Monopoly? Walked It Mate

May is Living Streets' National Walking Month and for the third year in a row, and so a few weeks ago, I decided to undertake another long walk. This time I wanted to visit the Monopoly board locations in Central London.

I have given some thought on how to present this post, whether following the route or grouping the sites, but I went for the route because that's the way the story of the day unfolded. So, let's retrace my 15 miles of walking which started early on Friday 22nd May 2026.

Planning the walk

I spent a bit of time in advance thinking about how I was going to tackle the walk, and until I had mapped it, I wasn't even sure of the distance. Because I wanted to take some photographs as I went, I had to build in time for that as well as posting on social media.

My previous walks had started near home which allowed an 05:00 start, but this year, I had to travel which meant a later start. In the event, I thought it would be around 8 hours or so and that turned out to be a pretty good estimate and I would have been much quicker without stopping for photographs!

Getting to the start

I left home at about the same time as I had in previous years, but with a walk to the station to pick up the first Elizabeth Line service heading west. My plan was to start at Whitechapel Road, but the first train didn't stop there (I should have checked more carefully). 

The first train of the day arrives.

I jumped on anyway with the aim of changing at Stratford for the following train which did stop at Whitechapel, but of course that was cancelled and so I ended up just catching the third train to the Liverpool Street terminus and then the Tube back to Whitechapel.

Best foot forward

I stepped out onto Whitechapel Road at 06:00 and took my first "proof" photograph of the day. A scene which someone commented looked like it was from 28 Days Later.

A zombie-free Whitechapel Road

Despite already having been to Liverpool Street station en route to the start, it was time to stop there properly, but there was a walk to get there. As I headed up Whitechapel Road, I passed the East London Mosque which, like the area, has constantly evolved with its current building opening in 1985. 

The East London Mosque

I then turned off Whitechapel Road and into Banglatown, an area which has attracted and benefitted from centuries of migration. Installed in 1997, the Banglatown Arch on Brick Lane commemorates the importance of the area for the Bangladeshi community - and of course, to London.

The Banglatown Arch

The area has gone through waves of immigration for people trying to find a cheaper area to live and my connection to this comes from my maternal grandmother's Jewish family who moved to Bethnal Green, about a mile to the north-east. Like so many families, they moved from Germany at the start of the 20th Century.

I weaved through the border streets between Tower Hamlets and the City of London to return officially to Liverpool Street Station, the first of four to tick off.

Liverpool Street Station

This station used to be part of my commute until Covid pushed us to work from home. When I returned to the office, it was to the underground Elizabeth Line connection. These days, it is rare for me to venture into the terminus as I am usually heading elsewhere.

30 St. Mary Axe

I then headed south passing 30 St. Mary Axe, more famously known as The Gherkin, where I saw the windows being cleaned from a cradle - a job which isn't being hit by the AI boom in the City.

I soon arrived at my second station - Fenchurch Street. This serves the recently nationalised C2C routes on the north of the Thames Estuary out to Southend-on-Sea and Shoeburyness.

Fenchurch Street station

I was heading to the Thames and to get there, I walked past the Monument to the Great Fire of London (to give it its full name). If you pushed it over in an easterly direction, its 61.2 metres height would point to the spot on Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started.

The Monument

From the Monument, I turned onto London Bridge and saw my board token - a battleship, or HMS Belfast in this case. Which is not a battleship but it is a museum. Close enough for my Monopoly walk!

HMS Belfast

South of the River

There's very little Monopoly action to the south of the Thames, but there is a jail you can visit - The Clink, or rather the museum which is close to the site of the original gaol. From the Monopoly point of view, I was just visiting and I was now in the London Borough of Southwark.

The Klink

From the cool backstreets of Bankside I was heading further south, but at least I got to walk through Borough Market, one of my favourite London places, even if it gets too busy for my liking later in the day. The last time I stopped for lunch here, I had some very tasty Iraqi dishes. This time, I walked through at about 7.30am and so a little early for its usual 10am Friday start.

Borough Market

I headed south along Borough High Street and then onwards, further south to my second property square - The Old Kent Road.

The Bricklayer's Arms flyover

I only went a couple of hundred metres into The Old Kent Road with its northern end dominated by the Bricklayer's Arms flyover which is as awful as you would expect it to be.

The junction itself is designed for the movement of motor vehicles, although if you enjoy an adrenaline rush, Transport for London has very kindly painted cycle lanes around it. Mind you, as I walked round, there were a few brave souls as well as a Waymo "self driving" taxi under test.

A 1970s throwback

I had a quick look at collision data for the junction, and something like 35% of the people hurt getting around it are cyclists, so I think I am justified in calling it a meat grinder which has no place in 2026.

I headed back north on Great Dover Street, partly as not to have to retrace my steps and partly because my nest destination was further west of The Clink. Things were warming up and I needed to tick of an electricity company off the list. This came in the form of the Tate Modern on Bankside.

The Tate Modern, from the Millennium bridge

For those that don't know, the building used to be known as the Bankside B Power Station. I am no architectural expert, but it's definitely a building I like with its Art Deco form (which is perhaps 15 years after the main movement). It to me looks like what people in the 1940s thought the future would look like.

Anyway, there was no time to take it all in as I had to push on back across the Thames which I did via the London Millennium Footbridge, returning to the City of London and my next Monopoly destination.

A different view of the Millennium Bridge

Back to The City

Back on the north side of the Thames, I stopped at one of London's newest public open spaces - the Bazalgette Embankment named after Sir Joseph Bazalgette, my civil engineering hero.

The Bazalgette Embankment

The embankment sits over the Thames Tideway sewer which provides service access to the sewer itself as well as new gardens which provided me with a few minutes to pause in, shaded from the sun, before I headed across another border and into the City of Westminster where I would be collecting the bulk of the Monopoly property squares.

Before I left the City for Westminster, I headed north to Fleet Street, named after the River Fleet which flows under it at its eastern end where it is essentially a sewer. 

As I walked up Temple Avenue on my way to Fleet Street, I paused for a minute to have a look at a parklet which provides much needed seating, although I had to crack on.

A parklet - a better type of parking

I turned left onto Fleet Street itself. It's a very old street and one brimming with history, but perhaps in more recent times, it was famous as the centre of London's newspaper publishing industry. The church on the right in the photograph below is St. Dunstan in the West and of course it also has a long history. The current church is from the 19th Century with the original being demolished to widen the street - a bit of a theme was emerging. 

Fleet Street

The kiosk in the middle of the road is part of the 1990s vintage "Ring of Steel" which was a security plan developed in response to the IRA's bombing campaign. It essentially created an arrangement whereby the number of motor traffic routes entering the city were reduced and monitored which meant lots of filtering and traffic management which these days has actually helped make the Square Mile far more pleasant to walk around.

A Westminster wander

I continued west along Fleet Street with the street name soon changing to The Strand (or technically "Strand") and the City of Westminster where I would be spending a fair bit of time. The name comes from from the Old English "strond", meaning beach or edge of river. 

St. Mary le Strand

In December 2022, a project was completed to pedestrianise a section of the street which included making the parallel Aldwych two-way for traffic. As you can see in the photograph above, it is now a traffic-free plaza and a great setting for St. Mary le Strand and King's College.

I then zig-zagged north to Bow Street which took me into Covent Garden. The street has had plenty of famous residents including noted killjoy (perhaps), Oliver Cromwell. It was also home to the Bow Street Runners, perhaps the UK's first organised police force. The photograph above is of the back of the Royal Ballet & Opera.

Breakfast was calling and so my next board square at Leicester Square was a perfect place to grab some food from a well-known fast food chain. Quite usefully, they had a loo which I could use and as someone well used to long walks and cycle rides around my city, I am here to decry the lack of public loos. 

Leicester Square gardens

That wasn't the only example of flowing water (!) the gardens in the middle of Leicester Square were already popular with people sitting watching the fountain in the cool of the shade provided by the huge London Planes. It is a place that has been popular in ebbs and flows. I remember that 20-odd years ago it was pretty grotty, but the latest incarnation really is notable and a good public square is something Westminster is good at.

Nelson on his column

The temperature was rising and it was noticeable as I reached Trafalgar Square which probably needs no introduction (but here's one anyway). As an open square, there is no shade at all and so I wasn't going to hang around as I crossed it to pick up my next board square.

The seat of government

Northumberland Avenue is a traffic sewer and I have nothing better to say about it. It's part of a district between Trafalgar Square and the River Thames where quite a lot of government buildings can be found. Unlike the Great Stink that Bazalgette only got to deal with when it affected MPs in Parliament, it's apparently not awful enough yet to deal with the traffic.

Northumberland Avenue - you can keep it

I skirted the south of Trafalgar Square to quickly reach my next location of Whitehall which was fairly calm. The street really is a hotbed of government action and it's also an important ceremonial street.

The Cenotaph

The photograph above is of The Cenotaph, which is the national memorial to the war dead. The word "cenotaph" is derived from Greek and means "empty tomb" which reflects the fact that in many wars, the dead are buried near where they fell. As I took the photo, I did wonder if the occupants of the little street between the trees remember what this memorial represents.

One of the challenges of planning my walk was whether to include locations that weren't named on the Monopoly board. Now I didn't bother with "chance" or "community chest", but I did want to find something to represent me passing "go". Bus stop "GO" would have been fun, but it was way out of my way, but at the junction of Parliament Street and Bridge Street there was something way geekier waiting for me.

12 Bridge Street

The plaque on the wall of 12 Bridge Street commemorates railwayman, John Peake Knight who is credited with the invention of the traffic signal. Or rather, he borrowed the idea from railway signals and applied it to the street. Unfortunately his 1868 installation to regulate horse drawn traffic exploded a year later when a gas leak caused a light to explode and it wasn't until 1929 that we tried again with electricity. 

Pall Mall

I retraced my steps back up Whitehall, passing HRMC, but I didn't pay any tax. I was heading north to Pall Mall which was another traffic sewer - yes there is a theme here in Westminster, a borough where 2/3 of households don't have access to a car and in this general area, that rises to 3/4.

I wandered north once more along Haymarket (part of the A4) and was nearly taken out by a motorcyclist who was turning right as I was already crossing Charles II Street. I will lay the blame for some of this behaviour with the council that maintains the area for moving motor traffic.

It's like Piccadilly Circus here

A the top of Haymarket, I turned left onto Coventry Street which is another part of the A4 which is in a bit of a gyratory here and of course, it's a traffic sewer. 

The two notable things here is the adverts on the buildings of Piccadilly Circus which these days were selling something to do with crypto currency, and the statue of Eros which is actually Anteros, Eros being the sexier of the two brothers. Crossing the junction took me into Piccadilly and another square ticked off (Piccadilly is to the left of the left-most block in the photograph above.

The very short Vine Street

Just a little way along Piccadilly is Swallow Street and off there is Vine Street, the shortest on the Monopoly board. For some reason, there was a terrible phone/ GPS reception in the area and it took me a few minutes to find Vine Street because it was tucked behind a development hoarding.

Zig-zagging around Soho and Mayfair

My route was becoming a little more complex because of the need to pick up Park Lane and so there was some zig-zagging to be done.

Stonewashing a junction

My next square was Bond Street, but it doesn't technically exist. In fact the street is split into Old Bond Street and New Bond Street which meet at the junction with Burlington Gardens (above, with zig-zags). It's a place of fancy shops and flash cars which didn't entice me to linger.

Get out of my city!

