The 23A is a bus service that runs once a year from Warminster to the middle of nowhere, via a village where nobody lives. The fact that it resembles a TfL bus route, with Routemasters, Boris Buses and proper TfL bus stop flags makes it all the more incongruous.
Barfleur, the cross channel ferry from Poole to Cherbourg is not in mid January a very busy ship. The last few days have been cold, with icy rain and the threat of snow, a rarity in the usually mild Dorset climes. Today, however, there is the promise of sunshine, just appearing over the horizon as we get ready to depart. A few minutes early, we head off from the berth into Poole Harbour, for a moment at least heading straight towards the rising sun.
The route from the port of Poole to the English Channel is not a particularly direct one, and takes longer to traverse than it does for us to eat our cooked breakfasts in Barfleur’s self service restaurant. The harbour channel makes tight turns to get round the twin obstacles of Brownsea Island and Sandbanks. The water is shallow here, and accuracy important. As we round the final turn the harbour mouth becomes visible, the chain ferry linking each bank waiting for us on the Studland side with only a few cars wanting to cross this early on a Saturday.
As we steam away from Poole out into the Channel I go up onto the winch deck. The sun is now as up as it gets in January and although I am in a reasonably sheltered position the wind is still bitingly cold.
We pass MN Pelican, heading into Poole to take our place on the linkspan to discharge her unaccompanied cargo. On arrival, she will load up with many more unaccompanied trailers and set off for Santander in northern Spain, ensuring productive mileage for those goods on board on a Sunday when most lorry movements are prohibited in France.
A slight swell set in as we pressed on. Seats in the restaurant gave way to recliner seats in the lounge, and wakefulness gave way to forty winks as the soporific effect of the rocking motion continued.
Eyes sprang open as we entered Cherbourg’s grand rade, and the public address system ping-ponged to let us know we were arriving. Heading out onto the deck, we were able to get an excellent view of the very thing we had come to see, the fast ferry Condor Rapide fully out of the water and on dry land for her annual refit.
This magic is achieved thanks to Cherbourg’s Syncrolift, in operation since 2001 and capable of lifting a 90m craft weighing up to 4500 tonnes. It is always impressive to see ships out of the water, that which is normally hidden exposed for all to see. It is doubly so to see it in the flesh and at close quarters.
Once on dry land we drove round to the passenger terminal where an outside viewing deck allowed us to get a closer look.
Rapide, the youngest example of Incat’s 86m class of wavepiercing catamarans, was built in 1997 with hull number 045 and has been in service with Condor Ferries, almost exclusively on their southern Channel Islands — St Malo route since 2010. Between 2010 to 2015 Condor operated three of these distinctive craft, having owned her older sisters Condor Express (042) and Condor Vitesse (044) from new (or almost in the case of Vitesse). 042 and 044 were sold to Greek operator Seajets in 2015 and Rapide is now Condor’s sole remaining catamaran.
Despite the welcome sunshine the temperature still does not lend itself to much lingering outside, and we need to set about finding the late lunch we have promised ourselves.
On our return to Barfleur following the usual round of day trip supermarket shopping we observe with interest that the wind has picked up somewhat and is blowing us right into the berth. An on-the-minute departure is complicated somewhat by the need to apply lots and lots of bow thruster to keep us off the piling. As we turn in the inky blackness of the harbour the wind becomes distinctly uninviting and we repair downstairs to the bar for beer, tall tales and an amuse bouche of crisps and peanuts.
The swell picks up a little later and we make the decision to feed in an almost empty self-service restaurant. I have eaten an awful lot of ferry food over the years and most of it is completely inoffensive but impossible to be prosaic about. A curiosity does present itself in the dessert selection however and I buy it, guessing it to be some sort of upside-down cheesecake. Wrong: it is lemon tart, also upside-down. As we hit the recliners for the last couple of hours I ponder whether or not this was intentional, and all of a sudden we are back in Poole, back in the car, and back on the road home.
