A row of shops that curves along a road. The lower storeys are typical shop fronts with plastic signs, that read "Ably Glass", "Dallas", and "Eardley Mini Market". The upper storey of the shops is pebbledashed, with brick around the windows, and the attic has dormer windows. A white van drives along the road between the camera and the shops. In the background, branching off from the main road, is a row of terraced houses. The sky is blue with some low clouds.

Welcome to the London Borough of…, part IV

Last time: it was hot. I’d been searching for London borough signs for nearly five hours, and I’d got six signs. I was in the outer reaches of Croydon, a borough which barely has inner reaches. But I was, at last, on a station platform, awaiting a train that would take me back to central London…

Indeed, central London was beckoning. There were museums there. Crucially, museums with cafés. I could sit down. Have a nice cool drink. All I had to do was hop on a Southern service, of which there were four an hour: two to London Bridge via Norwood Junction, and two to Victoria via Streatham Common.

That woke up a little voice in my head.

Streatham Common, you say? You know there’s a tripoint near there.

Now, being near a point where three boroughs come together is no guarantee that there will be signs nearby. We learnt that lesson at Crystal Palace, which has three tripoints near each other and can’t even manage one sign each.

The other lesson I’d learnt at Crystal Palace, though, was to plan ahead. And I knew from Street View that this one really did have three signs nearby, covering Lambeth, Merton and Wandsworth. They were all, in fact, quite near the station.

  • From the station, it was about half a mile’s walk down Streatham Vale to the point where it left Lambeth, marked by a sign.
  • The borough boundary then ran down the street briefly, so even though it had left one borough it was yet to unambiguously enter another. But when it did, though another few hundred yards later, there was a sign on Grove Road to welcome me to Merton.
  • I could then retrace my steps back into Lambeth, back to the station, and then instead walk down Eardley Road. A little over a quarter of a mile later, on the other side of a railway arch, I would find a sign for Wandsworth.

I was getting tired, though, and I wanted to spend some time that day not chasing local authority branding.1 So, ideally, I wanted to get off at Streatham Common, “bag” all the signs, and get back to the station in time for the next train.

You now have sufficient information that, if you’re into GCSE Maths word problems, you could pause here and take a second to calculate exactly how much of a bad idea this was.

For those not keen on the Imperial-system arithmetic, I’d need to average about four miles per hour to get all the signs. I knew I could walk that fast—as an undergraduate, I’d wanted to know exactly how many times I could snooze my alarm before I really had to set off to lectures, and my walking speed was the sort of information I needed to have to hand for that. But most people’s walking speed is influenced by how tired they are, how much they’ve walked already that day, and the external conditions. And, I hate to go on about this, but it was really bloody hot.

I do remember that the one sensible thing I did was call into the Co-op on Streatham Vale to get something to drink—although that, of course, took a couple of minutes that I didn’t really have to spare. Beyond that, I don’t remember what that half-hour was like, beyond that I was sweaty, short of breath, and deeply uncomfortable.2

But I made it: first to the Lambeth sign…

The blog's author, looking down at the camera with a scowl on his face. His hair is messy, and appears fairly short because of the camera angle. Behind him is a sign. The sign is dark blue above a curved line, and white below it (the dark blue area being much bigger than the white), with a white border. On the dark blue area "Welcome to Lambeth" is written in white. The sign is visibly coated with a retroreflective material. Behind the sign is a cloudless sky, paler at the top-right than at the bottom-left.
The angle is part of the reason my hair looks so short (I hope).

… then to the Merton one…

The head of the blog's author, very close to the camera. Behind him is a sign supported by a metal tube shaped into a pointed arch. The upper part of the arch holds a purple sign reading "London Borough of Merton", above the Merton Council logo (the word "merton", in lowercase, with a wavy line beneath, intersecting a waterwheel), all text and imagery beind in white. Below it, and separated by a metal pole, is a blank green sign. The camera angle is noticeably upwards. To the right of the sign is a lamppost, and three telephone wires cross the sky, which is cloudless (the sun appears to be behind the man's head).
You can tell I wasn’t actively blogging at this point, or I’d have put more thought into these pictures. Then again, given that I doubt I had long to spend composing them, maybe not.

