It is two weeks since I finished my walk to all of London’s 270 underground tube stations and every night I’m still having strange dreams that involve London’s tube stations. Sometimes the dreams are mini nightmares in which I have finished my 325 mile walk only to discover that I missed one station. Often the dreams involve a strange combination of my current project at work, which involves upgrading a component of the software used by hundreds of UK accounting firms, but the accounting forms are now tube stations.  And then there are the dreams that are so vivid when I’m asleep, but the moment I wake up I can’t remember anything about them.

My wife says that this was the hardest walk I’ve ever done, and I’ve now completed 32 walks of 100 miles or more.  She says that it took 5 nights after I completed the walk before she was able to get a good night’s sleep again.

One thing that people who are not actively involved in ultra-distance sport may not realise is that the event involves much more than just the time the event takes to complete.  There is the lead-up to the event, which often involves me having one or two restless nights sleep immediately beforehand (although not this time fortunately), and then there is the ‘afterwards’.

The first few times I competed in races of 100 miles or longer I found that the first night after the race I had terrible night sweats, often sweating so much that we would have to change the sheets in the middle of the night.  Sometimes I would also be in so much pain that it hurt just to lie down, let alone roll over in my sleep.  As I have become more experienced the night sweats reduced and sometimes disappeared altogether.  The pain was always there and sleeping with a pillow under my feet sometimes helped, but Ruth got used to the fact that if I was going to do a long race/walk, she would probably lose part of a night’s sleep the night afterwards due to my groaning with pain throughout the night.

The reason that Ruth says this was my hardest walk to date is that I had night sweats for three consecutive nights after the walk was over and, apparently, I was both swearing and groaning in my sleep for five nights.

But was it worth it?  Absolutely!  Walking to every tube station in London was probably the best adventure I have had so far.

I’ve created this video which shows the 270 selfies I took in front of each tube station as proof that I had visited them all (plus some additional photos), but there was so much more to the adventure than I had time to talk about in the ten minutes within the video.

Preparation:

After completing a solo circumnavigation of Surrey in early August, and with all the races I wanted to do over the summer either being cancelled or postponed I started looking for another adventure.  In July, when planning for the Surrey circumnavigation I had come up with an idea for a 7 day walk which I don’t think anyone has done previously (which is why I’m not going to tell you what that walk is yet) but the idea for that particular walk scared me so much that I’ve put that on my list for consideration next year instead.  I then heard about a guy setting a new Fasted Known Time (FKT) for the Wainwrights – the 214 highest peaks in Cumbria – and that started me thinking about a London version of this where I would visit tube stations rather than peaks.

For a little while I considered attempting the Smog Graham Round which is visiting the highest peak in each of London’s 32 boroughs but on investigation, I found that some of those ‘peaks’ (which range in height from 22 meters to 245 meters) are on private property which may not always be accessible, so I downloaded a file I found online containing the postcodes of all 270 tube stations and set about identifying the most efficient/shortest route that would enable me to visit all the stations in one very long walk.

One idea I had was to take the tube all the way up to Chesham, the most north easterly tube station and then walk from there to Upminster in the west via every tube station in between.  But the Wainwrights and all the other famous ‘rounds’ generally start and finish at the same point, and I also decided that with Covid-19, I would prefer to avoid actually going into a tube station or on a train/tube if I could.

Richmond Station, which is the end of the District Line, is only a few miles from where I live and I decided that would be the ideal start/finish point for this mammoth walk.

I used a combination of Google Maps, Notepad++ and two GPX creation websites to map a suitable route, convert the Google Maps routes (which could only contain a maximum of 18 waypoints between each start and finish and therefore required multiple maps) into GPX files, consolidate them into one XML file, and then finally produce one consolidated GPX file for me to visualize my planned route.

I’m not convinced that my planned route was the absolute shortest it could be (and it definitely wasn’t with the extra mileage I had to walk during the adventure) but after several iterations I think I was reasonably close – it was definitely shorter than the shortest route that I could calculate using a trial version of some commercial software I downloaded for delivery drivers to calculate their routes.

Other than planning my route I did very little preparation except for purchasing enough food to keep me going for the first 24 hours and packing some warm clothes and other equipment that I would need during the walk.

