My First Year in London: Track Walk and Toulouse

Piccadilly Line

Summertime fun things happening all over London at the moment means I’m finding it tricky to get these posts written and published at reasonable intervals, but I’m just about keeping it weekly at the moment – and this is week 41. FORTY ONE WEEKS?!... In fact it was exactly 10 months yesterday that I arrived in Canning Town, unpacked the car, wiped away the UmmBop-tears and started my London-Life. And actually, it’s going pretty damn well so far. This paragraph would have been ideal as a conclusion for week 52 but it’s written now and I’m really trying to let you (mainly Dad) down easy…. There really won’t be any great cliff hanger or climax I’m afraid. I may continue to write but I won’t be publishing after the year is done. Thought I’d get that out the way now…

But anyway, where were we?

When I posted last week I was just off out to do a track-walk down the tube tunnels of the Piccadilly Line to the disused station, Brompton Road. Brompton Road station sits between South Kensington and Knightsbridge, and closed in 1934 when a new entrance and the Harrods end of Knightsbridge station opened rendering this smaller station just 400m away, redundant. I got to the LU Track Access Control Centre offices at around 10.30pm. The small group of us had a safety briefing from the Protection Master and heard about how the crews of engineers and other workers sign on every night and how we keep track (pun not intended) of the people on our network – primarily so we don’t switch on the electricity whilst they’re still working! It’s all very interesting and is a system that has been evolving and improving over recent(ish) years and continues to do so.

Engineering train rolls through

At just after midnight we donned out hard hats and (orange) hi-vis jackets and headed down to the platform to see the last passengers train depart. After that we had to wait for several engineering train pass through heading off to various areas of the network and at just after 1am we got the signal that the power had been turned off and we were able to get onto the track. I obviously wasn’t about to offer myself to head onto the track first (just in case) but I didn’t want to be stuck in the eerie tunnel at the back either!... I positioned myself nicely in the middle of the group and we set off in single file, carefully avoiding various cables, big steel girders and surprisingly few mice. In short, it was great! We got back to the offices at about 2.30am and started the long and somewhat horrendous nightbus journey back to east London. By 5am (after some ridiculous roadworks at Trafalgar Square and a detour around the Isle of Dogs) I was in bed trying to get a few hours of sleep before…

The Pool

…dashing to Gatwick!

REALLY French

The View

I booked flights out to Toulouse a few weeks ago. Mum and Dad were off to my uncle’s place in Saint- Clar for a week so I thought I’d tag along for the first weekend. The great twist in the tale being, mum didn’t have a clue I was going and as she turned to face me at the baggage carousel I thought she might pass out and she told me later, she thought she already had! So that was funny. France is brilliant. Really…French. All of the boulangeries, pâtisseries, boucheries, charcuteries, crémeries, poissonneries, and épiceries – wonderful! And the countryside and the wine and beer and the swimming pool – all ACE! We explored Moissac (one of the towns on the many routes of The Way of Saint James) and a couple of other areas, although we didn’t manage to get over to THIS PLACE – randy old bastards! Only 80 minutes from Gatwick – I’ll be back!

TA Uniform

After a delayed EasyJet flight and a missed last tube home I only got in after 1am so first day in work was pretty tough going. I did finally receive my new contract and my official starting date was Monday 2nd July - hurrah. On Tuesday I was over at West Kensington all day for Travel Ambassador training. I learnt a lot about all our different ‘business areas’ (modes of transport) and about the iPhones/iPads everyone will be using. That evening I met up with Jane and Matt for a few drinks, a catch up about our current placements and another chance to ride the Cable Car. On Wednesday evening there was more socialising with the Manchester crowd. I went to a very busy Covent Garden to meet up with James, Devy, Rich and Amy. We spent a few hours reminiscing about the good ol’ days of MMU Course Enquiries and having a laugh. We saw Murray win his quarter-final game and agreed to do it all again in a few weeks.

And here we are at Thursday. Today, I’ve been getting used to my TfL issued iPhone and coming to terms with the striking pink hi-vis I have to wear during my Travel Ambassador shifts. I also visited West Ham for my familiarisation of the station and met some of the people I’ll be working with during my ICSA shifts.

The Shard:
shot from Tower Bridge
(NOT my image)

(via TimeOut London)

I was going to go into town this evening to see the opening of The Shard. We were promised a spectacular laser show… we got a few twinkly lights. I streamed it from their website and I’m so glad I didn’t make the journey up to Parliament Hill!!

One day left in the office then I’m off to Cheshire for a wedding on Saturday – but I’ll tell you more about that soon.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, I'll be putting more of the Toulouse photos on Facebook fairly soon (once I've weeded out any taken from below the chin!)

More photos from the week: