I love a good underpass. The uncertainty of what you might see and where they can take you, especially when they are ones that link to a warren of underground paths leading in all directions.

Tonight I managed to get a bit lost trying to use the underpasses around Hyde Park corner to get from one bus stop to the next as I travelled home from a day out in Kensington. The signage was not very helpful and in the end I just ended up going from one side of the road to the other, a step in the right direction but perhaps not the quickest route to have taken.

I did however enjoy the artwork on the tiled walls, portraying life in and around Hyde Park over the years which I’m not sure I’ve spotted before.

It was the third time this week I was near Hyde Park, and the third time using the various underpasses in the area. It’s made me think about other underpasses in the city but I can’t think of many, at least not ones that I am regularly in the vicinity of, the exception being the ones under the IMAX cinema roundabout at Waterloo. They are painted a rather vivid blue and have lights that change colour which certainly make them a little more inviting.

There’s also the ones at Wandsworth that were used as one of the locations in A Clockwork Orange, but that’s not a part of town I find myself in frequently.

Whilst I often didn’t feel very safe using them, I still miss the underpasses at Elephant and Castle. They were definitely the quickest way to get from one side of the roundabout to another – partly because I used to increase my walking speed to get out the other side as quickly as possible (I was a little more fearful of strangers back then than I am these days). They were tiled with various coloured tiles so despite them being dark and gloomy, they were colourful too. I’d have to go way back in the archives to dig out any photos I took of them but I did manage to find one of the old subway signs. I always wondered what happened to these when the underpasses were blocked in and the road layout above was changed in 2016. I hope they weren’t just disposed of – I’d have loved to have owned one.