Day 1 – Thursday 3^rd September

Breaking this particular walk down into days might not be the best way to write about it, especially as it was really a walk of two parts (as you may already know if you’ve watched my video), but hopefully it makes this report more readable.

Day 1 started with my wife dropping me off at Richmond Station just before 9:30am and taking this ‘starting photo’ outside Richmond Station.  I was using a photo app that  adds date/time stamp plus other information to every photo as I wanted to have proof that I had visited all stations and be able to show when I reached each station – just in case anyone ever questions whether I really did this.  And assuming that I successfully completed the walk I intended on registering this as a Fastest Known Time on the FKT website and also applying for a record with Guinness Book of Records (incidentally, the fastest time recorded by anyone visiting all 270 tube stations is 15 hours and 45 minutes). Edit: Guinness Book of Records advise that they won’t recognise a record for visiting all tube stations on foot because it isn’t possible to get to Heathrow Terminal 1 on foot.

As you would expect in a five day walk, the first day was reasonably uneventful except for two problems:

• When I arrived at Heathrow airport terminal 4 I discovered that it was closed due to Covid-19 meaning that the closest I could get to the tube station was the front door to the terminal, about 50 meters from the tube station itself. The FKT website have accepted this as being OK and I am hopeful that Guinness Book of Records will also accept this as otherwise this particular challenge is not possible to complete until terminal 4 re-opens, and the airport authority has no plans to do that in the near future.
• When I was almost at Uxbridge my phone battery life had gone below 10% and the screen had turned itself off to conserve battery. This meant that I couldn’t see the map to help me find the tube station and I had to stop and recharge the phone enough so that I could turn the screen back on.  I didn’t actually know that the phone had a setting to turn the screen off when the battery power was too low and initially I thought that maybe my phone was about to die, which would mean the end of my walk.

It also started raining soon after I left Uxbridge, but it only rained lightly for no more than an hour, so wasn’t really a problem.

Day 1, or at least Thursday (14 ½ hours), ended with me having visited 31 of the most westerly stations and heading towards Chesham at the end of the Metropolitan line.

Day 2 – Friday 4^th September

I passed under the M25 at about 1:20am heading towards Chorleywood.  I recognised the road I was on from my two walks circumnavigating the M25 motorway on 2016 and 2017.  I often notice this when I’m out training.  I walk down a road and recognise it even although it might have been years since the last time I was there.

The stations were reasonably spread out and it was taking me 30 to 60 minutes between each station but this was nothing compared to the three hours it would take me to get from Chesham (station 37) to Watford (station 38), where I stopped for breakfast, and then another two hours through to Stanmore (station 39).

My plan had always been to visit all the outer stations first and I had now visited most of the stations to the west of London.  Next up were the tube stations across the north of London before the stations to the east and south before eventually arriving in London itself on Sunday or Monday.  I figured that it would be easier mentally if I left all the inner-city tube stations to last.

I also planned on having my first sleep on Friday afternoon, and then sleeping for a few hours each afternoon for the remainder of the walk.  I wanted to do this walk as a solo self-supported adventure which meant I couldn’t accept help from anyone during the walk, and therefore needed to sleep rough along the way.  For this reason, I also decided that I would use the walk as a fundraiser for Centrepoint, a charity that helps homeless youth in the UK, and I ended up raising over £2,000 for them.

But when I stopped for my first sleep in a park between Dollis Hill and Neasden on Friday afternoon, I found that I couldn’t sleep.  This was partially due to two foreign speaking people sitting down not too far away from me, lighting up a joint and carrying on a loud conversation in their own language, and partially because I just wasn’t ready for sleep.  After resting for about an hour I decided to start walking again and I had another unsuccessful attempt at sleeping a few stations later.

The problem with not sleeping on Friday afternoon was that I knew that it would get too cold to sleep outside overnight.  I had some warm clothing, but to stop and sleep outside, even with the warm clothing on, would be too cold and I wasn’t prepared to sleep anywhere that wasn’t in the open due to safety reasons.

