At 4:59am on 18th February 2014 my 14 year old son Matt and I set off on the London Underground from Hatton Cross station in an attempt to visit all 270 London Underground stations in a single day and raise money for CRY. We would have to arrive and/or depart each station by underground train and run or take buses between other stations to make connections. This involved about 6 miles running during the day, not including negotiating many flights of steps and escalators.
A couple of late running and cancelled trains in the morning led to a frantic cross platform dash at Edgware Road and some hard running through North West London to get back on schedule. Matt is a strong runner and he encouraged me to coax my ageing legs to move a little quicker! A long ride through Central London gave us a chance to catch up with the morning papers left on the train but a train fault led to a long delay which had Matt hurdling waste bins as we ran to make a connection at Leytonstone.
With little time to wait at stations and no toilets on the trains and precious few at stations this wouldn’t be a very comfortable trip and by lunchtime we were already getting low on drinking water. By early afternoon we were back on schedule with about 120 stations ‘ticked-off’.
A wait for a free platform outside High Barnet meant we saw the tail lights of the 307 bus which we needed to catch heading off towards Cockfosters as we ran towards the bus stop. At this point things started to unravel. An agonising wait in the rain had us peering into the distance at each approaching bus for the next 307. Too far to run and on the Tube Challenge no private transport is allowed, so the bus was our only option although the long trip back to central London on the Piccadilly let us recover a little.
Not much time for sightseeing but I remember a good view of Post Office Tower running through Central London in the late afternoon amidst all the traffic and noise before fumbling again for a now well used one day travelcard.
Our late running gave us a 20 minute wait at Upminster which at least allowed us to take a breather for first time in the day, get a coffee and a well deserved pie for Matt. As the sun set we were able to catch up the evening papers now and find out what had been happening whilst we were travelling around on the tube!
We were 15 minutes down at Edgware when a noisy and excited party joined our train heading into London for the evening.
With fewer trains running late in the day we were 20 minutes down as we saw our train heading across the bridge at Northwick Park as we ran towards the entrance. I implored Matt to run up the stairs to the platform to make the train before me and I somehow managed to reach the platform as the doors were closing and flung myself between them to bemused looks from the passengers. A final run through the residential streets of Harrow in the dark saw us on a train to Watford. With timetables laid out on the floor we tried to find the quickest finish we could but a missed connection by 30 seconds lead to half hour wait for the next train, with just the sound of a nearby owl for company at Moor Park.
Finally, we reached the end of our journey at Amersham at 11.45pm. The trip had taken us 18 hours 43 minutes and 20 seconds, some 2 hours slower than the world record time for the trip, although I believe Matt may be the youngest ever to complete the challenge. We were exhausted but, more importantly, we eventually managed to raise £540 for CRY!
Matt had recently attended a CRY clinic in Sandhurst Berkshire and we were both delighted with the clinic and the friendly staff. Matt is a keen athlete and we are both grateful he can continue his sport with a greater degree of confidence in his health.
David Swan
