Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder and it's a busy old time here at one of London's major junctions. This is the north end of Blackfriars Bridge.

Traffic swirling everywhere and a million commuters. They seem to have

come back since COVID. But the reason that I've talked to you from here is because I want to

celebrate one of the world's great railway stations. And you might be thinking what is he going on about?

He's talking about a London commuter station which you may be able to hear I'm just walking into

and the reason that I'm going on about this is because if you have not had the immense benefit of visiting Blackfriars station, in particular, platform one,

well, it should be on every tourist to London's itinerary.

And even better, depending on your journey, it may well be that you can actually go through here on a train

while on your way to an airport or indeed a Eurostar train. I'm just surveying the various

destinations you can get to. Here we are, Brighton via Catwick Airport. Newton cancelled,

Sutton, Peterborough, Brighton again.

It's the last station in the spine of the Thameslink route through central London,

which goes from St Pancras International in the north through to Blackfires in the south.

But there's always been a station here in Blackfriars, or at least since railways were invented.

And what I particularly like is that the original Blackfriars station in 1886 was actually a hub for European travel because it would take you from here to Kent,

then on the boat and then you would go. And so the first thing that sees you that you see just next

to W.H. Smith and the entrance to the Luz is this amazing tablet, a series of tablets stacked up red brick with names all the way from Antwerp to

Wiesbaden and it's a really funny mix so you've got Gravesend and next to it

Darmstadt Beckenham is and Herm Bay are between Barden, Barden and Florence.

It carries on.

Genoa, Boulogne, Broadstairs.

And as a destination board, I just love it.

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