Day 2 ended at Highgate, station 77, almost exactly 200km (124 miles) into my adventure.  When I planned my route I estimated that, with a small allowance for getting lost and detours, the total distance would be around 500km (310 miles).  This meant that I had covered 40% of the total estimated distance but only visited 28% of the 270 stations so far.

Day 3 – Saturday 5^th September

I have done a few walks where I haven’t slept for 40+ hours but I was starting to get tired now.  It was also raining lightly on and off so even if I had found somewhere safe to sleep the weather wasn’t going to let me sleep for too long.

Somewhere between High Barnet and Cockfosters (outside number 62 Station Road, New Barnet, according to the location stamp on the photo) I came across a sofa that someone had left outside their house and I thought that perhaps if I took the squabs off the sofa and turned them over, I could sleep on the dry side of them for a little while.  To my surprise the sofa turned out to be a sofa-bed and I pulled it out and lay down on it.  I think I may have slept for 10 minutes and in total I was there for 20 minutes before I had to start moving in order to warm up again.

And then at about 5:30am, as I was entering Southgate I came across an outdoor pub that not only had a roof but also padded bench seats.  I lay down on one of the seats and may have slept for 45 minutes, but if I did sleep it was a restless sleep as I remember constantly making sure that I didn’t fall off the seat.  My watch shows that I was stopped for about an hour and I definitely felt better after my ‘sleep’.

When I got going again, I was kind of just going through the motions.  I knew what I was doing but it was almost like an out-of-body experience as I walked from one station to the next, taking one selfie after the other.

On my phone I had a list of all the tube stations, in the order I needed to visit them, and as I got to each station I deleted the station from the notepad file so as to easily keep track of where I was going.  Against Bounds Green I also had a reminder that a friend in New Zealand came from Bounds Green and I took some photos of the local school and shops which I sent to her via facebook.

By late morning I was ready for a sleep but even in sunny parks the grass was still wet from the overnight rain and I was too sore to try sleeping on a park bench, although in hindsight I probably should have tried.

Eventually near Wanstead I found a park with a nice dry bit of grass and sat down and took my shoes and socks off so that my feet could air while I tried sleeping again.  I think I may have managed another 45 minutes sleep but woke up in the shade and feeling cold again.  I drained my blisters, taped my feet and put on a clean pair of socks, and then resumed walking.

By the time I arrived in Loughton (station 106), the last station before crossing the M25 again heading towards Epping, I was craving pizza – until I saw a KFC.  I stopped for an early dinner and a short rest, which turned out to be a good idea  as immediately after Loughton was a long, steep uphill slog, and I didn’t actually pass another suitable fast food place until the next morning (other than the pizza shop about 50 meters up the road from KFC).

I arrived in Epping just before 8pm and then headed south back towards north east London.  Fortunately, I enjoy walking at night because the stations were well spread out.  I was also feeling good despite the serious lack of sleep I had had so far – less than two hours sleep in the 2 ½ days I had been walking.

By the end of day 3 I had walked another 90km (56 miles) and was almost at station 112.

Day 4 – Sunday 6^th September

Just after midnight I stopped at a petrol station to buy a drink and while waiting to be served I plugged my phone in to my portable USB charger to recharge as the remaining battery life was getting low again.  But when I got to the next tube station I noticed that the phone wasn’t charging.  I was carrying two heavy duty USB chargers, weighing 500 grams each (so about 1/7^th of the total weight I was carrying with 1 litre of water being another 1/7^th) and switched to the second charger.  But my phone still wouldn’t charge!

I checked the USB chargers by charging my watch.  That charged OK, so I made the assumption that it was the phone charging cable that wasn’t working and walked back to the petrol station to see if they sold charging cables.  Fortunately they did, and even more fortunately, the new cable worked.  I was so reliant on my phone, both for the list of stations to visit and the order to visit them in, and also for navigation using Google Maps.  If my phone had died, my walk would have been over.

A short while later I arrived at Newbury Park tube station which was the last station I needed to visit on the Central line.  From memory the station was quite busy – it was 1:20am on Sunday morning – so I quickly took my selfie and then got on my way again, wanting to avoid any drunken locals.  This time I was heading south east to Upminster Bridge and then Upminster at the east end of the District Line.  It was another long slog taking over 2 ½ hours to cover just over 14km but given that I had now been walking for over 65 hours on very little sleep I was maintaining a good pace.

