Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast, taking you out and about.

In this case, I am on the line that goes around the top of London.

It's a kind of north circular road of the railways and it's been really quite well revived.

Every 15 minutes or so, there are trains that run from Clapham Junction, which is of course

the busiest railway station in the UK and they kind of wind round the north.

I've joined the train here at Kensington Olympia, yes, for the exhibition centre.

And the train itself is going on a journey of about 20 stops all the way to Stratford,

home of the Olympics and also major junction

on everything from the Jubilee Line tube

to trains heading for South End and even Norwich.

There's a parallel line that also runs around the south of the capital.

And that curls around from Clapham Junction

and runs through places like Denmark, Hill, Peckham,

goes out to Canada, water, big shopping centre there, interchange again with the Jubilee line,

and then through the oldest railway tunnel in the world, as far as I'm aware,

the one between Rotherhide and Wapping.

Then it sweeps up to Shadwell and Whitechapel, the hub for the Elizabeth line when that's

finally working properly, and then Shoreditch, Hagerston and all the way to Highbury and Islington.

And they kind of overlap only twice along the way, once at Clapton Junction, where they tend to leave from, often the same platform, but just going in different directions.

And then on the link between Highbury and Islington and Canongbury.

In a month in which we've been opening new lines and talking about the great benefits of

the railways, it's a reminder that this is a kind of old style train that is some, or at least a,

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