Hampton Court
Tourist-smeared village backwater
Hampton Court station serves two purposes; as a clearly-marked destination for snap-happy Japanese and as a little commuter station for the suburb of East Molesey.
The two-platform terminus is actually on the opposite side of the river to the palace, on a tiny island called Cigarette Island, and is quite long. Looked at head-on, it doesn't look as if there's actually only one front wall. It's half a stable, painted red, and there's not even a door. The station signs are annotated "Home of the Hampton Court Palace flower show"; not Hampton Court Palace, then. The platform is sited on a bridge over a river that looks like it has been smoking 80 a day.
You then walk in through the open-air entrance hall, where there are plenty of helpful notices and signs in French, German, Japanese and Spanish, and the train announcements are a little too polite and informative. Near the ticket booth (which has obviously been appropriated from another station; there's a sign on it saying "This Station Is In Zone 3"), you can see a large sign for the local taxi firm, Headway Cabs.
| Windsor Castle | £28 |
| Kew Gardens | £15 |
Of course, there's no reason for the taxi firm to know that you can actually take a bus to Kew from outside the station for the small matter of £1.20. I'm sure it's just an oversight on their part.
The station, south of the river, opens out through a spaghetti-shaped roundabout onto a very busy trunk road. It's so busy there has to be signs to show where people are meant to walk; although by the looks of things, the little men painted on the tarmac ought to see an osteopath. A little way further down the road you can see the general Hampton curse of huge phone masts, plus a badly-spelt public siting notice with the email address Acquisition.Deveolpment@O2.COM. Unfortunately, the mast seems to have already been installed. Probably because they received no e-mail objections.
Hampton Court Palace itself is unmissable on any tourist's trip to London. Built in 1515 by Thomas Wolsey and then, erm, nicked by King Henry VIII ten years later, it stands in a huge landscaped park, with perfectly Euclidean trees and extremely aggressive swans. The palace was built upon and restored several times over by numerous monarchs over the next four hundred years, until 1986 when somebody accidentally set fire to part of it. The grounds also feature a surprisingly small maze, which costs about £3.50 to get into and an annoyingly long amount of time to get out of. Luckily, there are stepladders at various points around the maze. Which seems like cheating, really.
Residents of Zone 6, #20 – Hampton Court
"do you know daniela [surname removed]? she got licked out in the middle of a field by her boyfriend's brother, she stuck a banana up her arse and gave it a lick, and she's got no tits! ..."she said, 'You're SO common.', just 'cos I don't live in a big white mansion like her!" |  |
East Molesey's main industry is antiques. The tourist information centre is buried in the biggest antique shop, The Hampton Court Emporiom [sic], for some reason. It's a ramshackle collection of houses, chain restaurants, B&Bs and antique shops, and you have to walk for about 15 minutes to get to a street with food shops and scary armless mannequins.
Sign on East Molesey Police Station:
What do you know about crime and animals?
Tell us on 0800 555111.
There are many notable shops when you get away from antique city. Molesey Television Repair looks like a broken TV itself; it's a brown shed with most of the glass smashed in. The Sugarcraft Shop makes strange cake-like objects out of sugar. And there's another place which seems particularly descriptive: The Old Cack Shop. All of this adds up to a prosperous and whimsical place, although it's severely isolated. West Molesey is another long walk up the road; the two Moleseys are divided by a post marking the route of the River Mole.
If all of the strange shopping makes you hungry, you can go back to the station and visit the futuristic pizza parlour in the huge 1920's redbrick development just opposite. Space Pizza! Pizza From Space! The 'A' is either a mushroom or a mushroom cloud. I wouldn't recommend eating the pizza on the small branchline train, particularly because the pizza symbol looks more like a grenade.
Culture, potty-mouthed teenagers, antiques and unnecessarily violent pizza. Hampton Court's got everything. Except for much of a way out.
Statistics
Time to Zone 1 37min on South West Trains (Vauxhall)
Last trains to Zone 1 Mon-Sat 2324 Sun 2345 (change at Wimbledon on Sunday night)
What to do if you are stuck in Hampton Court after the last train to Zone 1
Well, you're actually not in London, which is a bit of a problem if you want to get a bus there. Try breaking into Hampton Court palace, running across Bushy Park for a mile, and breaking out again into Teddington. If caught, plead to be sent to the Tower, as then at least you'll be in Zone 1.