I had a bit of walk west now and so I cut through the back streets and happened across my second Waymo of the day (the first can be just seen on the Bricklayer's Arms photograph). At the time of writing these autonomous vehicles (so called robo-taxis) are under test with a driver, pending them going around on their own later this year. 

For anyone coming across this post from a search of the right key words, my opinion of this technology is extremely low because it will add to congestion, but more importantly, these vehicles are not accessible to all and never can be because taxi drivers do more than drive. Get out of my city!

Pedestrians: good luck crossing

The other notable thing about Westminster is the number of signal-controlled junctions without green men such as the junction of Hill Street with South Audley Street. It's a junction which should not need traffic signals, but of course we are in Westminster where drivers are given priority and so it's busy enough to need them (for drivers).

My mood wasn't lifted by Park Lane, the westerly extent of my walk. Park Lane is a dual carriageway which is part of the London Inner Ring Road and was built on the eastern edge of Hyde Park in the early 1960s. Any modern attempts to rebalance the place does of course get dragged into culture wars, but mainly by people who think driving in Central London is sensible. 

It's horrible and I soon headed back into the side streets where I did see quite a nice tree pit on Park Street. Which was full of car parking. This always amuses me given what parking used to mean.

Parking the parking

I started to head east once more and I was now in the heart of Mayfair which is on the Monopoly board, but not a street. It was here that I stumbled upon a little gem in the traffic-soaked streets - Mount Street Gardens.

Mount Street Gardens

It was a lovely spot and I did sit in the shade of more London Planes for a few minutes to give my aching feet a rest. But not for long, I needed to keep moving as there was a bit of a walk to get back to Soho. 

Silence

Just as I left Mount Street Gardens, I saw a curious fountain wrapped around a couple of trees with vapour coming out of the water. It's called "silence" and is by the Japanese Architect Tadao Ando. 

As I walked through Mayfair, it felt like an odd place. It really seemed like a suburban town where quite a lot of people drove everywhere, despite being in public transport utopia - very much driving to the local shops territory. 

After a bit more zig-zagging I reached Regent Street and another square ticked off the list.

Regent Street

Regent Street, in common with large areas of this part of London, is owned by the Crown Estate and this means they and other property owners tend to have influence. Despite being a shopping destination it is (you've guessed it) another traffic sewer. 

There has been some work to widen the footways, but it's poor for cycling. There have been further plans which are a bit better, but after this May's location elections where Westminster City Council reverted to Conservative, who knows what might happen. The old London local government joke was that Westminster was a car parking company with a council attached to it. 

Great Marlborough Street

Just off Regent Street, I had an easy tick with Marlborough Street, except it doesn't technically exist; it's called Great Marlborough Street and apparently it was quite the street for car show rooms at the start of the 20th Century. These days, the only thing of real interest is the department store, Liberty's which is housed in a sprawling mock-Tudor building, although it is at least a respectable 150 years old.

Oxford Street

I finally headed west again to another famous shopping street which is also mired in controversy - Oxford Street. It's regarded as Europe's busiest shopping street, but the only purchase I made was a welcome couple of bottles of water from one of the on-street kiosks. It had got really hot and I did have another rest in the shade.

The controversy here is London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, plans to pedestrianise part of the street and there is now a development corporation in place to deliver the vision. This means rerouting the buses that currently crawl along the street and some residents on the adjacent streets are not happy. 

The change back to the Conservatives here was perhaps helped by their opposition to this scheme and their manifesto included mounting a legal challenge to it. However within a few weeks of getting control of council again, they chickened out.

There are more complexities because so far, the plan is to ban cycling from the pedestrianised street and there are no concrete plans for providing alternative routes beyond words. The London Cycling Campaign has been trying to highlight this issue for some time.

In my view, a ban will as usual exclude those who generally follow the rules and who will be put at risk on other streets, especially where there are buses. Those who don't care much for rules (and this is complex) will carry on. This will lead for calls for enforcement and will demonise cycling as transport. It's a classic network issue that the UK is terrible at dealing with.

