Annie Mole's, webmaster of Going Underground, daily web log (blog).
If you like this you'll LURVE One Stop Short of Barking, THE fun and informative BOOK about travelling on the London Underground.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Tube Challenge Record Broken
Well done to Lars & Håkan
What was a tiny feature in The London Paper last night was actually known to intrepid die-hard Tube Challengers many months ago. On the 26th September Håkan Wolgé and Lars Andersson from Sweden, set a new record breaking time of 18 hours 25 minutes and three seconds for "Travelling the London Underground in the shortest time" - this means all 275 stations on the Tube.
Guinness World Records confirmed the record on the 6th November (which beat the previous holders of the record - Steve Wilson and Samantha Cawley - by just over 10 minutes) and now this has slowly made its way into the London press.
Håkan gives some of the highlights/lowlights of spending an entire day on the Tube:
"I had a close brush with doors closing around my knee, with Lars onboard after a communication glitch between us. After an eternity (probably at least 10 seconds) of me gesturing that I was stuck, the train driver finally conceded and reopened the doors. However, she didn't start immediately but spent another 10 seconds to give me a verbal bashing over the speakers"
"When all the Arsenal/FC Porto fans invaded the train and we realised we would lose a few valuable minutes and subsequently would miss a crucial change - which we did (probably cost us the 23:38 finish)"
So from a 5am start at Amersham they finished at 23:53:11 at Heathrow Terminal 1,2,3 catching the very last train of the day, as the one scheduled for 8 minutes later never arrived.
Hakan concludes: "Since our result was first known, one question has been put to me more times than any other: - 'How fast do you think it could be done?' Since my entire route is based on a statistical model I think I may have a good guess at it. As I've written numerous times, we expected a time of 18h10m, provided there were no extraordinary delays......On a lucky day I think it could be done in 18 hours flat."
So the challenge is out there waiting to be broken again. Visit the busy Tube Challenge Forum to see if you've got what it takes.
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