please empty your brain below

You would be disappointed if a pedant didn't come along and point out that, while the Corporation of London is an administrative entity within Greater London, it's not a London Borough.

dg writes: I knew someone would.
I’ve been reading this blog for almost 10 years, and I never felt the urge to comment until now... it’s always pretty much the last thing I read before going to bed (I live in the States), and tonight I just read the first line and thought: this is why I love this blog. Thanks DG for providing such fascinating content every single day :)
If you went to Crystal Palace, you could've ticked many boroughs off within 60 seconds, and cut off around an hour of time.
When I was a super-cool 17 year old I undertook a similar challenge I named The Borough Walk - my arbitrary rules were: no rail, a maximum of 10 buses and everything else on foot. I also took a photo in each borough with a logo-adorned wheelie bin for good measure. Started at the 5 borough point in Crystal Palace and finished 23 hours later in St Helier. I ended up walking about 35 miles. Hounslow at 4am was great fun.
If only Piccadilly line trains stopped at Turnham Green

Oh but they do. Just not during the week.
Out of interest - any idea how much this challenge would cost in terms of fares?
Havering's in zone 6, so a Z1-6 Travelcard would be required. That costs a whopping £18.10 (or £12.70 off-peak).

Alternatively, using Oyster or contactless, the Z1-6 daily cap should kick in, i.e. £12.50.

Thankfully I have a z1-3 Travelcard, so only had to pay for extensions outside my zones.
Like Ricci above, I love this kind of stuff! Personally I'm amazed that Ollie managed his seemingly much more demanding challenge in only 2 hours more time. (I'd have included borough-styled wheelie bins personally, ideally with some other detail in the pic to confirm location.) Sure there's bags of time to lop off both versions of the challenge :)
Another interesting challenge. I guess one could knock off a few boroughs by driving around the M25, although it wouldn't be much fun. On a similiar note possibly the challenge could be done by car overnight, although again not as fun or unpredictable as the public transport challenge.

I guess due to London borough geography the central boroughs are fairly quick to tick off due to being so close to each other.
A great idea for a run.
The M25 only passes through three London boroughs - Hillingdon, Enfield and Havering.
How quickly can you visit every borough in London?
What about trying "How quickly can you visit every Ceremonial County in England?" using your rules?
I read an article in The Times this week extolling the virtues of mathematics whilst admitting that <1% of the population will need to know how to solve simultaneous equations. The principle of maths to to teach people to think through tasks in a logical manner. Your somewhat frivolous but highly entertaining jaunt shows why we need kids to be taught how to approach such problems.

Any ideas as to what the optimal time might be (reference your comments re train 17)
Did you start the clock at Romford, or when the train crossed the first boundary ?
Though you doubtless devised the rules before you started, you didn't divulge them until after. Your record would have been more durable if you had ruled out, even if retrospectively, cars and taxis, since you seem not to have used any.

It is also interesting how much your local knowledge (perhaps supplemented by smartphone) helped you deal with issues arising on the day. If it wasn't for such issues, a related and less strenuous challenge would have been an armchair exercise to devise a suitable route, using timetables etc.

Might a train to New Southgate have proved a faster scheme than the Picadilly line?
What a fun challenge! Love these sort of posts.
@J As a maths teacher. I couldn't agree with you more.

A really lovely adventure. I predict the record will come down to sub six hours by, err, mathematical optimisation, and luck.

And, DGers may also be interested in a half hour programme this Tuesday morning, 16 Oct, on Radio 4 at 11:00am, which features the exploits of the British team in the Mental Calculations World Cup, held in Germany a fortnight ago. Maths teaching may get a mention!
I wondered if anyone had made a tube map with the boroughs on, and it turns out they have:

http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/london_borough_tube.png

(Source: The poor man's math blog)
If your route had taken you via Oxford Street on a bus you would have heard...
<99 ranty words deleted>
@David F
I don't know if this would be possible with any other boroughs, but Croydon, Merton, Sutton and Kingston upon Thames could all be completed with one wheelie bin!
http://news.croydon.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/06/Bins-2.jpg
I'm afraid to say that in my mis-spent youth I dabbled in tube challenging, and back in June 2009 set an apparently still extant record of visiting a station or stop in all 32 London boroughs plus the City of London in 6h 29m 19s.

My recent recounting of this to Oliver O'Brien can be read on this Twitter thread (worth expanding in full), and which also contains a link to a forgotten corner of the TubeForum where more clues may be contained.

As I offered to Oliver, I am also more than happy to share my full route to you privately DG, however I shan't be publicly publishing it for all the world to see - to do so in Tube Forum circles, at least when I frequented it in the late noughties, was akin to a faudian pact; and I wouldn't want to offend my companion that day.

I will say to all reading this though, there's remarkable similarities in major sections between what I did nearly a decade ago and your excellent effort!
Philip's time is much more impressive than mine, not just because it was three-quarters of an hour faster, but because he stopped at a station in every borough. I passed straight through Barking & Dagenham and Barnet.
Is Gregg's map right ? It says you missed Barking & Dagenham.

dg writes: Please read the comment above this one.
So that map is based only on stations, ignoring intermediate sections of line.
When I've counted states and countries that I've visited, I use the criteria that you must eat or drink something outside the airport to be considered visiting the country or state. For example, I don't count the US state of Tennessee as one I've visited even though I've been through the Memphis airport once or twice.

In the spirit of my personal rules, I would consider staying within a transit system not counting as visiting. Of course this is your blog and you set the rules for your quests.
I set the simplest possible rule for my challenge.

Philip undertook an alternative version with one additional rule - he had to stop at a station/bus stop (or set foot) in each borough.

Ollie set a much harder photography rule for his challenge.

I'd be delighted to read about other people's variants, be they the same or different.










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