Friday, August 21, 2009
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Which way am I headed? and which way am I going?
It's been a very quiet time over here, as I decided to give up blog-based time wasting in order to finish my PhD, and then I just stayed in that same habit, doing idle things like more research, writing papers, etc. And more casual things like Facebook which requires very little sustained attention and effort.

In any event, it's high tourist season near my workplace, and I'm frequently approached by people asking for directions. Not only directions to one of the many university buildings scattered around the area, but it's also a tourist-heavy area, with the British Museum as the primary destination. And even people with street maps are not necessarily clear on exactly where they are, and which direction they are pointed. This is largely because of frequently-changing street names, and also a system where the streets forming all sides of a "Square" temporarily take on the name of that square over the name of the street that continues in either direction. Sounds confusing? You bet! Here's a picture to illustrate:



Have a look at the major road that goes from upper left to lower right (the fact that the grid here is not evenly aligned with the cardinal directions is still another matter). It starts out being Eversholt Street, but then upon crossing the Euston Road, it becomes Upper Woburn Place. For the space of a block, until it temporarily becomes Tavistock Square (along with the other one-block stretches surrounding "Tavistock Square" itself [the garden area]). At which point it has become Woburn Place (minus the Upper, however). For only one block, however, thanks to another square: Russell Square. This one is especially good because Russell Square is also the name of the nearest tube station, which is not actually on Russell Square (the street or the square), but on Bernard Street, a couple minutes' walk ENE from the nearest point of "Russell Square" (and to even further complicate matters, the tube station is located on the wrong street by Google Maps in the image above). After Russell Square, the aforementioned road becomes Southampton Row, a name it keeps for nearly 300 yards before becoming Kingsway. And this is a main road (it actually has a highway designation, "A4200", but nobody seems to know this, I guess because few people around here drive). Complicating matters is the extent to which the area around here is littered with squares (for which all four sides have the same street name as mentioned above. Well, except for cases where one square abuts another! In which case only one of the squares gets to claim the attached street [the rules by which these decisions are made are not clear to me]). So there are a lot of little streets in the immediate area whose actual locations are not known most people, even those who have been working in the area for some time (there's a reason we all have London A-Zs, and/or phones with mapping functions).

Q: So how do I get to the British Museum?
A: Practice!
Friday, August 21, 2009 1:30:38 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   |