In news that would possibly interest not a great deal of people:
I’d been dimly aware that the Cowes Floating Bridge was due for replacement and that it would happen this year, but had no idea of the exact date. Completely unwittingly, I had already made my last ever journey on it just a week ago today, on Boxing Day. On the day I was rushing to catch the Red Funnel ferry to Southampton and didn’t stop to take any photos.
This was a great shame because I had been intending to capture the two passenger cabins, long and narrow along each side of the vessel and open at each end. They were painted in an array of mauves and pinks, on top of which were assorted poems and artwork contributed by local residents and schoolchildren in 2005. It also means the only photos I have of her are from exactly one year before, on Boxing Day 2015.
Travelling on the floating bridge was always an interesting experience. She looks every inch her forty-two years and is noisy, shabby and rusty. But herein lies the charm; the crossing takes a few minutes, not even enough time to sit down unless you are really intent on doing so. It is an in-between space, yet one that acts as a backdrop to the lives of residents, tourists and other travellers.
If you’re not familiar with it, you may be thinking that I’m talking out of my hat and that this floating bridge thing looks oddly like a ferry. It is in fact a chain ferry, a floating vessel attached to a pair of chains which are themselves anchored to dry land at each end. The ferry, by way of its motor, pulls itself along the chains in each direction. If, like me you live in Dorset, you’ll probably be familiar with the slightly bigger chain ferry that operates between Sandbanks and Studland.
The Cowes Floating Bridge is rather more modest, and clanks back and forth across the River Medina every ten minutes or so for up to eighteen hours a day. The gap she has to cross varies with the tide between around 250 and 500 feet with the journey itself taking two or three minutes. It’s an essential transport service for pedestrians travelling between Cowes and East Cowes, and a handy alternative for motorists who would otherwise have to travel twelve miles south to Newport to cross the river.
While the existing ferry bears the imaginative name Bridge No. 5 it is in fact the eighth ferry to operate across the Medina, but only the fifth to be commissioned by the Isle of Wight council since they took over the service in 1909. She entered service in 1975 and has transported over sixty million people across the Medina in her service life.
I’m certainly looking forward to seeing the new ferry installed on the chains. Will she also clock up forty-plus years of service? Who can say. But for now we will say a fond farewell to Bridge No. 5.
A foot passenger launch will be operating across the Medina until the new floating bridge enters service. This website has more information about the works that will be going on in the absence of the floating bridge service: https://onthewight.com/floating-bridge-understanding-the-works-taking-place/
Almost all of my floating bridge photos are shown on this blogpost. I’ve put them all together in a Flickr album at https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewjhaz/albums/72157676969770211
Every now and again over the last few years Transport for London (TfL) have opened up a select number of disused stations on a ticketed basis. These were so enormously popular, with tickets selling out so quickly that the London Transport Museum has latterly started advertising them to its mailing list subscribers before putting them on general sale. Even then, getting hold of tickets is a competitive business. So when @Ianvisits, a Blue Badge tourist guide in London (who tweets some really interesting stuff, by the way) tweeted about tours coming up later in 2016 I was put on notice.
Missing this time were the usual tours of Aldwych and the Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross. I’ve been to Aldwych previously and, while it’s an interesting visit, it’s used so frequently for filming and training that it has never acquired the patina of disuse. And while I’d quite like to see the old Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross I can quite clearly recall them in use so am happy to leave that particular opportunity for a while.
The other tours on offer were Down Street disused station, the Clapham South deep shelter, TfL’s art deco headquarters at 55 Broadway and the disused tunnels at Euston station. All these sites are interesting, and all places I want to visit, but the future arrival of Crossrail 2 and HS2 mean big changes for Euston, and a significant extension to the south west across Melton Street. It was quite possible that the chance to do this tour would not arise again.
Euston of course isn’t a disused station, but in the course of its life it has changed beyond all recognition, and it has some quite substantial disused areas. Euston mainline station opened in 1837 as the terminus of the London and Birmingham railway, connecting London with the Midlands. In 1903 the first deep level underground railway, the City and South London Railway, extended their route from Stockwell northward through the City to a new terminus at Euston. At the same time the Charing Cross Euston and Hampstead Railway arrived, on its route from the west end northwards.
