Q2 2019: Overground the Underground Write-up

With no holiday left to take and the epicness of Racing the Planet New Zealand for Q1 2019, Q2 was always going to be on the back foot.  I decided to keep things closer to home, so close in fact that Billy (my trusty new two wheeled steed) and I started at my nearest tube station, Acton Town, one of seven in Acton, just saying.  We headed Westbound to Heathrow, just about making it around the rabbit warren that is the airport in one piece before moseying Eastbound to Cockfosters, and then turning around heading back for Acton.

Having known very little about Cockfosters before we set off, bar it making a great fancy dress outfit for a tube map party (a chicken suit and a garland made out of Fosters cans, admittedly not one of my most demure outfits) I can authoritatively tell you it has a cricket club and a BP garage, with an M&S café no less, so one of the fancier ones.  Not huge amounts more, that I saw anyway. 

I was intrigued by the architecture of each station it’s got to be said, it was hard not to be when I took a photo of each one (bar Finsbury Park which I stupidly managed to miss out in both ruddy directions) as proof I’d done it.  Perhaps it’s too generous to suggest but I’m sure if some were in a Scandinavian country they’d have won a design accolade for their retro and edginess.  I found it heartening that in many of the Zone 1 locations, whilst adopting the more modern universally recognised underground branding, the station fronts from the 1800s with the distinctive maroon tiles and gold lettering were still very much in existence.   

On reflection I think it was a case of the journey being more exciting than the destination, although cycling through Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday afternoon was pretty testing on my patience, akin to shopping in Ikea at a similar time and on a similar day, something I wouldn’t wish on any decent human being.   

Question: has there ever been a terminal 1 at Heathrow? If not why not?