In order to get to the very end of the District Line, Upminster, I had to pass the Upminster Bridge tube station which I would also pass again on my way west back towards London.  I took a selfie outside Upminster Bridge at 4:03am and then 54 minutes later I arrived at Upminster station, just 1 mile down the road.  In between times I came across a block of houses that had garages underneath (at road level) without garage doors.  One was completely empty.  One had security lights that came on when I went to go inside, and the middle one had a car in front of it.

I decided that the first one would make a good place to try and sleep and lay down on the hard, cold concrete floor at the back of the garage.  It turned out that hard cold concrete and sleep don’t go together.  It was another unsuccessful attempt at sleeping, but a few minutes off my feet which was much needed.

The fact that it took me 54 minutes to walk 1 mile indicates that I was probably resting for about 30-35 minutes and that made an incredible difference.  That and the knowledge that I was now heading towards London.  My kilometre split times on Strava don’t show it, but for the next few hours I felt like I was flying – although in reality my fastest kilometre was 10 minutes and 17 seconds!

I can’t remember which came next.  Soon after daylight I stopped and brought some breakfast – just some yoghurt – from a shop I passed.  And either just before or after that I had a weird sensation of déjà vu – in that I felt like I had been here before.  In a way I had been here before.  In 2016 I walked the District Line but in the opposite direction to what I was doing now, so I hadn’t actually seen what I was seeing in front of me, as it has been behind me last time.

I had the same sense of déjà vu last year a few hours before things started to go wrong for me in the Lon Las Ultra in Wales, but this time I was actually feeling good and having déjà vu.  I’ve heard about other ultra-distance athletes experiencing déjà vu during multi-day events, so I guess it isn’t uncommon. I was still aware enough to know that something wasn’t right though, but as I have since discovered, I wasn’t aware enough to do anything about it – like eat some foot perhaps.

Anyway, I continued walking, feeling good/reasonable most of the time and I arrived in Stratford at 10am.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and I decided that it would be a great idea to go into the Olympic Park and lie down in the sun for a sleep.  Dumb idea!  If you want to sleep, find somewhere away from people, not where tourists and locals are going to walk past you every few minutes.

As it turned out, when I lay down my legs decided that they were too sore to sleep and I couldn’t get comfortable, so after resting for about an hour I decided to start walking again.

This time the rest had had the opposite affect to my rest in Upminster.  I felt terrible and really struggled.

My mind started to get confused.  I ended up at a DLR station called Star Lane but was convinced that I was at Canning Town (which is a combined tube and DLR station) and I started to think that perhaps Transport For London and renamed the DLR to ‘Star Line’ (I had miss-read the station name) as a part of the Cross Rail construction project.  I crossed from one side of the station to the other, and back, at least twice.  But I couldn’t find a sign saying Canning Town.  I eventually checked Google Maps and found that I wasn’t yet at Canning Town.

And then when I finally got to Canning Town I couldn’t work out how on earth I was supposed to get from one side of the station to the other as per the Google Maps navigation to get through to the next station.

Add to that, I had just discovered that the Greenwich foot tunnel which should take me through under the Thames to North Greenwich was currently closed in the weekends due to Covid, and therefore I was going to have to make a change to my route and go the long way to North Greenwich, and my mind was really starting to fall apart.

Since finishing I have also realised that I didn’t eat much/anything at all on Sunday other than the yoghurt I purchased at around about 7am’ish for breakfast.  I used my phone to pay for all my food purchases throughout the walk as that was much easier than trying to deal with physical money, and my bank statement only shows the one purchase, for £1 on Sunday.  I think/hope that I ate something, but it would have only been small snacks and maybe some fruit that I was still carrying from last time I had stopped to buy supplies on Saturday.

I do remember stopping at a pizza place in the east end on Sunday afternoon, but they told me the pizza would take 30 minutes to cook and I didn’t want to wait.

If I had been able to think clearly enough to stop and eat, what happened on Sunday afternoon/evening may not have happened.  But that is easy to say now, two weeks later.