Both stations had their own surface buildings at the south of the mainline station, the C&SLR on the corner of Eversholt Street and Doric Way and the CCEHR on the corner of Melton Street and Drummond Street. There was no interchange between lines, each one being owned by a separate company, and any passenger wishing to do so had to leave one station and walk to the other.
In 1907 the two companies opened a joint ticket hall, lifts and underground passageways to link the mainline station with the two tube stations. This became popular with passengers and the two surface buildings were closed in 1914 when the companies merged as part of Underground Electric Railways of London (UERL). The two railways subsequently became part of the Northern line, with the C&SLR station on the City branch (via the Bank) and the CCEHR station on the West End branch (via Charing Cross).
By the mid 1960s the underground station was feeling the strain of an ever increasing number of commuters. As part of the redevelopment of Euston mainline station a new ticket hall with escalators down to new interchange passageways made the old joint facilities redundant. The transfer passageway was closed in 1962, with the lifts and access to the City branch closing in 1968. The lifts were removed, the shafts being converted into ventilation ducts. A new shaft was then dug behind the lifts to provide further ventilation to the brand new Victoria line platforms.
Arriving at the RV point a little early I was able to take a moment to admire UERL architect Leslie Green’s standard station design. There are lots of these dotted around central London and are so familiar they barely merit a second thought, until you have to spend a few minutes lurking around outside one. The recognisable ox blood tiles hide a steel frame, used not only to support the lift gear but, to enable UERL to sell the air rights above their stations, a platform to build on as well.
It’s pleasing to note some of the architectural details, such as this circular window:
Heading inside the station building we were given a safety briefing and a potted history of the site, some of which I have described above. The original fixtures and fittings of the station have long since been removed, the steel frame and lift shafts now housing an enormous ventilation fan. With a 24–105 lens I was not terribly well-equipped to photograph this but this photo hopefully gives an idea of its size.
We then headed across the road into Euston mainline station and headed downstairs to platform six. Reaching the end of the platform, our guide unlocked a door in the tunnel headwall and took us into another world. Here we are, looking back down at the door we had just through:
In the disused areas, everything is familiar yet different. Usually polished tiles are dirty, and cables and equipment usually hidden is exposed.
Under the grime and the cables lie time capsules in the form of 1960s posters still on the tunnel walls from the date of their last public use.
Walking up the transfer passageway, we arrived at the staircase leading up to the Charing Cross branch platforms, now blocked off. When the new interchange passageways were built in the late 1960s they were at a higher level than the platform; the staircase was reversed, and from the platform now leads up rather than down.
At the end of the transfer passageway can be found this oddity, a transfer ticket office dating back to the days of the C&SLR and CCEHR being separate companies. This must have been a very claustrophobic space in which to work.
Returning along the transfer passageway to the stairs down to platform six, we turned left to head along the passageway to the lifts. As an access route for engineering staff this was much better lit than the transfer passageway which is now effectively a dead end.
At the far end of the passageway are the old lift shafts, visible on the right hand side. Cables run over what seems like every available section of wall.
Turning a corner we found ourselves at a modern wall that has been erected across the passageway — we were to go no further along this corridor.
Looking back past the lifts towards platform six:
Walking into one of the old lift shafts we can see that all the lift equipment has been removed, allowing it to function as a ventilation shaft.
On the other side of the lifts we continued down a series of passages before climbing a steep slope to a level above the Victoria line platforms. We were able to look down through the ventilation grilles onto the platforms.
And with that it was time to go, away from this strangely peaceful place back into the middle of busy central London.
If you want to see a few more photos, or larger versions of the ones shown here take a look at my Flickr album.
2021 update: the Hidden London team at the London Transport Museum have made a video about this area of Euston in their YouTube in their series Hidden London Hangouts:
