AstraVanMan wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:
Unfortunately I think you'll be very lucky to land at 10pm and get to
Blackheath by 11pm.

Paul C's route described elsewhere on this thread sounds solid but
nontheless I also think trying to do it in an hour is pushing it. If
you took a taxi I can't help but imagine you'd get stuck up in traffic
(friday night is party night after all), though this could possibly be
avoided by going round the M25, but that's just much further -
depending upon which route you used to get into Blackheath you could
end up doing almost a half circle of the M25 - which would eat up time
too.

Indeed - just worked it out very roughly on Memory-Map Navigator and it's
around 49 miles from J15 to the J3 for the M20/A20 - there's no way in the
world you could beat the direct route at that time by going that way. Or,
indeed, at most times.

Yeah, a spectacularly bad idea! It's not one that I would ever try
myself but I threw it out there just to see whether anyone else might
rate it or not.

One suggestion might be to get a train to Lewisham - you might possibly get
a slightly quicker train that might only call at more major stations on the
way out to somewhere further out, than a more local stopping service.
Wouldn't knock much off the time, but there might be slightly more trains to
Lewisham, and depending on where in Blackheath the OP is heading for, it
might be almost as close anyway.


At that time any train to Blackheath will be coming from Charing Cross
so there's no point in going to Lewisham to pick up another to get to
Blackheath.

You could go to Lewisham if there's a wait for the next Blackheath
train and pick up a cab from there - as there's a rank at Lewisham -
but you might have to wait for a taxi as that's a busy time taxi-wise
(either in a queue or waiting for one to pull up, or both). Doing this
could be useful if there's a long way to go from Blackheath to the
final destination as there's no taxi rank at Blackheath station, but
it's dicey as you might be waiting at Lewisham a while.


And from what someone else said, going from the tube to mainline station at
London Bridge is probably almost as much of a pain in the neck as it is at
Charing Cross from the Bakerloo line. I wouldn't bother with Southwark to
Waterloo East though - a quick look on a map reveals it to be a longer walk
than at Charing Cross.


It's not a long walk for a very good reason - Southwark tube station
has two exits, one onto the street and another exit directly connected
to Waterloo East - there's no exit to the street via this dedicated
link, just a concourse that leads to stairs up to the far end of the
platforms. Given that Southwark tube station is practically underneath
Waterloo East it's very easy - I've done it myself several times.

One issue with catching a train from here is that the train information
screens aren't as useful as they should be and there's a choice of two
platforms (whilst the train will almost certainly go from one of these
I wouldn't rely on it). So it'd be helpful to know the time of your
train and the ultimate destination so you can decipher which platform
you need to be on quickly - unfortunately there won't be any staff to
ask on this concourse (there is a member of Underground staff, but they
don't know about the railway) but there are often railway staff on the
platforms above - along with other passengers to ask of course.

The information at Charing Cross is much more thorough, if it weren't
for that I'd give the Waterloo East route my full thumbs up.