I’ve been on holiday. It was lovely, thank you. Hope you didn’t miss me too much.

Anyway, eager to make up for lost time, Day 16 brought about three Achievements.  If you’ve read the title of this post, you’ll already know what they are.  If you didn’t, you should go read the title of this post to find out what they were.

Living out west, and never having worked in or had much cause to visit the square mile, I’ve had little call for the services of the Waterloo & City line.  But, with nearly ten million passengers a year, I had to be sure I wasn’t missing out on something.  So off to Waterloo I went (on the big train, no less).  This, should you be interested, is what the platform at Waterloo looks like:

A couple of things struck me about the Drain.  Firstly, there’s no gate-line, just Oyster readers.  The trains are small, too, comprising only four carriages.  Thankfully, the carriages themselves are full-size and very nearly identical to those in operation on the Central line (save a different moquette and overt CCTV cameras).  It’s not some sort of underground railway for midgets, you know.  But perhaps the most exciting thing about the whole experience was seeing inclined travelators. Not a stepped escalator, not just a travelator. A cross between the two: a travelator on an incline.  Just in case you still can’t get your head around this crazy concept, here’s a picture:

The only other place I’ve seen such a beast is in a now-knocked-down shopping centre in Leeds. (I can’t remember the name, but it was that horrid, dingy, town-planning-nightmare one bordered by Boar Lane/Briggate/Commercial Street/Albion Street. They were outside the Co-op, now Wilkinson’s.)  Of course, if you can think of any others…
Once at Bank, it seemed sensible to go to The Bank (of England).  Their museum is open on weekdays and it’s free to get in.  The entrance is on Bartholomew Lane.  To quash any confusion, here’s a photo:

Once inside, you’ll be able to learn about the Bank’s history, see a glorious array of bank notes, hold a bar of gold (at the time of writing, to the value of £313k), visit the toilet and mentally remark at quite how naff the gift shop is.  As history is boring and bank notes you can no longer spend are a bit dull, let’s get down to the good stuff: holding a bar of gold is pretty sweet.  Heavier and tougher than you might imagine, the bar on display being a standard 12.4kg.  Looking at it, you’d expect it to be soft (a bit like a Milky Bar) but it’s not.  The things you learn when you try to scrape a bit off with your fingernail…

Fans of vintage news presentation might also like the Economic Shocks display, featuring Sue Lawley, Nicholas Witchell, Michael Buerk, Edward Stourton and Peter Sissons.  All of whom, apart from Peter, have carved out a successful post-TV career at BBC Radio 4.  Relive the glory of the 90s virtual set and the double-headed SIX, wince at the original 1998 rebrand and redesign.  It’s all there.  You know you want to.

One potentially pub-quiz-winning bit of knowledge for you: Kenneth Graham, author of Wind in the Willows, was the Bank’s Secretary until 1908. He retired on grounds of ill-health, aged 39, with a £400pa pension.

The Bank of England is participating in Open House London this September.  Half-hour tours will be offered on a first-come, first-served, basis.

After the Bank, it was time to head east.  To the DLR, to King George V, to the Woolwich Ferrry.  This sounds remarkably simple and straightforward, so much so you’d expect the whole thing to pass without incident.  Unfortunately, though, it involves navigating Bank station.  From the orbital corridor around the main ticket office, through a warren of corridors, escalators, stairs, over and across a working platform, back into a different warren of corridors, escalators and stairs and finally to the DLR platform.  I can only conclude that Bank station was designed: a) for people on drugs, b) by people on drugs, c) both.  It’s truly bonkers, even without adding Monument to the equation.

I digress.  Seventeen minutes after entering the station, I’d found my platform, boarded my train, got my book out and knuckled down for the twenty-minute jaunt across east London, past London City Airport, to King George V — the nearest station to the Woolwich Ferry’s north terminal (and, as it goes, Arqiva’s London teleport).  North Woolwich is probably one of the few places in the world you can wait for a boat while looking at big satellite dishes.  In fact, the satellite dishes were far more interesting, entertaining and fun than the boat journey itself.  Here’s a really dull video of the crossing if you don’t believe me:

Took that on my knackered old Mini DV camera.  And I’m not a cameraman. Or film director. It shows, doesn’t it? YouTube have blocked the sound, too — they were offended that I chose to use Rod Stewart as a backing track. At least, I think that’s what they said…

Stay tuned for details of more Things: planning for the Underground Challenge is underway. More info soon.