alexist

OK, exaggeration, but it got your attention. What I hate is that I get lost at the drop of a hat. I was attempting to find a bus at the back of Woodside Park station. I didn't spot a bus stop sign and kept walking. Eventually I spotted that the postcode on street signs had changed from N12 to N20 and decided to go back. Except I didn't do it exactly the way I had come. I proceeded to get lost in the wilds of North Finchley. Dead-ended at huge park/open space, walked back. Eventually I realized I'd gone round in a circle (I spotted a roundabout I'd already crossed). Kept going, post code changed to N3. oops. Turned round. Made wrong turn (not realized at time). Came within hair's breadth of West Finchley station, again not realized at time. Made it back across Northern Line tracks, realized where I was, walked home (2 minutes walk from Woodside Park station!) Total time, 2 hours. Never did get the bus. Ha.

I consulted the A-Z when I got home. The actual area I was in is fairly small; however, it seems like all the non-main roads in that part of North Finchley are either dead ends or go in loops, which would explain a great deal of my frustration!

I also hate London bus maps. The quadrant maps are useless. The spiders are better for seeing routes (instead of having to find all the spots on the quadrant map where it says "82") but tend to focus on all the routes going through the major point for that area. For example, the 326 (Brent Cross - Barnet Spires) is not shown on the North Finchley spider.

Now I'm tired and hot and and there's no dinner. Neil won't be a happy bunny tonight....

(Ed. note: Yes, carrying around an A-Z would be an excellent idea. The trouble is that the regular sized one won't fit in my handbag and the mini one doesn't cover far enough out. The only solutions are to: a) use my messenger bag instead, which is great for carrying around junk [I can actually fit a book in it] but can be a pain to lug around, or b) buy a larger handbag, which I can't afford. I don't like buying really cheap handbags because they fall apart.)

We may be going to Reading for the evening in a couple of weeks. So I head over to thetrainline to see how long it will take. Great, fast service during peak hours, only 25mins from Paddington. Out of curiosity, I click on the fares. First, there are 5 or 6 types of return fares. Second, the cheap ones can't be used on the fast service; instead, I have to fork out £22 for a "standard day return". A single for the outbound service, btw, will cost £19. FFS, 22 quid to go to fucking READING! The Long Island Rail Road was slow and shitty but at least its fare structures were simple and transparent (it used a zone system with specified peak hours, one ticket price only for each time period, so a return was the same as 2 singles and you could buy a peak ticket in and an offpeak out if necessary.)

FWIW, I was also just checking the price of tickets to Devon for next week. if we'd booked 3 weeks ahead we could've had an APEX ticket for £28 each. It's pathetic when it costs the same to go 220 miles as 25. (Of course, now they want £60 each so Neil will probably drive... and the government wonders why rail traffic hasn't risen as quickly as they expected!)

I'm feeling a bit better after dinner at the pub (thanks to the trek, I never got to the supermarket today). I made Neil drive as I couldn't face any more walking, even though it's only about half a mile. :-)

Also cleared out some of the wardrobe, so I can hang my clothes up, yay!

Compare
http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/busqns.pdf
with
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/n_west.pdf

Which one is easier to follow, hmm?

(I'm deliberately using Queens, the largest borough and the one with the most complicated buses)