… and then to the Wandsworth one.

The blog's author in front of a sign supported by a metal arch. The sign inside the frame is likewise arch-shaped, and white, with a grey bar along the bottom. On the white part is the word "Wandsworth" in green, beneath a blue semicircle, the bottom edge of which is a skyline including a church tower and Battersea Power Station. Arching above the semicircle, text in green says "THE BRIGHTER BOROUGH". Below, "TOOTING" is written in white text on the grey bar. Behind the sign is foliage, with a building behind that which is hard to discern through the leaves. The sky is solid blue.
It’s hard not to smile at the name “Tooting”. Hard, but evidently not impossible.

I even managed to make it onto the train back to central London. How? Genuinely, no idea. Not a clue. I don’t think I’ve moved that fast since.

As far as I can tell, the train ride was uneventful; apparently, I read a bit more of a book on the train, so that must have been nice.3 I got back to Victoria, in the pleasingly central City of Westminster, relieved that my south London odyssey was now over. It’s only two stops on the Tube from there to the museums at South Kensington, all of which have cafés.

That little voice woke up again.

Kensington, you say? As in Kensington and Chelsea?

My decision to walk to the V&A from the station was reassuringly inevitable. Goodbye Westminster…

Unimprestminster.

… and hello K&C.

The blog's author, squinting at the sign, his hair messy and his ears turned bright pink by the sunlight streaming through them. He stands between the two poles of an arch-shaped white sign, which is divided into two parts by a blue line. Above the line, in blue, is a coat of arms, above the words "THE ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA". Below the line, in black, is the word "CHELSEA"; there is also a sticker on this part of the sign. There are two smaller signs on the right-hand pole, not clearly visible. In the background is a modernist block of flats, made of dark brick and render, with windows arranged irregularly. The sky is bright blue, with the sun forming a sort of halo around the man's head.
Frayed in Chelsea.

But that, at least, was genuinely it. I was spending the rest of the weekend with my husband, and the whole reason I’d done this that day was because he wouldn’t enjoy traipsing—or, indeed, sprinting—around random streets.

Plus we had a tourist attraction planned for the next day: Hampton Court Palace. I’d last been in 2002, and so I’d forgotten how close it was to London. Indeed, it’s in London itself; I think as a child I’d been confused because Hampton Court station isn’t. It’s in Surrey, on the other side of the river from the palace. To get to the gates, you then cross Hampton Court Bridge, and in the process cross the Greater London boundary.

Cross the boundary, you say?

Oh dear.

To be continued…

Borough count: 11/33.

  1. I (in)conveniently forgot that I had been to the Horniman earlier on, so I had already done that. ↩︎
  2. I had a look at my photo reel to see if anything would jog my memory. No such luck: other than the selfies I was seeking, I took four photos. One was of a pebbledashing business, based in an appropriately pebbledashed building; two were of a pretty ordinary row of shops near the Wandsworth sign, the better of which is the header photo for this post; and one was of a disused church surrounded by hoardings printed with children’s artwork. Even by my standards I can’t see what possessed me to think those things were interesting. ↩︎
  3. I know this because I took a picture of an excerpt from it, I think to complain that the book had had a character use a First Great Western train to go somewhere that wasn’t on their network. I’m cool like that. ↩︎

2 responses to “Welcome to the London Borough of…, part IV”

  1. Welcome to the London Borough of…, part III – Escaping Oxford

    […] be continued… And if you can’t believe that I’ve managed to get (counting the next one) at least four […]

    Reply
  2. Welcome to the London borough of…, part V – Escaping Oxford

    […] Last time: I completed my first day of looking for London borough signs with five boroughs, bringing my total to 11. I was now going to spend the weekend doing actual tourist things, so the game was over for the moment. Or was it? […]

    Reply

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