hazard Card that says, in full: “SEIZED BY A COMPULSION: You long to discover Kensal Green.  Go there at once in your excitement.”