5th January 2024
This was the first day of 2024 on which there seemed to be a low risk of getting seriously wet. Wanting to relieve the winter cabin fever I took a long ride on the Piccadilly and Central Lines to a station I’d never been to before. It’s a station that most people haven’t been to either as Roding Valley is the least used tube station with only 259,271 entries and exits according to the latest official figures, 2022 at the time of writing. (
Station Usage Data" (XLSX). Usage Statistics for London Stations, 2022. Transport for London. 4 October 2023.) So I’ve added 1 to whatever the 2023 figure turns out to be.
Served by the Central Line Woodford to Hainault shuttle there’s not a lot at Roding Valley station - not even a ticket barrier just Oyster/Contactless validators which must affect the accuracy of those entry and exit figures a little. I arrived from Woodford a little before half past midday a little disappointed not to have ridden on the newly refurbished train with its new moquette which is supposed to be running on the shuttle service.
My “plan” was to take a short walk to either Grange Hill or Hainault and then head back into London again. I’d plotted a route on my phone which took me via Loughton Rugby Club, a short way along the River Roding under the Central Line to a bridge over the river and along Luxborough Lane to cross over the M11. Having crossed the edge of the rugby field I found that the Roding had other ideas.
There was about six or seven feet of the path flooded to “needs wellies” depth so I retraced my steps and found an alternative route via Ray Park, crossing over the river and under the M11 at Woodford Bridge, pausing for coffee at Costa on Chigwell Road.
Suitably caffeinated and having taken advantage of the other facilities I carried on past St. Paul’s Church and across the green by the pond then continued along Manor Road towards Grange Hill. A fairly busy road but with broad pavements and more importantly dry underfoot.
Manor Road is peak Chigwell, isn’t it? Lined with very large detached properties behind big, often ornate gates mostly electrically powered. The front “gardens” nearly all paved over and accommodating a range of exotic or just large cars, many sporting personalised registration numbers (or twat-plates as I can’t help thinking of them). Visible alarm systems and CCTV adorn most of the houses. Every so often they’d got the builders in, refurbishing or extending the houses and blocking the footway with vans or skips. OK **** we’ll just walk in the busy road then shall we? Crossing the A23 the houses become more standard suburban fare and have suburban streets behind rather tan the golf course. On the opposite side of the road St. Winifred’s Church looks oddly utilitarian but is in parts at least
older than it looks.
I carried on along this less ostentatious part of Manor Road to Grange Hill Station. I could have got back on the Central Line here but Hainault is only a little further and I’d have needed to change trains there anyway. In fact the walk would have been shorter had I gone to Hainault directly but then I’d have missed the opportunity to make the obvious
low flying sausage joke.
So I passed by the station and turned down Long Green continuing along the alleyway at the end parallel to the railway. Rather unexpectedly there’s a World War II pillbox fortification here and a line of concrete tank obstacles along the edge of the line.
The alleyway emerges into Robina Close amongst blocks of flats and then via Clinton Crescent to New North Road where I turned right to Hainault Station entrance under the railway bridge.
Hainault has some unusual tiled station name boards on the platforms which I thought reminiscent of a mid 20th century domestic fireplace particularly with the spaces intended for posters being mostly empty.
From the platforms the footbridge you can see the entrance to the Central Line Hainault Depot just north of the station. There are three platforms, one seems to be for the Woodford shuttle and the other two for trains towards London. Checking the next departures on both the TFL Go app and Google Maps showed completely different platform numbers to those actually being used so I followed everyone else onto the train at platform 3 that said it was bound for Ealing Broadway even though both apps said it was leaving from platform 1!
Roding valley ticked off I went to Gants Hill next but that’s another story.
