As the weather warms up on sunny days (though as I type, rain pours out of leaden skies just as it did on the Bank-to-Beckton day, as the picture proves), my focus has turned towards the Thames in the east of the capital. I mopped up, wrote up and published the three routes following the Docklands Light Railway, combining that with doing the eastern end of the Jubilee Line.

Now the Jubilee Line takes some effort. It crosses the river four times, and while getting from Waterloo to Westminster presents no problem, the other three crossings need lengthy detours. Between Canning Town and North Greenwich, the Woolwich Foot Tunnel must be used, and between North Greenwich and Canary Wharf, it’s the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (both of these feature in the DLR routes too). Between Canary Wharf and Canada Water, it has to be Tower Bridge, which is as far as I have reached so far. The bridge should be quieter when I set off for Canada Water, since there will be far fewer slack-jawed and slacker-legged tourists obstructing free passage.

The eastern portal of the Islington Tunnel, Regent’s Canal

I found myself walking up Watling Street in Edgware last week, and discovered a short improvement to the London Summits Walk, avoiding two main roads and a particularly nasty roundabout. Today, I wrote up two short paragraphs which amended the route. The new text was a few lines longer than the old text, and that was just enough to throw an extra page. I therefore had sixty pages of adjusting illustrations, recasting paragraphs so that they did not leave ugly gaps at page-ends, and so forth. Of course, I also found a few typos and corrected them. Fortunately, I am confined to barracks for a few days, so the hours spent at the wordface were not particularly begrudged. The PDF link on the page linked above has now been refreshed.

I have also completed the walking route for the Hammersmith and City Line, and that page now has the PDF link.

I have now managed to corral content for the Overground‘s new nomenclature., retaining a separate document for each of the six named lines. I have also completed the Victoria Line and have made progress on the Metropolitan Line and the Docklands Light Railway routes (which have also given me a start on the Jubilee Line route).

A new route is now in the planning stage — as hinted by the photograph above, it is to parallel the Superloop bus routes through the mid-outer suburbs. I have tested two mornings’ walking between North Finchley (yes, at that hour of the morning!) and Wanstead, and there is a lot more than mere streets, including hearing a woodpecker drumming in Epping Forest on 5 February. The next section to Ilford and beyond will require a few days of dry weather, rather than the current swamp conditions.

There is a new official TfL walk — the Green Link Walk. I have not yet had a chance to study the route in detail, but it starts from a bus stop on the edge of Epping Forest and ends by crossing Burgess Park to reach Peckham. A start at Snaresbrook station would allow walkers (if not all wheeled users) to experience the section of Epping Forest where I heard that woodpecker, rather than just peering at the Forest from the bus stop. Judging by the hazy route-map, I suspect that there will be no separation of feet from wheels throughout, which will bring lesser joy to both groups..