After leaving Canning Town I walked through to Canary Wharf where I again got totally confused, partially due to some road closures, and then from there via the east end stations through to the Rotherhithe Tunnel, a mile long car tunnel which would take me through to the Canada Water tube station on the south side of the Thames.

After emerging from the tunnel I found another park and again, I lay down in the sun in the hope of getting some sleep.  However, the moment I stopped walking and lay down my whole body started shaking uncontrollably as if I was freezing cold.  There was no way I was going to be able to sleep, and I also knew that there was probably no way I would be able to last another night without sleep.

I called my wife, Ruth, and told her about the situation.  She said that I was going to have to come home and try and get some proper sleep in my own bed – which made sense to me – but as I felt good’ish when I was walking I suggested that I walk to North Greenwich first and from there I would walk to Wimbledon where she could collect me.  Due to Covid I wasn’t too keen on taking public transport to get home, and it would take her hours to drive to where I was.  The idea made sense to me, and I convinced Ruth that I would be in Wimbledon no later than midnight and would call her when I was almost there.

That was at about 7:30pm.  1 ¾ hours later I had arrived at North Greenwich (6km in the opposite direction to Wimbledon), and it was then that I realised that there was no way I would get to Wimbledon by midnight.

My walking felt extremely slow now, and I was ready to give up completely.  I eventually made it back to the Canada Water tube station at 10:50pm and stopped my watch, deciding that that was enough.  My walk was over!

Total mileage 377km/234 miles. 139 tube stations visited in 3 days, 15 hours, and 20 minutes.

I caught the tube from Canada Water to Waterloo and the train home to Richmond from where my son Zac collected me and took me home.

As soon as I got home, I had a shower than then went to bed.  And surprise, surprise.  I slept for 9 hours!

Day 5 – Monday 7^th September

When I stopped at Canada Water tube station on Sunday night, I thought my attempt to visit all 270 tube stations was finished.  I was mentally exhausted and physically tired.

But after a good sleep, and with a little prompting from Ruth I decided that I would continue what I had set out to do.  At that stage I think I had raised about £800/£900 for Centrepoint and I didn’t want to let down those people who had donated.  And I also knew deep down that I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t continue.

I slept another 3 hours in the afternoon and then after dinner Zac took me back to Richmond station and I made the return trip back to Canada Water tube station arriving at about 10:30pm.

I waited until 10:50pm as, being a little OCD, I thought it would be best to resume walking exactly 24 hours after I had stopped.

It only took 20 minutes to walk through to Bermondsey tube station and by midnight I had passed Southwark tube station and was almost at Waterloo.

Total distance on Monday – just 5km.  Total distance since the beginning – 382km. 143 tube stations visited.

Day 6 – Tuesday 8^th September

I wasn’t walking fast but I enjoyed walking through the night.  I arrived at Wimbledon tube station (station number 162) a little after 4am – this was the station that I thought I could have got to by midnight on Sunday night when talking to Ruth via phone at 7:30pm on Sunday.  Obviously that estimate was way off, even if I hadn’t had the 24 hour break.

My first rest was just before 6am when I sat down in a park between Parsons Green and Fulham Broadway.  On Friday afternoon I had sent an email to everyone at work telling them about my fundraising for Centrepoint and I thought I would send them an update as many of the donations I had received had come from my work colleagues.  The email achieved the result I wanted and donations from my work colleagues started coming in again on Tuesday.  Watching the donations grow helped with my motivation throughout the final 24 hours.

I was now in London and the distance between tube stations was measured in hundreds of meters rather than kiometers.

By 10:50am, 12 hours after resuming, I had walked another 60km (37 miles) and visited 55 tube stations.  Mentally I was feeling good.  Physically I was feeling OK.  I couldn’t walk any faster than I was, but I didn’t need to.  The important thing was that I was walking with the knowledge that I would finish this adventure.

Again, it was a nice sunny day and when I arrived at Leicester Square just after 3pm I decided to have one last long rest and sit down in the sun outside Burger King with my feet up.

I could have sat there all afternoon but after about half an hour I got moving again.

