Amsterdammmm

The BF has a friend.  I know, I'm as surprised as you.

For years now they've gone on a little mini break in the summer.  Somewhere in Europe for a few days.  Nice little trip away.  I've not partaken, because I think you should sometimes have separate experiences as a couple, and let's be honest sometimes it's nice to have a break.  Instead I've often travelled across the UK for this blog.  Wales perhaps, or the Isle of Wight.  Something like that.

This time, the first trip post-pandemic, they decided to go to Berlin.  And a small thought occurred to me.  I could go somewhere in the UK for my trip.  Or I could go abroad.  Look around another city's railway.  Proper underground stations instead of pootling round the English countryside.  But where?

The Amsterdam Metro.  Thirty six stations on four different lines.  A modern, exciting network that's just across the North Sea in a beautiful and vibrant city.

I worked it out in detail.  Three full days of exploration would enable me to visit every Metro station in true Merseytart style: taking a train, passing through the ticket gates, and walking to the next one along for the next train.  Properly visiting them and getting a feel for the city.  

It was incredibly thrilling to me: a new place to collect and mark off.  A new map to conquer.  

For reasons far too dull to go into here, both the BF and I were taking flights from Luton Airport.  I waved him off on the Friday then waited for my plane to Amsterdam.  (Before you ask, the Eurostar was far more expensive, and the timings were weird).  

The first warning sign was the general lateness of the plane.  It was an hour past schedule when we finally got to the gate.  We passed through the passport check, waited to board, then got a message, shouted at us by the girl on the desk: there was no pilot for our plane, so we were all being "deboarded", a word I have never heard before and I'm pretty sure she'd made up.  We headed back to the gate to wait some more.

An hour later, the phones of everyone in the gate purred and bleeped and sang.  A single message had gone to all of us: We're really sorry that your flight has been cancelled.  To see the options available to you, go to Manage Bookings in the app...

That was it.  No announcements, no nothing.  The staff were nowhere to be seen.  A sense of panic and horror sank into me.  This was what I got for actually looking forward to something.  This was punishment.  I scanned the app for alternative flights from Luton: none until late Sunday night.  I clicked the "refund" button with despondency.  I was ready to write it all off.  Head back to Birkenhead and cry into a pillow.

There was another announcement, asking all of us on the cancelled flight to head to Gate 6 for information.  There, a crowd of harassed and irate passengers surrounded a tiny man who stammered that we would all be getting €250 compensation and a refund on our flight, but could we all kindly leave the airport because we were kind of annoying?  I hammered the apps and found a flight from Gatwick the following night, then a hotel room at a Holiday Inn close to the airport.  The compensation was spent immediately but at least I might be able to get to Amsterdam.  (Before you ask, the Eurostar was entirely sold out all weekend).

The following morning, after a tense sleep in the hotel, I dragged myself to the station.  My flight from Gatwick wasn't until the evening so I had time to kill.  I headed into London.  Maybe I could find some solace in railways?  Of course I could.  The only thing that could cheer me in times of crisis like this was riding the Tube.  More than the Tube; I actually went on the Elizabeth Line for the first time.  Not the circumstances I'd planned, but at least it happened.  I got to go to Woolwich station, which I'd visited when it was nothing more than a hole:

I larked around on the Jubilee; I got the DLR.  I went all over until finally it was time to head for Gatwick.  A train from London Bridge and I was at the airport, but the wrong terminal.  You know what that meant?  The Gatwick people mover that connects the two stations!

It's not a monorail, no matter how much you want to sing the song.  It's an automated train on rubber tyres.  So I got on at South Terminal:

...rode the people mover...

...and got off at North Terminal.

No, this isn't very exciting.  What you have to remember is that as I did all this train riding I was filled with a nihilistic despair and overwhelming pessimism that I was ever going to reach Amsterdam.  It wasn't helped by the fact that once we actually got on board the plane, we did nothing but sit on the tarmac for an hour.  A problem with the baggage, apparently, though they may as well have simply said "we want to drive the man in seat 7C absolutely insane".  You'll notice I've not mentioned the airline involved in all of this; this is because I am a classy individual who doesn't bear a grudge, and I couldn't possibly name them because that would be rude.

