The Thamesmead Grump

Round the Houses

How to get from Abbey Wood to Charing
Cross according to Transport for London.

On the Transport for London website you can find what they call a "journey planner". You type in your starting point, your destination then when you want to leave or arrive and it tells you how to get there.

Simple enough you may think, but for some reason it really doesn't like British Rail and will do everything it can to plan your journey without using the train, even if it makes it longer and far more difficult.

I wanted to get from Abbey Wood station to Charing Cross and needed a train time; simple enough you would think, but you wouldn't be taking account of the TFL journey planner's little idiosyncrasy.

For those of you who don't know, to get from Abbey Wood to Charing Cross, you get on the train at Abbey Wood and get off again at Charing Cross. The journey time is 43 minutes and takes you directly from station to station.

Not if you use the journey planner it doesn't. First, you get on the train at Abbey Wood (fair enough so far) but you get off again at Woolwich Arsenal. Why you need to get off the Charing Cross train to get to Charing Cross they don't explain but anyway, you now need to transfer to the DLR and go to Canning Town. Once at Canning Town you transfer to the Jubilee Line tube to Waterloo. There you change again for the Bakerloo line to Charing Cross. At Charing Cross you will find the train you got off of at Woolwich and which arrived 8 minutes earlier.

The mind boggles.

And Another Thing

I've stolen this picture from the Note
Machine website. The ones at Morrison's
look like this only there are three of them.

Morrison's in Thamesmead Town Centre have replaced their cash points with different ones. Originally, they were owned by individual banks but these new ones seem to be run by a company called "Note Machine". 

The problem is this new company doesn't seem to think anyone wants to take money out of them and they are always running out of cash. This is a pain and needs to be sorted out.

Other than that, it's a good idea for them all to be the same. I would see people waiting for their own bank machine to become available and regular users would always know to avoid the HSBC one in the middle as half the time it would either swallow your card, not give out any money, or both at the same time. When there is actually some money in these new ones, at least they work.

BOTTLING IT UP

While I am sitting here writing this blog, I am watching some poor delivery man struggling past my window with crates and crates of bottled water that he's delivering to a neighbour.

I see this sort of thing all the time. When I'm visiting my local supermarket, I will often see someone wheeling out a trolley full of the stuff. It's mostly the Africans doing it; it's an African neighbour that's getting today's delivery. These people don't seem to realise that in this country, the tap water is safe to drink; in fact, it's probably safer that the bottled stuff which in most cases is only filtered tap water anyway.

I know some people claim that they are put off by the smell of chlorine you sometimes get although I can't smell it in our tap water, but all you need to do is invest in a filter system of your own for just a few pounds and save all that plastic, and transport cost.

Looks like it's time again for my favourite presentation -

SOME VIEWS OF ERITH

I decided to take myself down to Erith Pier and catch some pictures of the Sun going down but mis-timed it and got there too late.

Grabbed a couple of shots anyway plus a few pictures of the Erith Lighthouse Garden Party which was just starting to wind down as I arrived. I didn't have a ticket but they let me in anyway.

The Erith Lighthouse also has a Facebook page listing all their events which you can access by clicking this link.

A view from Erith Pier looking North-East

A view from Erith Pier looking West.

The last few remaining party goers at the Erith Lighthouse Garden Party.

The band doing it's stuff.

Erith Lighthouse.

I was heading back to the car and took this picture of the Erith Playhouse with the newly restored White Hart pub next door; very nice it looks too.

Although I didn't see him there, I'm pretty sure Arthur Pewty will have attended the Erith Lighthouse event and will be covering it in his next Sunday edition.