Fiona MacLeod explains the London transport system with the specific advice that experience provides
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Fiona MacLeod writes from London on the transport system and how to use it without making the mistakes that first-time visitors make.
The Oyster Card and the Contactless Card
The first decision every London visitor makes about transport is whether to get an Oyster card or use a contactless payment card, and the answer in 2026 is: if you already have a contactless payment card that works in the UK, use it. The contactless card caps at the same daily maximum as the Oyster card and does not require the deposit and return process that the Oyster card requires. The Oyster card is still useful if you are visiting for more than two weeks and want to pre-load credit, but for most visitors the contactless card is simpler. The Travelcard, which provides unlimited travel for a day or a week, is worth calculating against your expected journey count before purchasing.
Which Lines to Use and Which to Avoid at Peak Times
The Tube lines that most visitors use most often are the Central, Jubilee, and Northern lines, and all three are crowded at peak times (7:30 to 9:30am and 5:00 to 7:00pm) in ways that first-time visitors find more intense than they expected. The Overground — the separate orange-branded network — is less crowded and connects many of the same destinations via a different route. The Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022 and connects Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east through central London, is excellent and less crowded than its central location suggests because many visitors do not yet know it exists.
The Walking Alternative
The walking alternative to public transport is consistently underused by first-time visitors who see the Tube map and assume that the distances between stations are larger than they are. South Bank to Southwark is a five-minute walk. Covent Garden to Trafalgar Square is seven minutes. Shoreditch to Liverpool Street is ten minutes. The Tube map’s distortions make central London look larger than it is. Walking between central attractions is often faster than the Tube when you account for the walk to the station, the wait, and the walk from the destination station. The Transport for London journey planner shows walking times alongside transit times. The Visit London transport guide provides the visitor-oriented overview. Both are worth consulting. The walking is worth trying.
London is the most visited city in Europe and one of the most visited in the world, and the visitors who come to it deserve better information than the generic tourist content that most travel writing provides. Fiona MacLeod writes the specific content: the neighbourhood detail, the timing advice, the local knowledge that the visitor who has done their research arrives with and that makes the difference between a London trip that covers the surface and one that reaches something more like the actual city. The Fiona MacLeod column at The London Prat continues with the same commitment to useful specificity. London continues welcoming visitors. The visitors deserve the column. The column returns next week.
London is inexhaustible as a subject. The visitor who arrives having read everything still discovers something new, because London is always in the process of becoming something slightly different from what it was when the guidebook was written. The column tries to keep pace with the becoming, which it does imperfectly and usefully. The column returns next week with the same city and a different set of its infinite specific details.
The column exists because the city deserves it. London is the city that attracts more visitors per year than any other European city and that provides more to see and experience than any visitor can process in a single trip, which means that every visitor leaves with things undone and places unvisited and food uneaten and a reason to return. The column tries to give every visit the best chance of including the things that make London the city that people return to, which is the city beneath the tourist surface: the neighbourhoods that reward the visitor who ventures away from the prescribed circuit, the markets that are better on a Tuesday than on a Saturday, the museum rooms that the crowds do not find, and the specific London pleasures that require a bit of knowledge to locate and a bit of time to appreciate. That knowledge is what this column offers. The column returns next week with more of it.
Shoreditch keeps producing the neighbourhood stories. London keeps producing the visitor stories. The columns keep producing both. The subjects are inexhaustible. The column is weekly. The weekly column and the inexhaustible subjects have been in productive dialogue for long enough that the column has developed the specific local knowledge that sustained attention to a specific place produces. That knowledge compounds. The column continues. London continues. Both return next week. The column continues. The city continues. Both return next week with the same commitment to the specific and the observed.
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SOURCE: Satirical Journalism
