Walking The London Overground: Done, and I Think I’m The First!

Kentish Town West

Photos of Kentish Town West taken 10 hours and 59 minutes apart on my final walk

On Sunday September 14th, 2014 I completed walking the London Overground as part of my ongoing attempt at walking the Tube (done), Overground and DLR. I believe I’m the first and, at this point, only person to have walked all of the London Overground (unless of course anyone knows of anyone else).

In a slight shift of focus, I’m now aiming to be the first person to walk the entire Standard Tube Map, which means I’ll also have to add the Emirates Airline into the mix (and more Overground if I don’t finish before the end of this year). Fortunately, mainline trains and the tram network don’t make it onto the map, which saves me walking them.

Overground Walk Stats

Total distance walked: 109.45 miles (176.14km) – 27% of the Tube’s distance
Time spent walking: 34 hours and 52 minutes – 23% of the time spent walking the Tube
Total number of walks: 5 (although I did walk the former East London Line as part of my Tube walks)

Shortest walk: New Cross Gate to West Croydon via Crystal Palace – 13.32 miles (21.44km)
Longest walk: Walking the Overground Circle from Kentish Town West to Kentish Town West – 34.48 miles (55.49 km) – Will be the longest walk of this whole adventure

Average walking speed: 3.14 miles/hr – 20% faster than walking the Tube
Average walk length: 21.89 miles (35.23 km) – 28% longer than the average Tube walk
Average walk time: 6 hours 58 minutes – 6% longer than the average Tube walk

Grand total distance walked to date (Tube + Overground): 503.75 miles (810.7 km)

Fundraising Reminder

Just a reminder that I’m doing the walks to help support Bowel Caner UK. So far I’ve raised £1,773.43 but am aiming to raise £16,013 – so please donate here

Blog Post Updates

You may have noticed that while this blog has been relatively active lately, there have been few posts about the Overground walks and none from my past Tube walks. The reason is that those posts take a long time to compile and I don’t really have a lot of free time.

However, my goal is still to publish photos from each of my Tube walks, just without the long winded prose to go along with them. So look out for those and photos from the rest of my Overground walks (and upcoming DLR walks) here soon.

You can read more about my Tube Challenge here.

Secrets of the DLR By Geoff Marshall

Not content to focus on just the tube, Geoff Marshall continues the wonderful secrets series with Secrets of the DLR. I especially like this video, not only because it focuses on the seldom discussed DLR, but also because I got to see it being filmed! (Any help I may have offered was minimal at best)

The video may only be 5 minutes long, but took over 5 hours to film. I don’t want to ruin any of the magic but a lot of thought and effort goes into the editing process and several good bits had to be dropped to allow the whole thing to flow so well.

I won’t spoil anything that’s in the video, just watch it! However, as an added bonus here 5 photos I took on the day.

DLR-Ticket-Machine-Reboot

DLR Ticket Machine rebooting, seems it runs on Windows

DLR-Ticket-Machine-XP

Make that Windows XP

Tower-At-Tower-Gateway

Cool tower Spotted at that back entrance of Tower Gateway

Wrong-Abbey-Road

The very punny Abbery Road sign

Secret-Lift-Bank

The Secret DLR Lift at Bank

For all the other videos in the series visit:

Announcement: I’m Going To Be Walking The Overground & DLR

27j - Services from Stratford

Stratford, the only place where all services & my walks will intersect

On August 24th 2013 I successfully completed my walk of the Tube network. In the interim I’ve been rather quiet about what my next major project would be. I’ve toyed with the idea of walking the Capital Ring and/or the London Loop.

While those are both projects I’d like to tackle at some point, I’ve decided to be wholly unoriginal and instead walk the Overground (that is the TFL Overground, not National Rail; at least for now) and the DLR.

I’ve no desire to repeat my long walks though London in the rain and cold. Thus, the project has no fixed order in which I’ll walk the lines nor a fixed end date to be completed by. I’m going to choose walks when I want to do them, rather than forcing myself to do them because I have to.

The format of the blog posts is also going to be slightly different. These days I find I have far too many projects to work on and far too little time to work on them. So instead of writing book chapter length posts, I’m just going to post some of the photos from each walk.

I hope you enjoy them just as much.

Finally, I’m going to keep raising money for Bowel Cancer UK. Please donate here.

What’s Happening With My Tube Posts?

I have no idea how closely you read this blog, but if you’re a particularly keen-eyed, long time reader you’ll have noticed that I still haven’t written up most of my tube walks (or even tube station visits).

Well there is still a plan to get these written up. The bad news is that it will take some time. In the meantime I hope you do enjoy the other posts on this site.