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Old October 7th 06, 02:06 PM posted to uk.transport.london
AstraVanMan AstraVanMan is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Nov 2005
Posts: 74
Default Heathrow to Blackheath?

"Mizter T" wrote:
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.


Heh. I certainly wouldn't. Apart from if they completely closed all of
London within the North/South Circulars, or something equally extreme....
:-)

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.


That was my idea - if a cab would have been required from Blackheath station
to the destination anyway, then it'd probably be as well to get off at
Lewsisham, especially if a Lewisham train that wasn't stopping at BH came
along first.

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.


Ah - noted. Didn't know that. I'm only going on an A-Z - though I do know
the tube network reasonably well (having done a bit of 'tube challenging'
here and there) - just not that particular connection.

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.


Yup. Sounds like the interchange between Southwark and Waterloo East is the
best choice compared to the masses of walking at Charing Cross and London
Bridge, and Bakerloo Southbound to Jubbly Southbound is an easy change at
Baker Street.

--
"For want of the price of tea and a slice, the old man died."