Hampton
Affluent yet mysteriously vacant commuto-village
Olives or poo? Olives or poo? New York might have its Hamptons, but they certainly don't contain confusing smells like the ones you're assaulted with upon arriving at Hampton, Surrey. Like Montauk, Hampton is largely residental, although instead of sandy beaches you get the muddy banks of the Thames, and instead of lush golf courses and millionaire playboys you get, ummm, er, oh.
If the number of schools are anything to go by, Hampton children are certainly well-educated. A sign just outside the village boundaries warns CAUTION: SCHOOLS FOR 1/2 MILE, and it's not kidding; there are about 53 schools here, based in townhouses, Victorian halls, sheds and other improbable buildings. It's almost as if they can't find enough room for all of Hampton's offspring. A number of these schools, such as Hampton School (duh) have "HAZCHEM" signs outside, which is rather worrying.
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Unusually for a village with such a large number of schools, there's also a large number of phone masts. They look like great big metal poppy stamens, open and closed. One's near a school, another's near a park. So far we can draw the conclusion that Hampton's youth spend a lot of their time near hazardous chemicals and radiation. Do the X-Men send their kids to school here, or what?
Residents of Zone 6, #8 – Hampton
| This lady, who got off the train at Hampton, was engrossed in Lynne Truss' punctuation polemic Eats Shoots & Leaves. More alarming was her bookmark, a laminated photograph of a kitten, paws in the air, being threatened with a pistol. |  |
Sign outside Jolly Cooper bar:
SORRY
FRIDAYS
BARBI
CANCELLED
BAND SICK
WEATHER BAAAAAD
One overlooked aspect of Hampton is the nature reserve on the borders of the area. Oak Avenue Nature Reserve is a Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP for short), according to the 9ft-tall sign at the gate. Fresh motorcycle tracks lead over the hill into a forest, where you can squidge through mud to find St Richards Baptist Church, featuring what looks like a half-constructed Wicker Man with a cross on his head.
The village is well-kept, bar the odd explosion of nachos on the pavement or broken exercise bike. Down here, people have no qualms about leaving expensive vanilla smoothies on the bus (yum). The further you get from the Thames, the grimmer the houses get, until you're by the A3 flyover and a skip looks like positive gentrification. Skips, indeed, feature in the parking lots of a lot of Hampton homes. They're mainly full of rocks, although on a couple of occasions could be seen piles of rocks that failed to include the skip.
It's the river to which we now turn. Quite difficult to get to from much of Hampton, although there are a couple of slipways down to the boating club guarded by evil swans. (And who would name a boat "FAT TUM"?) A lot of this is because access is blocked by the extremely odd, haunted-looking reservoir:
Why a reservoir would need a windsock is anybody's guess, as are the large foreboding signs saying "Danger: Deep Water" on spiky fences that border onto er, large lawns. The rattling and creaking of machinery add to the ghostly feeling that this place has. But the several large, dirty-marshmallow Victorian buildings that house the pumps are very impressive, if only because they have year-round Christmas decorations.
Leading up to Hampton village square are many funky-coloured cottages, some of which may even be lived in. One cottage just near the square has a blue plaque saying Alan Turing was a resident. A bookshop, which hasn't opened since the Beatles' first LP, sells books such as The Birds of The British Isles and their Eggs: Vols 1+2 and Mountbatten – Hero of Our Time. Visiting in the dark would be quite unnerving.
Trains are more or less half-hourly from Hampton, and there isn't much to do while you wait; shops by the station include Floral World, the Hampton Crystal Company and Chauffer Driven Cars. At the station, which is a charming combination of country village house and supermarket car park, dire warnings tell you not to trespass on the railway. Somebody has replaced the £200 fine sticker with a £1000 sticker, presumably to cream off the profits. Got to keep those mutant children and reservoir ghosts fed somehow.
Statistics
Time to Zone 1 35min on South West Trains (Vauxhall)
Last trains to Zone 1 Mon-Sun 2316 (change at Wimbledon on Saturday night)
What to do if you are stuck in Hampton after the last train to Zone 1
Be thankful that you're not completely bollocksed, though you do have a long walk ahead of you if there are also no more 111 buses to Kingston. Follow Station Road past the police station on the left to the High Street (which isn't a high street), turn left, and keep walking for ages and ages until you hit a crossroads at Hampton Hill. It's then a matter of an N285 bus to Kingston and another bus to the city.