Anyway, the London Cycling Campaign has also been looking at a low traffic West End vision because the pace of change here has been glacial. 

Turning the corner

There were four more locations to visit, but this next phase of the walk was going to be tough as I headed into the afternoon's heat. First, I had to head northwest to collect my third station - Marylebone Station.

Marylebone Station

Other than when I was at university, I have lived in London for five decades and this was the first time I had visited Marylebone Station. The reason for this is it is tucked away on a back street and although it serves Birmingham and the Chiltern corridor, it is easier for me to use Euston for Birmingham and Paddington for Oxford coming from East London. I should probably give it a go next time I am heading in one of those directions!

Free parking

It reminded me of a sprawling Edwardian manor house (despite being Victorian). Who cares, it's a fascinating building and much quieter than the other London rail terminals. Apart from being handy for a loo stop, I also managed to find some free parking.

From Marylebone Station, my journey would now be east for the next 4km along the A501, another part of the London Inner Ring Road. The first section of the A501 is Marylebone Road and a rare sight in this part of London - a petrol station (above). It's part of Dorset House, a 1930's Art Deco complex which sports a 120 space car park where you can pay £10 per hour. Until fairly recently, Westminster City Council had a planning policy of protecting petrol stations!

A quick diversion

As I carried on east along Marylebone Road, I remembered that there had been a little bit of cycling infrastructure change in Regents Park - York Bridge to be precise. Give this would only add 250 metres to my walk, I thought it worth a diversion.

Looking north towards the bridge

The bridge had apparently been degraded by heavy traffic (of course) and needed restoration. As part of the work, the former two-way traffic layout had been replaced with one-way for general traffic, with a contraflow cycle track (above).

Regent's Park is owned by the Crown and the roads within the park (I know, right) are managed by the Crown Estate Paving Commission which is notorious vague in explaining what it does and this new layout was no exception as I couldn't find any plans online.

Looking south towards York Gate

For what it's worth, I thought the cycle track was too narrow with the risk of catching wheels on kerb upstands on both sides (above) and the awful cobbled ramps at the southern end (below). In this case, paint would have been better than kerbs!

Slippery when wet

On the home straight

As I continued east, the A501 became Euston Road and I entered the London Borough of Camden, although this the A501 is part of the Transport for London Road Network. And you've guessed it, another traffic sewer.

The Mayor's* Roads Task Force considered Marylebone Road and Euston Road featured in its 2013 report "London’s street family: theory and case studies" as a case study which classified the corridor as a "City Boulevard". Yes, there are lots of challenges here, but over a decade later, the place is still awful for walking, wheeling and cycling. (* that particular mayor was Boris Johnson.)

Euston Road

During the Pandemic, protected cycling space was added to this road and it became bearable to use as I found when I rode it in 2021, but it was short lived and removed by TfL which didn't have the appetite to be radical.

King's Cross Station

Walking along Euston Road was handy for collecting the final station of my journey - King's Cross. It's a part of London I remember from maybe 25 years ago when it was terribly run down and often sketchy to walk around. Euston Road remains awful, but the wider area has been the subject of years of regeneration and with neighbouring St Pancras Station, it's definitely a key national and international transport hub.

Pentonville Road

Just east of Kings Cross Station, the A501 becomes a bit of a gyratory for general traffic, but with bus priority measures including a contraflow bus lane. I took the eastern arm which becomes Pentonville Road and my penultimate Monopoly board square as I entered the London Borough of Islington.

The Angel

Pentonville Road is on a pretty steep hill and with legs feeling the pressure I did avail myself of a brief rest on a bench before continuing to my last square and lunch that would soon follow. The end of my walk was at the eastern end of Pentonville Road and a set of buildings at the junction with City Road and Islington High Street known as The Angel, Islington, which was (you've guessed it) almost demolished for a road scheme!

