London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
Special day.
June 13th.
The day the monarchy went modern.
A young woman boards a train at Slough.
The future of Britain boards with her.
She is twenty-three years old.
She has been Queen for less than five years.
She is accompanied by her husband, Prince Albert.
The young woman is Queen Victoria.
The train is one of the marvels of the age.
Today, of course, we think nothing of it.
We’re annoyed if the train is five minutes late.
We grumble about overcrowding.
We complain about ticket prices.
But in 1842 railways are astonishing.
The railway age is still in its infancy.
The world is changing.
And on this June day the British monarchy climbs aboard and changes with it.
Victoria has been reluctant.
One can understand why.
This new mode of transport looks alarming.
Smoke.
Steam.
Noise.
Iron wheels.
Great pistons pounding away.
And speeds that many people consider unnatural.
Dangerous, even.
Some people genuinely believe travelling too fast might damage the human body.
Others worry that cows will stop giving milk.
Victorian Britain is every bit as capable of believing odd things as the modern world.
But eventually the young Queen agrees to try it.
And where does this leap into the future begin?
Slough.
Pronounced “Slow”, by the way, not “Slau”.
Which is rather appropriate, because what happens next is anything but slow.
The place name itself is wonderfully ancient.
Slough almost certainly means a marsh, a bog, a muddy place.
The future of Britain is about to set off from a place whose name essentially means The Bog.
You couldn’t make it up.
Not from Windsor, incidentally.
Windsor has no railway station yet.
The Queen has travelled by carriage from Windsor Castle to Slough.
And there, waiting for her, is the train.
At the head of it stands a locomotive with one of the most magnificent names in railway history.
Phlegethon.
A name straight out of mythology.
In Greek mythology, Phlegethon is the River of Fire.
One of the rivers of Hades.
The underworld.
You really couldn’t make it up.
The first British monarch ever to travel by rail is hauled by a locomotive named after a flaming river in Hell.
At the controls is Daniel Gooch.
And standing beside him is none other than Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself.
Brunel.
The great engineer.
The man whose fingerprints are all over modern Britain.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The Great Western Railway.
The SS Great Britain.
And now, helping drive Queen Victoria’s first train.
The royal carriage is no ordinary railway carriage.
This is Buckingham Palace on wheels.
The Great Western Railway has spared no expense.
There are blue velvet sofas.
Silk curtains.
Mahogany tables.
Rich carpets.
Even a padded silk ceiling.
One contemporary observer says it resembles an elegant drawing room more than a railway carriage.
And there is another concession to royal nerves.
The Queen insists that the train shall not travel too fast.
Different accounts give different figures, but forty miles an hour seems to have been the upper limit.
Forty miles an hour.
Today that’s a speed at which impatient motorists start looking for an opportunity to overtake.
In 1842 it seems almost reckless.
So off they go.
From Slough to Paddington.
About eighteen miles.
The journey takes roughly half an hour.
Think about that.
Half an hour.
And when they arrive at Paddington, Queen Victoria transfers to a horse-drawn carriage for the final journey to Buckingham Palace.
That carriage ride through London takes about another half hour.
The future has arrived.
The train from Slough to Paddington is about as quick as the carriage journey from Paddington to Buckingham Palace.
Which somehow feels symbolic.
The old world and the new world standing side by side.
And speaking of Paddington.
The station takes its name from a place that long predates railways.
Long predates Brunel.
Long predates Victoria.
Long predates Norman castles.
Paddington means the settlement or estate of a man called Padda.
An Anglo-Saxon.
A flesh-and-blood individual who lived more than a thousand years ago.
A man now utterly forgotten.
Except for his name.
Which survives.
So there we have it.
One end of the journey belongs to a bog.
The other belongs to Padda.
A forgotten Anglo-Saxon.
And between them roars the Industrial Revolution.
Ancient England and modern Britain connected by a strip of shining railway.
And what does Victoria make of it all?
She loves it.
She describes the journey as “delightful and so quick.”
She particularly appreciates the absence of dust, heat and discomfort.
Which is wonderfully human.
Historians get excited about speed.
Victoria gets excited about comfort.
No rattling carriage.
No clouds of dust.
No endless jolting over rough roads.
The Queen has discovered what railway passengers have known ever since.
Trains are civilised.
And after that first journey she becomes a keen railway traveller.
The Royal Train becomes an institution.
The monarchy embraces the railway age.
Indeed, one could argue that Britain embraces it more readily because the Queen does.
Royal approval matters.
The Crown has effectively endorsed the future.
And that’s why this story matters.
It’s not really a railway story.
It’s not even primarily a royal story.
It’s a story about a country crossing a threshold.
For centuries British monarchs have travelled at the speed of a horse.
Then, on June 13th, 1842, something changes.
Steam replaces muscle.
The Industrial Revolution welcomes the monarchy aboard.
And the monarchy accepts the invitation.
A young Queen climbs onto a train at a place called The Bog.
She arrives at the settlement of a long-forgotten Anglo-Saxon called Padda.
And in the half hour between those two ancient place names, Britain steps into the modern age.
The day the monarchy went modern.
And London is waiting at the other end of the line.
And on that note, I’m off to Golders Green. Going to meet Charlie and about twenty walkers. The third leg of The Ultimate London Walk. The walk all the way across London, north to south, 42 miles in total. Divided up into 14 segments, 14 walks. Two a day for seven days. So the two walks today will be the third leg of my journey. Three down, four to go. I readily own up to it. I’m going to love being able to say “in my 80th year I walked all the way across London. North to South. Hertfordshire to the Surrey Downs. 42 miles. Got me into some pretty select company. Only 12 other people have done it. Going to love wearing the tee-shirt that shows the journey on a map of Great London and below it says, “I did it.”