At ten o'clock on the Saturday, roughly 28 hours later than I'd planned, I finally reached my hotel.  I collapsed on the bed and tried not to think about that lost day.  I still had all those stations to collect, and I was determined to do it, even if it killed me.

(Spoiler: I did not die).

The Varsity Line In The Sand

It's a question that's torn British society asunder for literally centuries: which is better, Oxford or Cambridge?  There has never been a definitive answer to this question... UNTIL NOW.  Yes, thanks to a couple of mini breaks I took this year, I am able to once and for all settle this question, through the twin powers of science and railway stations.  These are the only true metrics that should be used to decide anything.  I will run you through my workings before I reach a conclusion, breaking it down into a series of extremely valid categorisations:

1. NEWISH RAILWAY STATION THAT IS ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN

Oxford Parkway station opened in 2013, though weirdly, it didn't have services to Oxford itself until three years later.  This was part of Chiltern Railways' scheme to improve the line from the city into London Marylebone and it's a very Parkway station.  There's an absolutely enormous car park, tied into the local park and ride bus service, while there's a lot of silver cladding and glass on the building itself.

One feature it does have that I thoroughly approve of is tilework.  Ceramic tiles used to be all over railway stations - they're easy to clean, they add colour, they're charming.  It seems to have been lost over the decades however, replaced by plain walls or plasticky cladding.  Oxford Parkway brings back the tiles with a lovely blue colour throughout the ticket office and public areas.

Delightful.  There is one minus however, and that's the lack of a ticket office.  There's an "information desk", but if you want to buy a ticket, you have to use the machines.  Why they couldn't combine these two services into the one desk, I don't know.

Meanwhile there's another grey box over at Cambridge North, opening in 2017.  This one isn't a Parkway station, but was instead built to serve both the burgeoning Cambridge Science Park and the redevelopment of the area.  It's a bold, show off-y building, the kind of building that gets called "iconic" by the developers before they've even laid a single brick.

There is also quite possibly the largest cycling storage facility I've ever seen in the UK.  Imagine a warehouse, without walls, and filled with row after row of racks.  It looks like something from Amsterdam.

Cambridge North has been decorated with an intricate design cut into its steel fascia.  It looks lovely, and is apparently based on some incredibly complex mathematical something.  I don't really understand it.  Head over to The Beauty of Transport for the full explanation, and also, the story of how they got the wrong design and the one they used was actually by someone from Oxford, which is quite funny really.

Final verdict: Cambridge North should win this.  It's newer, it's funkier, it's got artwork.  But I'm going to give it to Oxford Parkway because... I liked the tilework.  I mean, I really liked it.  Also that family you can see in the picture above were really annoying, bouncing all over the station like it was a playground, and that put me off North.

WINNER: OXFORD

2. THE CITY

I spent one day in each city, being a tourist, clattering around pretty wildly without much of a scheme.  As such I almost certainly didn't go to wherever you thought I should've gone.  Yes, there probably is a fantastic café tucked away at the back of an alleyway that's only open for twenty minutes a day, but sorry, I'm being basic and hitting the sights.

My impression was that Oxford felt more like a city: by which I mean, a functioning, modern place where people lived and worked.  It had buses and noise and bustle in a way that Cambridge didn't.  Cambridge felt more historic, more preserved, as though it had settled on its form sometime in the 15th century and hadn't bothered updating it.  Oxford was a bit more modern, although since we're talking about Oxbridge, I'm using "modern" in the sense of "felt like the Victorians might have actually been here."

Normally I'd go with the city that feels more modern because that's who I am.  I dislike cities that are fossilised.  But Cambridge had a charm woven through it that was absent from Oxford.  Wandering the narrow streets of Cambridge felt like a delight, a pleasurable experience in itself, while in Oxford, ducking down a tiny street was a means to get somewhere else.  It didn't bewitch me in the same way.

Final verdict: Oxford should win this on paper, but I simply found Cambridge much more fun to be in.  It made me smile.

