Wimbledon to Borough Markets
July 7, 2009 by Chelsea Dodd
In the lovely leafy suburb of Wimbledon, commuters have two choices to get out of Zone 3 and into central London – the train or the Underground. I always choose the train, because it’s faster and more comfortable compared to the District Line, which creaks its way past fourteen stops before it intersects with the Jubilee, the tube line that will take me ultimately, to Borough Markets where my modelling agency is based.
At rush hour, the Southwest service comes every three to four minutes but each carriage is filled with commuters coming in from Woking, Guildford and Chessington, to name but a few of the outer suburbs. I jump on the 08:14, which will get me to Waterloo by around 08:35, and head for a strategic handhold near the middle of the carriage. At , two stops away, most of these sober, dark suited workers will alight for other Overland trains to other London destinations and sometimes if I’m lucky I manage to snare a seat. It takes almost twenty minutes from Wimbledon to Waterloo, as passengers push, jostle and shove to get off or on the train, so a seat is a rare and treasure thing for sore, aching feet.
After Earlsfield, Clapham Junction, and Vauxhall, the train pulls up to Waterloo. I jump off the train, diving into the mass of humanity that flows out of the station, head out the barriers and down escalators into the bowels of the London Underground.
Here the fun really begins. The Underground station at Waterloo is a mess of neon lights, people, buskers, “travelators”, and escalators. Pick the wrong entrance and you could find yourself wandering around following “This way to the [insert name] line” signs for what feels like ages. I dodge the traffic across Waterloo station, head past the benign, life-size elephant made from chicken wire and go down the escalators towards the closest entrance to the Jubilee Line. This little manoeuvre saves me time threading through the traffic below-ground.
Counter-intuitively, the closet tube stop to Borough Markets is actually not Borough on the Northern Line as many would have expected, but London Bridge. From Waterloo it is only two stops to my destination, a short journey which takes three to four minutes on a good day; five to six if there are delays. My total journey time from the south west to south east takes about half an hour, inclusive of transit times.
