Freshers' Pullout: Local Travel

Walking

Walking around is a great way to get to know the local area as well as nearby parts of London. You often find the best places to go while wondering around or walking to another engagement. Great places to walk to near South Kensington include Hyde Park (obviously), Fulham Road & Kings Road, Knightsbridge (and Harrods), Bayswater and Oxford Street. If you do wander down to Kings Road you’ll find yourself minutes away from the Thames and across the river from Battersea and the beautiful Battersea Park. On the other hand walking is much slower than taking other methods of transport (unless you’re on a bus during rush hour hut it’s healthy and refreshing!

Buses

Buses! Hmm, a tricky one! Buses can be great to get around in, providing the speed of a motor vehicle while still giving you a chance to absorb your surroundings. Even if you’re a native Londoner, you’ll still have a lot of new things to discover, after all it’s a big city! Buses do however have downsides, they can be caught in heavy traffic during peak periods and the seats can be hellish to sit in if you’re above average height. Let’s not get onto the subject of how cavalier some bus drivers are when navigating the roads. The South Kensington campus has fantastic links to the rest of London via buses, you can even get to Heathrow on a night bus! Buses 9 and 10 go west to Hammersmith and east to Trafalgar Square and Oxford street while other buses can take you to places far and wide.

Tube

The Tube is London’s underground transport service, a bit like having trains underground that come every 2-4 minutes (amazing I know!), can often be packed full of people during peak times (I hope you don’t mind standing in awkward positions) and have a fewer number of chairs (bummer). However the Tube is an awesome way to get to places in a short amount of time; travelling from South Kensington you can get to Charing Cross (Embankment) within 15 minutes, Hammersmith in 10 minutes, Heathrow in 30ish minutes and Kings Cross Station similarly in 30 minutes. The Tube does stop running soon after midnight (or 1 AM on some nights) so it’s not as helpful to get back from a night out, so if you’re planning a late night excursion you’ll probably want to check how to get back by bus.

Train

London is very well serviced by trains. As well as getting trains to other parts of London there are also several stations that host trains travelling across the country, such as London Euston, London Charing Cross, London Marylebone and London Liverpool Street. You can even get a train to Scotland if you’re willing to spend 5 hours on a train. There’s not much more to say about train travel, we’ve all been on trains and know how to use them so here’s a picture of a cat.

Cycle

Cycling in London can be a fun or dangerous and deadly. Many people cycle to college from where they live and make the journey in one piece. However if you’re not used to big city traffic maybe take it easy at first, motorists can be rude, ignorant and just plain stupid at times. If a taxi doesn't want to stop to let you cross Prince Consort Road to get to the Union, do you really think they’ll be any better when you’re on a bicycle? On the positive side, cycling at night is really cool, the roads are mostly empty and you can cycle in fantastic locations. Hyde Park is an amazing place to cycle when it’s not during rush hour if you’re planning a leisure trip but you can also cycle across it to make quick trips to Paddington or Oxford Street. And there’s always “Boris Bikes”.

Bonus: Boris/Barclays Bikes

If you want to commute by cycle to College or plan to cycle on the roads, it’s probably best to get a “real” bicycle, and don’t worry Felix will let you know when this term’s campus bicycle auction takes place (oh, and if you ever abandon your bike around College, you might find it here a few months later). However if you’re more of a casual cyclist then maybe give the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme a go. Affectionately known as “Boris Bikes” in tribute to the Mayor of London the cycle hire scheme let’s you hire a bike for a short period of time. There are lots of docks in Central London and the local area and if you didn’t already know they’re represented by the red circles on our map! The scheme seems daunting but it can be really fun. My best experience of the scheme has been cycling past Buckingham Palace at 1AM!

Travel Savings

Oyster Card

This is a key item, buy one as soon as you can! It’s not really a saving because it’s the default travel tool for the majority of Londoners but if you don’t have an oyster card then bus and train prices are much more expensive. Oyster cards have a pay-as-you-go feature that allows you to buy travel credit as well as longer duration travel passes (or “travelcards”) which are valid for a week, a month or longer. If you plan to buy week or month long travelcards, applying for a £10 18+ Oyster card will allow you to get savings of 30% on your week’s travel. Oyster cards are valid on buses, trains, tubes, the DLR and even the River service, but can only be used in London.

16-25 Railcard

You should already read about this in the Business section, if you haven’t then tut, tut! The 16-25 railcard is the ultimate in discount rail travel, saving you 1/3 from any train fare as long as you travel after 10:30 (you might want to check that). For £30 a year you can take advantage of these reduced fares by travelling around England and visiting new places. The card also works in London so if you’re staying with your parents make sure you pick one up sharpish! Another awesome feature you might want to know about, you can link your railcard to the oyster card we mentioned earlier in order to have one card to save them all! This applies the saving to all Tube and train journeys across London.