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

3. UNIVERSITIES

Obviously I didn't go to Oxbridge (Edge Hill massive, represent).  I did actually get invited to my Sixth Form College's Oxbridge preparation class; a teacher took me aside and advised me to attend it at lunchtime, because he thought I had the potential.  I went to one session and I was terrified.  It wasn't about simply being clever - you also had to be a certain kind of person, act a certain way in interviews, have a varied and interesting life outside of your studies.  I fled the class and put any thought of attending out of my head, which was lucky considering (a) I then comprehensively cocked up my A-Levels and (b) I wouldn't have been able to afford a single term there.  And this was when you still got grants!

I wandered the precincts and imagined how it would be to attend here and suddenly I got it.  I got that Oxbridge attitude, the slight sniffiness, the superiority.  It wasn't pure snobbery.  Walking among those buildings I could see how you had history pushed into you.  These were thousand year old colleges, places that produced kings and prime ministers and the finest scientists and artists and mathematicians of their age.  You weren't simply studying here, you were being added to their ranks.  You were being imbued with importance.

How can you wander through exquisitely designed ancient corridors and not feel like a prince?  I felt like that and I was only using it as a shortcut between one bit of town and another.  If I'd been wearing a gown and clutching a pile of books I'd have felt like the greatest person on earth.

FINAL VERDICT: Both universities seem like astonishing, inspiring places to study, places that have changed the course of the entire human race.  So it's a tie there.  I'll have to bring it down to alumni.  Cambridge has the Footlights, which has been home to some of my most favourite people on earth.  Oxford has the Bullingdon Club.

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

4. RIVERS

Oxford is on the Thames, which seems like cheating.  The Thames is London's, and you can't muscle in on it, I don't care what "geography" says.  It's like Stockport having a Merseyway Shopping Centre, laying claim to a river that quite clearly belongs to Liverpool.  

Meanwhile, Cambridge is on the Cam, quite obviously.  That's more like it.  As the name implies, the Cam goes right through the centre of the city, while in Oxford it sort of bends round the edge - by the time you reach it you are most definitely on your way out of town.  

What Oxford does have is a disused railway bridge to let you cross the river.  This is the Gasworks Bridge, which used to carry a small spur off the mainline to a long demolished gasworks.  

Cambridge, on the other hand, has footbridges that belong to the colleges and are fenced off to the plebs.  In fact, at one of them, the BF paused in the shadow to check his phone, and a porter appeared behind him and eyed him suspiciously in case he tried to open the gate.  Unfriendly.

FINAL VERDICT: I almost gave this to the Cam based on the fact that the trousers of the punters are extremely tight and make their backsides look amazing, but at the end of the day, I can't fully condone private bridges.  

WINNER: OXFORD

5. JOHN LEWIS TOILETS

If you need the loo in a strange city, head for the John Lewis, because they'll be clean and easily accessible.  I visited the department stores in both cities and while they were both nice enough, Oxford's mall was a bit better and more interesting, so they get the win.

WINNER: OXFORD

6.  HARRY POTTER TAT

Harry Potter still means a lot to people, of course, even though its author has turned out to be a thoroughly awful person.  I enjoyed the books myself.  And even though it's literally more than a decade since they last released a Harry Potter film, lots of people still want to visit the locations.  Fair enough - I visited Matera while I was in Italy, not because of its stunning architecture and proud history, but because James Bond shot a significant portion of it to pieces.  Oxford, however, has really embraced its legacy as a filming location, to the extent that you can't go more than ten yards without someone in a striped scarf lurching out of a side alley talking about their patreon.  There are Harry Potter shops and Harry Potter cafes and Harry Potter walking tours and I will remind you that this is the oldest university in the English speaking world and a city that existed for more than a thousand years before JK Rowling put aside her rampant transphobia for a couple of minutes to write a book.  There was something quite depressing about standing behind a tour guide talking about the Bodleian Library, one of the finest academic centres on earth, and have them reveal that it was used for a scene in one of the Harry Potters to gasps from the assembled tourists.  Cambridge, on the other hand, wasn't used for a single scene in the films, and so can't make any spurious claims to fame; it sells itself on being Cambridge rather than Gryffindor adjacent.  Perhaps if Hogwarts' dining hall had been in Peterhouse College instead of Leavesden Studios it'd be a very different story but for the time being Cambridge comes off as a lot classier. 

