King's Cross Nightmare 1: mainline station → Victoria Line
It used to be simple. You alighted from your train down from Peterborough, Edinburgh or wherever, and an entrance on the main concourse directed you down to the ticket hall at the top of the Victoria line escalators. Not any more. That entrance has been filled in and replaced by seating, and a new entrance opened up in a wall to the west. Come this way, it beckons, seductively. And then at the foot of the stairs there's this illuminated sign, installed by utter ******* sadists. Hammersmith & City, Circle and Metropolitan lines to the left, and Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines to the right. So you turn to the right, because you trust signs like this. Big mistake.
Start the clock... 0:00 A terribly long corridor stretches off in front of you, eventually leading to the the new Northern ticket hall
0:40. Double back through the barriers
1:00 and down the escalator, then turn left along a long and winding tubular passageway
1:30. After a while
2:30 you'll reach the turnoff for the Piccadilly line but you're not going that way, you're carrying on. At the end of the tunnel
3:45 turn right down the last set of steps and you'll finally be on the Victoria line platforms
4:00. Four minutes in total, and that's the fastest I can do it as an able-bodied pedestrian unencumbered by luggage. Most people take longer, and elderly passengers with suitcases take so long you almost want to hug them at the end and say well done. What you should have done, of course, is to have ignored that evil sign and turned left
0:00. You'd soon have reached the top of the old escalator
0:30, headed down to the passageway below
1:00 and been on the Victoria line platform soon afterwards
1:30. It takes far less time, and requires considerably less physical effort. But no, the bastards send the unwary to the right, on a journey almost three times longer than necessary.