Going into the night I did have one moment where I was a little concerned for my safety.  I can’t remember exactly where it was.  Somewhere around the Ladbrook Grove or Latimer Road tube stations Google Maps took me through a housing estate and I walked past a group of young people who looked a bit menacing.  Fortunately they were more interested in their skateboards than me, but over the whole walk that was the only time that I had any concerns about safety, and I suspect I walked through a number of other suburbs that may not be 100% safe.

Just before midnight I arrived at Hammersmith tube stations – two stations, one for the District and Piccadilly lines and the other across the road for the Hammersmith & City and Circle lines.

It was at this stage that I was finally able to start thinking about how far, or how little, I had to go.  Only 20 stations (including Hammersmith) and less than 30km (19 miles).

I have learnt over the years that in any long distance walk you cannot afford to think about how far you have to go, or even how far you have been.  You need to focus only on the here and now so as not to be overwhelmed by the overall distance/time of the walk.  Up until now, as much as possible, I had focussed on one tube station at a time.  Nothing more.  But now, I was on the home straight!

Day 6 totals: 252 tube stations now visited. Total mileage 496km (308 miles)

Day 7 – Wednesday 9^th September

I had started my walk the previous Thursday morning, and it was now Wednesday.  One awesome week!

But it wasn’t over yet.  There were still another 18 tube stations to visit and as I discovered when trying to find the North Acton tube station, things could still go wrong.  Google Maps doesn’t seem to know that cemeteries are often locked at night, and at about 2:15am it wanted me to walk through a cemetery on the way to the tube station.  Eventually I found my way around the cemetery and more importantly I was now counting down – only 8 stations to go!

It’s not over until it’s over though, and the last 3km (2 miles) from Kew Gardens through to Richmond was a real struggle.  I was walking at a reasonable speed but I was falling asleep on my feet and had to have several micro sleeps where I simply stopped walking and leaned against a fence with my eyes closed for 20 to 30 seconds.  If I hadn’t of been so close to the finish I would have sat down for a rest, but I was almost there!

The finish!

The finish was an anti-climax.  As I approached Richmond Station I saw on the electronic sign at the bus stop that my bus from Richmond to home was only 1 minute away.  So I quickly walked over to where I had started the previous Thursday morning, stopped my watch, and took a ‘finisher’s selfie’, then walked back to the bus stop, put my face mask on, and got on the bus for the short trip home.

Total time: 5 days, 20 hours, 18 minutes, and 3 seconds.

Total distance: 523km / 325 miles

Total tube stations visited: 270

Total money raised for Centrepoint: over £2,000

 

And when I got home everyone was asleep.  It was only just after 6am.  I had a shower and went to bed.

Some final thoughts:

• I can go faster.
  Most of the races, especially the race-walking races, that I want to do are in Europe and therefore unavailable to UK based athletes during the current crisis. If that continues into next summer, I would like to have another attempt at this walk.  Next time I will do it with support.  I think if I had people either following me throughout or meeting me at tube stations to feed me, give me everything I need, and if I have some places lined up to sleep when I need sleep, and I don’t need to carry 7 kilograms of food, water and equipment, I think I could complete this walk in under 100 hours, maybe inside 4 days.
• In total, my watch recorded the walk as being a total of 538km (334 miles) but this included 4km recorded when I had to catch the bus from Bath Road to Heathrow Central bus stop and return in order to visit the tube station within the airport terminal – the only tube station not accessible by foot because it is within the airport parameter.  And it also includes some additional mileage that my watch was recording when I was inside shops buying food.  By my calculations the watch recorded an additional 10-11km that I didn’t walk (plus the 4km) so my estimate is that total distance walked was 523km (325 miles).
  My walk on Strava can be viewed here – part 1, and part 2.
• Today, I’ve used Google Maps to compare the route I had intended to take to get to the North Greenwich tube station to the route I actually took, and there is only a 3km (2 2 mile) difference. At the time, I thought the detour was adding 10km or more to my journey and that really messed with my mind.
  Ultra-distance events such as this are more about mental strength than physical.  You need both, but as the saying goes, “an ultramarathon is 90% mental, and the other 10% is in your head”