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

7.  CENTRAL STATIONS

I'm going to tell you the winner before we even start here, because I'm sorry, it has to be said: Oxford station is a dump.  I expected a historic, beautiful building, something with a bit of class.  Instead I got a load of red and blue metalwork chucked up during the fag end of British Railways.

Who hurt you, Oxford?  Who told you this was acceptable?  Aren't you embarrassed?  I suppose they have the Oxford Tube, that famous coach line that runs direct to London, so the trains are an afterthought.  Still, I expected better.  I thought of the thousands of people who must pass through here every year and get this as their first view of a legendary city.

I must also point out that directly outside the station is the entrance to the Thatcher Business Education Centre, named after That Bloody Woman.  Welcome to Oxford, indeed.

Cambridge on the other hand - now that's what you want from a railway station.  An epic frontage, a station square, some artwork.  Admittedly Cambridge has a slight advantage in that it's clearly in the middle of a big regeneration project; the station is surrounded by a serious of large bland boxes that house apartments, hotels, offices.  It's a bit like Canary Wharf has crashed into the Fens.  

Still, it's better than the bloody Thatcher Institute.  The interior suffers slightly from being a through station - it's more of a long corridor stretched along the platforms - but it carries itself well, and has some lovely heritage features.  It also has some funky LED next train indicators with animations and colours.  I'm easily impressed.  It is, however, lacking a proper totem with the station name on it.  Sort it out, please.

FINAL VERDICT: Duh.

WINNER: CAMBRIDGE

AND THE OVERALL WINNER IS:

Cambridge!

Both cities are beautiful and elegant and totally worth visiting, but Cambridge nudges ahead.  Cambridge was the one that I could see myself revisiting someday, for a longer period, whereas I feel like I've "done" Oxford.  Still, it's good to finally solve the eternal question of which one is better.  You can argue with my decision in the comments if you want, but know this: I am right and will not be persuaded otherwise.  Next week, I definitively prove which is better - Cats or Dogs.  

(Spoiler: it's dogs).

Cool

On a hot day in June, there aren't many places you can escape the sun in London.  Air conditioning still hasn't really caught on in this country.  The parks are packed.  The Tube is a stuffy nightmare.  I had to go somewhere.  I escaped underground.

Crossrail finally completed its tunnel works, and to celebrate, they invited locals in to have a look round.  They also mentioned it on their Twitter feed, and as usual, the free tickets were gone in seconds.  But I was very, very lucky.  I happened to be on Twitter right at that moment, and I managed to claim one ticket.  One hastily booked train journey - and one lunch at the Barbican with Ian - later, I was walking through a metal detector to get into what will one day be Woolwich Crossrail station.

Woolwich was scrubbed off the list of new stations at the "value for money" stage.  However, Berkeley Homes intervened.  They'd won the right to redevelop the Royal Arsenal, a huge stretch of former Ministry of Defence land between the town centre and the river.  Right now, it takes about 20 minutes to get to Canary Wharf from Woolwich, changing from the DLR to the Jubilee Line at Canning Town.  Crossrail will transform that into a single train journey taking just 8 minutes.  That sort of transport gain was worth Berkeley paying to build the station box out of their own pocket.

It'll turn what is, at present, a slightly soulless, slightly desolate collection of flats into a hub.  And since Woolwich town centre is just over the road, the money will hopefully spread further into the town.

I stood over looking the hole in the ground and waited for the rest of my tour party to come through security.  There were twenty of us, a pleasingly random collection of Londoners.  They were a microcosm of the insane variety of people the city is home to.  Two aging hippies with long grey hair.  A neat middle-class woman in a leather jacket.  An enthusiastic Scot and her Chinese boyfriend, accompanied by their tall English friend.  A Sikh couple.  Two teenagers with neon coloured hair and tattoos.  And my favourite type of Londoner, Hot Jewish Guy With A Bubble Butt And A T-Shirt You Could See His Nipples Through.

