Australia is a flat country. There's also plenty of space for everyone. As a result cities like Sydney are far more horizontal. London on the other hand feels like an endless series of stairways and stairwells. I can't recall walking up and down so many stairs in my life. They're everywhere and largely unavoidable. It's clear easy access for the elderly and infirm was never a high priority in previous centuries.
On a whim, I counted the number of separate stairways and escalators that I climbed today. Stairs = 16. Escalators = 6. Several stairways were climbed more than once. Add these repeats to the mix and I climbed a total of more than 25 sets of stairs.
This total is all the more staggering when you consider how geographically flat actually is London. Hampstead Heath, 15 minutes walk from home, is one of the highest points in the city. It's a mere 112 metres above sea level. A typical day in Australia would see me climb six steps of stairs and one escalator. Half of these stairs were part of our Sydney apartment complex.
Basically, there are days when London feels like one giant StairMaster. Just getting from the street to our apartment every day requires climbing four separate sets of stairs. First, there's a short step up from the street to the entrance path, a set of stairs from the path to the front door, then two flights of internal stairs up to our apartment. Inside the apartment, we climb another set of stairs to reach our main bedroom. I also work on the top floor of my office building. This means climbing two floors to reach my desk every day, and another four sets of stairs.
A trip on the tube is no different. I have to descend three sets of stairs to reach the main ticket gates at Swiss Cottage, then take an escalator down to the platform. The station I transfer at has another four sets of stairs and an escalator. Pretty much every tube station requires negotiating several sets of stairs. Every theatre has them, as do most pubs and restaurants (the toilet is almost always in a basement or on another floor) and a surprising number of stores.
I'm convinced that every tourist attraction is automatically designed with stairs in place. St Pauls has stairs, and so does Westminister Abbey, Trafalgar Square, and the Tower of London. If you're coming to London, leave your wheelchair at home.
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3 comments:
Do they not believe in lifts for the infirm?
John has already counted the sleeps until we leave!
Andrew, I didn't want to hear about the stairs. I have been trying to put them out of my mind however my knees are a little better and I do have several more weeks to work on them.
Oop - sorry Rhonda. It just struck me the other day that seems to be more of them every where in London - sometimes its only one or two steps but nothing seems to be perfectly flat in this city. I'm sure you'll be fine!
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