Beer though

It was now 14:30 and I was hungry, so I creaked my way into the Peacock pub and ordered what turned out to be an excellent Croque Monsieur, complemented with a couple of freezing cold pints of lager. My goodness, it was great to sit down.

My route

There are all sorts of ways in which to tackle this challenge and I will leave it up to you to decide what is the best, but for those interested, I have made a Google MyMap for my particular route which was arranged with that start at Whitechapel Station in mind.

Epilogue

The walk was a tough personal challenge and writing this post has easily taken me as long to write, and over several sessions. I never ask for money for my writing and I wasn't walking for sponsorship; but if you have enjoyed this post and have a couple of quid to spare, you could do worse than send it Living Streets Way.

See you next year with another long walk. I guess.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: New Zeeland Stories, Part 1

For my latest adventures traveling by cycle and train in the Netherlands, I headed south and west in a trip which included a foray into Belgium to visit Antwerp. However, this post comes from Zeeland province in the south-west of the country.

I first visited this part of the Netherlands as part of a camping holiday in 2017 where I wrote about cycling longer distances which was my first real immersion in Dutch road network design, but it involved hiring campsite cycles which had to be returned to base. 

My Spring trips of the last few years have been with my own cycle which in combination with the train has enabled plenty of inter-urban trips that have been even more insightful. This year included cycling from Antwerp (Belgium) to Hulst (Netherlands) and then on to the Breskens - Vlissingen pedestrian and cycle ferry. However, this post is going to concentrate on the village of Vogelwaarde which I cycled through in 2017, but the story starts before then.

As ever, there is a health warning about what I write as it has been pieced together from what I can find online and any local insight is always greatly appreciated. 

Background

There used to be a car ferry crossing the Western Scheldt between Perkpolder and Kruiningen, but that was closed in 2003 when the Westerscheldetunnel was opened some 16km to the west and which carries the N62 between Terneuzen to the south and the A58 motorway to the north. It is very much for motors, but pedestrians and cyclists can use local bus routes. For cyclists, it might be a bit of a gamble as there is only space for two cycles on the buses and given that cars are free, it's more expensive to cross as a pedestrian or cyclist!

The closure of the car ferry will have shifted traffic patterns in the area and when I visited in 2017, there were signs that the N689 serving Perkpolder had been downgraded from a dual-carriageway to a single carriageway  (I think) given it no longer fed the ferry. You can see the changes between 2009 and 2021 in Google Streetview. There was a regeneration plan for the area, but it seems to have stalled just now.

What does this have to do with Vogelwaarde - the village sits 3km west of the N689 and so was bypassed for longer distance traffic anyway? Well, there are other villages to the north and the obvious driving route for some trips is through Vogelwaarde rather than the N689, and with the closure of the ferry, all of the longer distance trips have to come south and then west first, whereas with the ferry, northbound trips wouldn't have bothered Vogelwaarde as much.

When I visited Vogelwaarde in 2017, there was some familiarity to British eyes. The village centre had been traffic calmed and repaved (above) and the north-south approaches had been traffic calmed (below).

However, it was felt that the traffic situation was still unacceptable and a more radical solution was required - a road bypass of the village. In the UK, such a bypass would end up being a gold-plated high-speed affair and probably linked to low-density residential development. For Vogelwaarde, the solution was far more pragmatic.

A clue can be found on the roundabout which provides motor vehicle and cycle access to the village from the N290 to the south (above). The large horseshoes signify one of the area's most important industries.

Even more of a clue was provided by this trailer towing tractor using the roundabout because Kerckhaert is based in Vogelwaarde at the Royal Kerckhaert Horseshoe Factory. The company manufactures and suppliers farriers' equipment which in this rural part of the Netherlands (Zeelandic Flanders) and adjacent Flanders has a large local catchment as well as the national and international markets.

Solving a local problem

Part of the traffic problem in the village was linked to agricultural vehicles, traffic from an industrial estate to the north and HGVs accessing the factory. The Hulst municipality developed a plan to build a "landbouwweg" (agricultural road) around the village which would include a connection to the factory and would thus remove the undesirable traffic. 