Plus, of course, me: the fat railway nerd.

There was a brief talk about the engineering achievement from Mick, the project leader.  He proudly told us that the handover date for installing the railway had been set at June 10th, 2015, in their original tender documents, and that date would be met.  Then we descended into the station down a flight of metal steps, accompanied by our guides, Patrick and Thibault (see?  Diversity).

We were now in the station box, stood close to the island platform.  The metal posts hanging from the ceiling are for the platform edge doors.  Unlike on the Jubilee Line, the whole rail area will be screened off from the passenger part, creating sealed areas.  I peeked into the distance but I could only just see the distant end of the colossal station.

A few more steps and we were at track level for the walking part of our tour.  We were going to actually walk from one side of the Thames to the other through the Crossrail tunnel.

The air was cool, and it got cooler as we entered the tunnel mouth.  We fell almost reverentially silent.

It's hard to describe the excitement I was feeling as I advanced down the tunnel.  It was the thrill of being underground, then, under the water.  

There was the thrill of knowing that hardly anyone had made this trip before, or ever would again.  There was the thrill of Crossrail actually being a real thing that has happened and been built, after so many years of false starts and broken promises.

The tunnel was made by huge boring machines, and the concrete segments were then laid into the wall behind it.  They are locked together; each one was pushed in place, and a keystone holds them tight.  There's no need for any further reinforcement, except for round the cross passages, where steel beams are needed to hold them together as the hole in the wall breaks the tessellation.

The cross passages are there for evacuation of the trains in an emergency.  When the tunnel is fitted out, there will be a walkway at the level of the bottomof the cross passage, to enable you to get out of the trains and walk to safety.  It was strange to stand on the floor of the tunnel and be looking up to the floor height of the train; it's easy to forget just how huge they'll be.

The deepest point of the tunnel is, weirdly, not the halfway point; that was a few metres further down.  I'm sure there's a perfectly logical engineering reason for this.

Apologies for the crappiness of some of these pictures by the way.  We were told that bags would not be allowed in the tunnel, so I couldn't bring my camera, and had to use my phone to take all the shots.  However, some of the women had handbags and bum bags, and they were let in, not that I'm bitter and annoyed or anything.

After what seemed like only a few moments, we were passing a sign saying End of the Thames.  Without any other reference points, it was impossible to gauge how far we'd walked, or how fast.  It was a long, undulating curve of grey concrete.  I placed my hand on one of the tunnel segments and was shocked at how cold it was; it almost felt damp.

Then the literal light at the end of the tunnel.  It was astonishingly bright, and impossible for us to see beyond.  It was a bit like coming out of the womb.  The curved walls gave way to a larger chamber, built for emergency access and ventilation.  

All that was left was the last few metres walk out of the tunnel and into the sunshine.  But why tell you about it, when I can actually show you what it was like through the medium of poorly shot iPhone video?

Why yes, I am available to film all your important life events.  E-mail me for prices.

In the bare sunlight, the bases of emergency stairs took on a surreal, almost artistic quality.

Another building company will be in soon to finish what has been started but until then, they were a Rachel Whiteread installation.

Slowly the floor rose to take us up to ground level.  On the north bank of the river, Crossrail has taken over the old North London Line.  That was cut back to Stratford in 2006; the section from there to Canning Town became the DLR, and now Crossrail is using its route to get to Custom House.

Suddenly there was noise again, and buses, and the huge hulks of sugar refineries looming over our heads.  London was reasserting itself.

A tiny stand had been set up, and two friendly volunteers handed out leaflets about the tunnel and Crossrail, and we all got a badge.  I don't know where I'd ever wear the badge, but I'll add it to my Station Master and I Get Around By Merseyrail Underground ones.  I left the railway behind, heading up to London City Airport DLR station with a big stupid grin on my face.  It was a wonderful hour of fun, and something I will remember for a long time.  I can't wait for Crossrail to open in 2018, just so I can take a train through here and tell the person sitting next to me, "I walked through this tunnel once, you know."

Then that person will change seats.