It somehow seems appropriate that the British >G fans' nemesis is public transport.
Fortunately for the people coming in from another country, it doesn't look like it will affect your travel plans (given where you said you were staying previously, but don't take my word for it), just those of us who actually live here
Thanks!
I think there's a typo above – would need to take the Metropolitan line to Finchley Road, not Finchley Central.
My plan had been to take Picaddilly to Amos Grove (instead of Southgate) and take bus 382 from there. Is Southgate/125 better than Amos Grove/382?
Alternatively, we may just take busses 43/143.
And what do London/UK post codes mean?! They look like an indecipherable set of numbers and letters with random spaces to me.
That would probably work, Andy. I just couldn't compute all possible options so went for two that I could. One, from a big central London station and one that's at an underground station on the magical mystery bus route I'll be taking.
As for UK postcodes, its a hierarchy of subcodes pulled together. The first set of letters are the postal area, the first number is the district, then the sector, and so on. The N, E, S, and W starts refer to the cardinal points, but you also get things like WC which is West Central as London basically ran out of numbers several times in the past and a new high level area had to be set up. It's also incorporated what used to be towns, with their own post area that became suburbs, like my home of Enfield. The space in the middle is to distuinguish the district (before the space) and the sector (After) as some areas can have more than 9 districtss, so it needs to be clear when you mean 11 1 and when you mean 1 11.
[EDIT]: Wikipedia page does more detail
Thanks again. Does knowing the postcode help one, aside from delivering the mail? You pointed out above that Leisure Games' postcode is N3 2DN. Do you expect that to help people get to Leisure Games? Just being curious here. I could see that knowing N3 might be useful to tell us that Leisure Games is in Finchley, but is it more than that?
So you're not looking for the wrong station it's ARNOS grove, not amos, damn tiny type making it look all wrong.
I would expect Google maps and the like find it very useful, it's certainly how I planned my route to the Harp
Noted. Thanks, again.
I noted the postcode as it's an option for tfl to figure out the best way to get you there rather than thed whole address whcih often asks for a postcode anyway.
[EDIT} And what MSM said
Thanks! Good job you checked, because I wouldn't have thought of that despite planning our journeys exactly. Bloody selfish of TFL to pick this exact weekend when they know an important Sentinels event is happening!
Irritatingly, the site says there are replacement bus services but doesn't specify where to actually catch them. Even more irritatingly, our hotel is right near Elephant and Castle, and was specifically chosen since it's on the Northern Line. And now the Northern Line is closed for the entire stupid weekend!
They use the following format:
1 or 2 letters - signifies a large area, city or section of a city. London has 10 of these I think (N, SE, NW, etc).
1 or 2 digits - the area within the above (originally indicating the appropriate sorting office but I'm not sure if that's the case now).
SPACE
1 digit - again narrowing down the area into smaller bits, usually suburbs or villages or similar.
2 letters - a road, section of a road or a specific building (in some cases, especially for large buildings).
I'll use my own postcode as an example (S41 8–, with the final letters removed for internet security purposes).
S = Sheffield, which encompasses not only Sheffield but also Rotherham, Barnsley, Dronfield, Hope Valley, Mexbourough, Worksop and Chesterfield.
41 = Part of Chesterfield (Hasland, North Chesterfield, and Old Whittington)
8 = Newbold and Whittington Moor
The final letters indicate a section of my road.
Because of all this, you can actually address mail by using only the house number/name and the postcode, because the postcode narrows the area down so much.
Argh! Ninjaed!
And yeah, I do most of my travel planning by postcode. It's often much more helpful than just knowing the road name, especially if it's a longer road. Great when using satnav as well.
Arse, typical...we'll be coming from Victoria Station, and I just looked on the transport website thingy and...it gives me a whole load of suggested routes, all of them involving buses, I think I may have got the bus in London once or twice with my dad when I was about six but other than that I never have. I wouldn't know where to get off or anything.
I don't suppose there's anyone heading there who actually knows what they're doing and is gonna be in the middle of London somewhere that we could meet up with and sort of...follow to the destination? ;)
I am genuinely looking forward to meeting you all! Seriously, make sure you find me and introduce yourself. I'm the guy that used to have more beard.
I'd definitely like to second what Christopher said! Introduce yourself, and feel free to let us know your forum name for context if you like. I am the one who doesn't have a beard at all :)
Our plan: Elephant and Castle - Baker Street - Finchley Road on the Tube, and then the 82 bus. I'm planning to navigate by a combination of timing, counting the stops, and Google maps on my phone, having been to London fewer than 10 times and Finchley never.
So I can't offer I-know-exactly-where-I'm-going type help, but if there's a convoy happening we'd be very glad indeed to join. Multiple eyes and brains are better, right?
Who is still on for the Harp on Saturday? I am still planning on attending.
The >G crew should have a straight shot on the Picadilly line to Leister Square.
Hmm, well, we can get to Elephant and Castle (we'll be coming from Swanley so I figured we'd be arriving in London at Victoria, but Blackfriars trains go through Swanley too, and they stop at Elephant and Castle), so maybe we could meet you there. What time were you planning on getting there? I have absolutely no idea how long it'd take to get to the Leisure Games place from there. I hope you were planning on getting there for the 11am start ;). Our train would get us to Elephant and Castle for either 18 minutes past, or 49 minutes past, each hour. Maybe we can sort something via e-mail or Skype or some other similarly private with regards to meeting up :).
To Christopher and Paul - don't worry, we plan on being there all day and I will be bringing my copy of Sentinels with me to play many many games and stuff. We're looking forward to meeting you as well! :D Getting there and back is apparently now going to be a bit of an arse but I'm sure we'll manage somehow ;). Next time, just don't come on a Sunday when they do all the engineering work and close the most vital train line for the whole meeting :D.
Okay, well for other people who might want to join us, I'll give a rough idea of what our plans are - we can definitely chat privately as well. You're in the G+ community, right?
For the tube section of the journey I have a kind of bare-bones timetable, and probably need to err on the side of starting slightly early since Google Maps doesn't leave any time for me to get lost. 
I figure we'll be at Elephant and Castle around 9.35, Baker Street at 9.45, and Finchley Road at 10.09.
Then the bus at Finchey Road (stop FK) at 10.15, getting us to Leisure Games at 10.45 (early, but that's better than late).
I guess the tube part's the easy bit though, so if it's more convenient for people to meet us at Baker Street or Finchely Road then that works too.
incidentally we'll be heading back to Victoria after the event since our coach home (yay 3 hour coach journey!) is from the coach station near there.
I'll be the one who's a girl that isn't Ameena, by the looks of things. Beard status TBC…
And I may also be recognisable by my Tshirt, which is also TBC.
I did join the Google+ thing at one point, but it seem to automatically activate webcam images for everyone, meaning I just get all these video images and it breaks my Internet. I couldn't see any way to turn it off though I don't recall whether I specifically looked for one as it was ages ago, when the Google+ thing first started - I joined for one of the first games and my connection dropped a couple of times so I gave up. I dunno if Google+ has some kind of PM system you can use to send me a message. If not I can PM my e-mail address or Skype name to you on here or something (not keen on the PM system here though as there is no visible notification on the forum homepage as to whether you've recieved a PM, therefore I'd never check my inbox unless someone actually posted on the forum that they'd sent me a PM, lol).
If you're heading back to Victoria after the thing, that's cool - we can head back with you and go home from there :).