On the 8th July 2023, I went to London to join in the London Transport Race organised by On Our Lines. I found out about this event from someone that I have been following on Facebook.
So what is the Transport Race? In simple terms, you have to get to 6 allocated stations and a Landmark and then back to the start in the quickest time possible, but there are challenges to do along the way, which give you additional points. The higher the score, the better!
On this adventure, I took my wife, our son, my wife's cousin and her husband, so we had ourselves a team of 5 people. We started the day by having breakfast in McDonald's next to the square outside King's Cross station, which was our starting point.
We had been sent instructions by email as to where to meet the organisers. When we met with them, we submitted our team name "The Oyster Card Abusers" and were handed a pack with additional information in and were asked to select an envelope, which had a number on, but were not allowed to open it until instructed. This contained our mystery destinations and landmark. The pack also included "The Rules" and the "Side Quests" and "Bonus Points", along with additional safety information.
So the rules were straight forward, next we were eager to know how we can gain bonus points (underlining in the image was done by us), along with what the challenges were, so we referred to these:
We didn't have long before the start whistle was blown and the green flag waved and then we were allowed to open our envelope with the mystery destinations. My wife uses a wheelchair and we had already asked for a set of step free stations. so we were given:
Zone 1: London Bridge
Zone 2: Canada Water
Zone 3: Beckton Park
Zone 4: Woolwich
Zone 5 : High Barnet
Zone 6: Elm Park
Landmark: Tower Bridge and City Hall Tactile Model.
Our race MUST also include at least one bus journey,otherwise points will be deducted.
So with a quick look at a paper map, we marked out the destinations and got on a Northern line service to head to our first station...
...High Barnet and on the way, we had a discussion about if we should try and get the bonus point Labyrinths. at Moor Park, Mile End, Hampstead and Heathrow Terminal 5.
After some deliberation, we decided that Hampstead would be easy enough to get to from High Barnet and even if we didn't make it to all of them, we knew that we would get some bonus points for getting a photo of the Labyrinth there.
At High Barnet, we managed to get a selfie with a staff member on duty, not smiling - more bonus points and a photo on the platform, one outside the station and the Labyrinth (No. 217) - more bonus points.
On the way back down the Northern line, we jumped out at West Finchley to get a photo of the Labyrinth (No. 214), which is located in the waiting room on the southbound platform and we also spotted a disused signal (covered with a bin bag) - more bonus points!
Then on to Camden Town for a quick change to go up the Northern Line to Hampstead just for the Labyrinth (No. 180), which fortunately is located on the end of the southbound platform, so no getting out the station! What a relief this was, as this is the deepest Tube station and certainly not one that you would want to go up the stairs of, if the lift is out of order!
After getting the picture, it was back to Camden Town, for the next service to Tottenham Court Road.
Here we looked at Google Maps, Citymapper and the TfL go apps to see if could get a bus to Covent Garden. They all had slightly different times, but all said that a bus was arriving soon. After waiting a short time, we decided that it would probably be quicker to walk to the Transport Museum from here - more bonus points.
We stopped for a quick drink and a photo of the unusual roundel "Canteen" and to get a plan of action as to where to go next.
We discussed the possibility of finding the Art on the Underground at Gloucester Road / Aldgate East / Earl's Court / Holland Park, as these would give us additional points. We agreed as a team that we would need to prioritise our stations list, but we had time would come back to these.
Next we walked (in the rain) to find Aldwych for some more bonus points and, then a bus ride (No. 341) to Farringdon for the Elizabeth line. While at Farringdon we spotted the Labyrinth (No. 202) and got another photo.
Next stop was Woolwich - another on our list, so a quick photo stop both inside and outside and a selfie with a staff member not smiling and then back to Custom House for Excel for the DLR - change of mode of transport for more points. The Woolwich ferry was not running today, so unfortunately that was not an option.
Off to Beckton Park - One on our list and bonus points for visiting a least used station, and a Moquette picture and an unusual roundel, which is the bicycle rack!
From here, we went to Canning Town and got delayed waiting a while for the lift to get from the DLR to the Jubilee line to take us to our next stop, which was Canada Water - another on our list! Another Labyrinth (No. 74) photographed and another staff member not smiling for more points. At this point we realised that we were not likely to get to Elm Park and back to the finish for 18:30, so we sent a message to the organiser to ask how many points we would lose by missing a station and we were advised 100 for each missed station, so we had to make a decision as to what to do next. The organiser did say that as we had been sending pictures as we went along that Elm Park could be substituted for Stratford.
At this point, we still had a quite a bit to do, so we said that we would opt for losing points, hoping that we could gain additional points later on from other challenges. So it was time for a quick selfie inside the station and out and back on the Jubilee line to London Bridge - station 5 out of 6, where we managed to get another selfie with a staff member not smiling.
From here we walked along the side of the Thames looking for the Morph models on the trail: https://www.morphsadventurelondon.com/art-trail/
This is where we bagged some points that we missed by not going to Elm Park!
We also found our Landmark!
It was at this point that we could see more morph models and then had to decide if we get more pictures, or head back to St Pancras, time was ticking by and we knew we had to get back, as if we were late back, we would start to lose points, having already lost 100 points and no idea if any other teams had finished or not, we headed back to London Bridge, for the Northern line back to Kings Cross St Pancras, then a mad dash to the final meeting point inside St Pancras station. We made it back just in time. We then discovered that there was only 1 more team left to arrive, so we knew we hadn't won based on our time, but were hoping that the points would help.
We showed the organisers more photos of our day and then had the opportunity to win more points by entering a general knowledge quiz. The quiz had a total of 270 questions available - each one corresponding to a Labyrinth number. We gave the quiz our best shot and we got some right and some wrong. We had the opportunity to make a morph out of Play-Doh to gain even more points. Our sons creation can be seen below.
We had a fantastic day and were totally exhausted by the end of the day, but still had to drive back to Midlands - I know this is crazy! We finished the race in 8 hours 12 minutes and 32 seconds. We managed to do 5 out of the 6 stations and the landmark and we had a total of 2800 points, which at the time of writing this blog, was the highest score, but still had to be confirmed by the organisers - seen in the second picture along. We were impressed with the different options to get more points!
Results published 13th July 2023
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