The new road was part funded by the EU and opened in May 2024 as Honoré Kerckhaertweg after starting in February 2024; which is a pretty astonishing pace, although that's not the whole story.

The approach from the south (below) was as I remembered from 2017, although a new traffic sign showed that the other villages in the area to the north are accessed for motors via a different route to Vogelwaarde itself.

It's a typical rural Dutch main road with a verge separated two-way cycle track. Remember, this is not even a National road by class, but as with those, protection is provided to cyclists (and moped riders) which in turn gets them out of the faster and heavier traffic.

A little closer (above) and we reach the village limit marked by a standard sign with the speed limit (50kph / 30mph) and parking control information, as well as a speed hump, but the cycle track persists.

Closer still (above) and the new road bends quite tightly to the right in a way that a UK bypass scheme designer could not comprehend. Just after the bend, the speed limit increases to a standard rural 60kph (40mph) with access to Vogelwaarde to the left as the minor arm of a T-junction.

The cycle track then rejoins the carriageway (as it did before the bypass was built) on the basis that the route through the village is shorter than the bypass for cycling and of course is now much quieter. 

The longer story

I said earlier that the quick pace of building the road wasn't the whole story. Now that through-traffic has been cleared out, the southern entrance to the village has been closed to motors while the local cable and sewer networks are replaced and once that's done, the speed limit is being reduced to 30kph (20mph) and the streets remodelled to match this lower speed, lower traffic situation; although so far, I have not been able to find any proposals.

The lack of cycle track on the bypass road means it is not for cycling on (or using mopeds) and the end of the cycle track within the village limits reinforces this by design. I did used to have people telling me that the Dutch gave up their rights to cycle on the road, but after cycling hundreds of miles in the country, I would not want to cycle on the type of roads I would have to in the UK - give me a Dutch rural cycle track or local access road any time. 

However, it is still possible to go and have a look at other parts of Honoré Kerckhaertweg by cycle, such as the crossing of it at Grafelijkheid (above) which was severed, but where the last part has been retained with a filter that turns into a cycle track. The end of the 30kph zone sign is for moped riders crossing to the road ahead (but not joining the bypass).

The eastern end of Grafelijkheid on the village side is a cycle track which provides access to a refuge on Honoré Kerckhaertweg and on the other side, it forms a marked priority junction for general traffic that continues towards Terhole to the east, although this will be an extremely quiet lane for cycling.

The view from the refuge shows how modest the road really is (above, looking south). It's just the width required for the traffic using it and is not designed to add capacity in any way. It really is just a replacement for the route through the village - it doesn't even have a centre line!

The refuge is long and only raised at each end (above), with a rough and fairly low irregular paving design between the raised areas. I don't know for sure, but I guess this is to allow agricultural traffic to turn left into/ out of the eastern Grafelijkheid. Or at the very least it adds flexibility to the layout where future maintenance or emergency access is needed.

Looking north from the refuge, it is possible to see the factory access (above) and ongoing remodelling works. The road appeared quickly, but it's taking a bit longer for the wider plans to unfold!

I didn't look at the northern end of the village because the interface there is the same as the southern end - it's on Google Streetview, so you can have a nose around yourself - we had to crack on into the howling headwind to continue our journey across Zeeland.

Conclusion

I'm not a road building fan in the main, but I will make allowances for projects like Honoré Kerckhaertweg because it is very much part of a wider plan to genuinely improve the environment and liveability of a village while supporting the rural economy. It's not like the UK which builds roads to increase capacity and it's not like the UK because the long term will see changes in the village to make it unattractive to drive through.

When I think of the rural parts of the UK I have visited over the years, this type of treatment, along with verge-separated village to village cycle tracks is just the sort of thing we should be doing and perhaps with some careful village densification. We acquire land for large bypass roads and doing the same for projects like this should be no different.