Riverboat commuting is on the rise

Londoners "turning" to boat travel after London Bombings

This is so weird after my post of yesterday with Neil and mine's riverboat cruise, as today The Daily Telegraph have reported that riverboat commuting is on the rise.

"Commuter traffic on the Thames has soared since the July bombings as the river attempts to reverse the decline of the last 40 years......"

"The dramatic rise in the number of Thames commuters - 80 per cent higher than the same time last year and 40 per cent up on the pre-bombings level - comes at a time when optimism over the future of the river is at its greatest for more than a decade......"

"Peak services are operated on a 220-seat craft, with a journey from the Savoy pier, on the Embankment in central London to Canary Wharf taking 20 minutes, 10 minutes quicker than the tube. Read the full story from The Daily Telegraph here and our riverboat trip from Kew to Westminster with other transport issues below.

Tourist in your own town

Riverboat Better than London Underground?

Every so often it's good to be a tourist in your own town. I had lived in Kew for about seven years and yet had never taken a boat trip from Kew Pier into Westminster or even the other direction out of London and into Hampton Court. But today, Neil and I decided to do it. We intended to go to Hampton Court cos it was prettier but due to lots of miscommunication between me and the guy at Westminster Passenger Service Association we ended up going to Westminster instead - a 90 minute leisurely journey.



Neil will blog a lot more of the pictures on route, but I'm sticking to the tube related-ish and London Transport stuff for the blog and it's more to do with what we saw when we left our boat (below) at Westminster.






When you come up from the boats and get to the top of Westminster Bridge, it is heaving with tourists and whenever somewhere is heaving with tourists you'll find people trying to sell them a lot of tourist tat.

I particularly liked the London Underground Map Boxer Shorts with "Wapping" station prominently at the front (an indication of the size of the wearer's men's bits?)



I had to buy some batteries for my camera, so went to the stall holder and used my best London accent and said "Sigh, so how much will the batteries be here?" She looked embarrassed and said "Eight pounds for a pack of four". I feigned shock. "You are joking?" She looked embarrassed again, "You could go to Tesco's, it's not too far". Obviously I couldn't be bothered, "Well would you just sell me two?", and fortunately she did for four pounds - still a rip off, but hey I needed them.

So I thought it was quite funny to see her sign saying that she accepted Euros above the little London Underground roundel badges. I felt like adding "and blood"



Going across Westminster Bridge and the inside of it was covered with a promotion from Transport for London highlighting their 5 year investment plan of providing a fast way for people to travel round London



So there were lots of images showing how quickly you could get to Westminster from various parts of London, using a variety of public transport. It was pretty appropriate to see the Kew Gardens to Westminster by boat one



Admittedly it took us 90 minutes but we weren't on the commuter route which I think uses faster river boats. I also liked the two below:





We walked down along the river towards the London Eye going past City Hall and the Dali Universe gallery



Finally, as were coming into Westminster on the boat we sailed past the brilliant "Ducktours" boat/bus. This river boat turns into a tourist bus and leaves quite near to the London Eye. We heard the driver asking if anyone from France was on board as they would be driving past Trafalgar Square (London is currently celebrating the bi-centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar)!



All in all, a good day being a tourist!

Acton Museum Depot meets the Dust Masker & Nikki

Go today while the Dust Masker is away!

I mentioned in Thursday's post that the London Transport Museum's reserve collection is at the Acton Museum Depot and has an Open Weekend this weekend.

Well Neil and myself couldn't go but we did meet up with regular commenters and tube challengers, Dust Masker Anthony and Nikki (Fimb) for a few bevvies in the evening after they had finished.

It sounded like they had a great day and they showed us pictures on their digital cameras of the highlights. They'd even bought has back some rather fetching hats which will be blogged later, as Neil and Anthony modelled them in the pub.

Anthony has already emailed me some of the pictures and a few are below so you can see the sort of things you can get up to there.



Volunteer & Tube Relief entrant David Scard with Nikki



Anthony "driving" the train - God help us!



David Scard donated his Tube Relief T shirt to the Museum.



Anthony reclining on a District Line Sofa



Here are our luvverly models Anthony & Neil in the pub afterwards with the rather strange baseball caps from the museum. Picture courtesy of Nikki



Many more pictures of the Dust Masker (which were expertly taken by Nikki) are on the Tubechallenge Forum. And Nikki's pictures without the Dust Masker are in her Flickr set for the Acton Museum Depot, so you can see it's not just for the men in white coats!

The one below is very X Files:



The Acton Museum Depot is still open for visitors today!

UPDATE - More pictures from Toby Bryans

Toby Bryans emailed me with a link to the pictures he took on over the weekend with a great picture of the little model Tube Train that people could ride on:



Many thanks to Toby for sending the link through.

Just to satisfy the sudoku addicts

Sudoku on the London Underground in Saturday's Times



Abigail does them on the Tube and can't get enough!

Welcome from The Times

Blimey

What's the world coming to? This blog is featured in today's Times. Ooooer

"The Tube is an abiding obsession for many and the London Underground Tube Diary at www.london-underground.blogspot.com should be loved by anyone who has been mesmerised by Harry Beck's classic map design. Annie Mole's blog is an irreverent and informative must-read for everybody, not just subterranean commuters."



Cheers guys - and welcome to everyone from The Times. Hope you have fun......