A Day in the Country.

Arnos Grove
Inside Southgate
Inside Southgate
When I was a lad, aged about 12 I guess, I was given some of the books in “The Things We See” series of beautifully produced large format lithograph soft cover paperbacks. I lost one, but I still have “Ships” and “Public Transport”, by Christian Barman. Years later I learned he worked for London Transport, under the martinet Frank Pick, who made it the world’s greatest mass transit system, emulated and watched by all, including Joe Stalin who got Pick’s advice in planning the Moscow Metro.
The cover picture was a brand new Piccadilly Line tube train, destination ‘Cockfosters’, which was thereafter always in the back of my mind as A Place To Go. And as it is only five stations up the line from Wood Green it begged to be visited. Armed only with Tom’s camcorder and a Tube Pass for zones 2 to 6, I set off on Monday, but not before having digested, “The Subterranean Railway”, a history of London’s many competing underground railways from 1860 to the present.
This had told me that on the Piccadilly Line, ‘our’ tube, were to be found a series of the Charles Holden railway stations, commissioned by Pick, in the days when the UndergrounD group was a private company, with a chairman and chief executive who both believed that at bottom, the Underground was a benefit to society, not just a money earner for the shareholders. (It never ever paid a decent dividend from train operation).
His stations were each said to be the finest piece of architecture in the suburb it served, so I alighted at the intermediate stops, Bounds Green, Arnos grove, Southgate, and Oakwood and delighted to find a Holden station at each one. They are easily distinguished by their high towers enclosing the the entrance concourse—which may be circular or rectangular, and are wholly devoted to providing a gigantic skylight over the station foyer, with entrances on all sides, ticket offices, information and sometimes small shops around the interior perimeter, funnelling into the entrance gates which take you to the escalators. These are in tubular shafts lit by Holden’s distinctive upturned trumpet or tulip lamps which reflect off the white ceiling giving a marvellous feeling of welcome to what are really deep holes in the ground, with trains crashing through every 3 or 4 minutes.
After the minor disappointment of the Enfield Lock expedition, I wasn’t hoping for too much from Cockfosters. But the line emerged to above ground after Bounds Green and became increasingly countrified, which boded well. Cockfosters station is bang on busy Cockfosters Road, but over the road was a small bus station with a solitary gent, smoking, and doing The Times Crossword. Now if you hope for directions to a pleasant country pub for lunch (it was now 1.30 PM) you don’t ask a Rasta or a likely lad reading the Sport section of the Sun. This man thought a moment and pointed to the left with his biro, and said “on the left up there, past the sportsground”.
Faintly visible about 300 yards off up a lane was ‘The Cock and…..’(obscured by tree). The Cock and Dragon exceeded all expectations. A pint of Black Horse bitter set the tone (it’s not strong, honestly; about 3.5%), and a hot jacket potato with beans and bacon was so huge that it needed another pint, this time of Adnams bitter, to wash it down. It is important to try all these—one day the perfect bitter will emerge. So far King and Barnes Sussex Ale is doing well, but when I get to Scotland on Friday I will be able to try Deuchar’s again. It came up early on, during the Albion Bus Tour, when my critical faculties were not switched into “Bitter Ale” mode.
And then back to the station and some impromptu “interviews” with tube drivers changing ends for the trip back to Heathrow some 90 minutes away. I could now drive a tube train if my life depended on it, and I satisfied my curiosity about the drivers’ being shut away under ground for long periods: yes they do worry about lack of sunlight and the vitamin D question.