Monopoly Board Walk
Growing up, Monopoly was a popular choice at family game night. I was the dog, my brother Onkar was the aeroplane, and my parents would randomly choose from whatever was left. I didn’t like playing it very much though, because my brother would manipulate everyone into making deals with him, enabling him to collect full sets of properties of the same colours. He would proceed to build houses and hotels on them and then bankrupt the rest of us with the rent we’d have to pay every time we landed on one of his squares. Fast forward a few years though, two things happened:
- I got over my dislike for the game (or I just forgot about it because I never really played it again since).
- I moved to London and Onkar to Cambridge.
This meant that I had a chance to visit all these properties from the Monopoly board whose names I’d grown up hearing. I’d thought of it quite a while ago really, but after a few months of procrastinating, I drew inspiration from RichardWalksLondon and finally decided to walk the Monopoly board.
Day 1
Feb 11, 2023
It was a Saturday, and I’d been visiting Onkar in Cambridge. We invited Muyan, a flatmate of his and a friend of ours, to join us too. In preparation, I’d pinned all the properties we were going to visit on Google Maps. It included all of the coloured properties and the train stations, but not the utilities (Electric Company and Water Works), Free Parking or Jail since these didn’t point to any specific places in London.
I also planned our path for the first few properties but left the rest to figure out on the go.
The three of us set out in the morning and took the train to London. The train was the most crowded I’d ever seen it, and after checking almost all the compartments we realised it was impossible to find three seats together. The first class section was empty and we did think about it but after reading that we could be fined £100 for sitting there, we decided on the alternative — zeroth class, i.e. the floor between compartments.
Soon we arrived at King’s Cross St Pancras — the starting line for our walk. We decided we’d strictly walk between all the properties, i.e. buses and tubes were off-limits. We took some pictures at the station to prove our visit and set off east on the way to the next property.
It was about a ten-minute walk to Pentonville Road, and at this point, we realised that, unlike the stations, the properties weren’t names of actual buildings but just roads or general areas. We resorted to finding street signs or tube stations with the right names for picture purposes.
On the way to our next stop, Angel, we sat down at a cosy little coffee shop. At this point, I also coordinated plans with a childhood friend, Arvi, who was going to join us later in the day. My brother and I hadn’t met him in years, so it was quite exciting.
The shop’s signboard did mention ‘Angel’ and we considered using it as our ‘proof of visit’ picture, but decided it would be worth the extra 5 minutes of walking to get a more official-looking sign.
It was already around 4pm by now (we hadn’t managed the early start we’d planned) and the eastern properties (Liverpool Street, Whitechapel Road, Fenchurch Street and Old Kent Road) were quite far apart from each other. It would take us an estimated two hours to cover just them, and Onkar and Muyan also had to get back to Cambridge the same day. So, for the sake of efficiency, we abandoned our initially planned route and decided to tackle the denser group of properties just north of Buckingham Palace. This meant that we were now on our way to Fleet Street.
On the way there, we passed St Bart’s Hospital (significance: Sherlock).
Next stop: Strand
After Strand, we met up with Arvi and proceeded to walk to Bow Street.
At this point, Arvi mentioned he knew a cool bar close by (the rooftop of the Royal Opera House), and it sounded promising so we decided to take a detour to check it out. The view was great (forgot to take pictures, sorry!) but it was too busy to actually sit down for a drink. Not to mention, we were on a schedule and running very late. Muyan also wanted to go to Chinatown nearby, but we ended up heading straight towards the next property, Leicester Square.
Here we facetimed Arvi’s mom to say hello (our dads are friends from med school so our families know each other), before starting to walk towards Pall Mall.
Next was Trafalgar Square. Again, we couldn’t find an ‘official’ sign so we took a picture of the bus stop sign in addition to a few at the main square. A minor car crash (not even a crash, just a bump) led to a major traffic jam there and sparked a conversation about insurance nightmares.
My phone’s battery ran out at this point, so Arvi took over the navigation for a while until I was able to charge it again. The next stop was Northumberland Avenue. It had started to get dark by now and we were worried that it would be difficult to get legible pictures, but thankfully, buildings are pretty well-lit in London and it didn’t become much of a problem.
It was only a 2–5 minute walk between properties at this point, and very quickly we were at the next one — Whitehall.
Another task on our to-do list for the day was for Muyan to work on a group assignment for university for which she had a make a digital poster. She had the content ready so it was only about a half-hour job to design the thing in Canva. We had to sit down somewhere for it though, and most coffee shops in the area were too crowded. We tried going to a Waterstones cafe which had space, but it was almost closing time and we needed a place where we could stay for a while. Eventually, we found seats at a Caffè Nero, where I charged my phone and helped Muyan with her poster while Onkar and Arvi passed the time talking to ChatGPT.
Around this time, we also ended up finding ‘better’ signs for some of the properties we’d previously visited and took extra pictures.
The next bunch of properties were also fairly close to each other and it didn’t take us too long to cover them.
With Bond Street, once again we couldn’t find a sign that said just ‘Bond Street’ but decided that the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ in these signs would cancel each other out and suffice.
Mayfair was an important stop since it is the most expensive property on the Monopoly board. Sadly, it was yet another one that we couldn’t find a proper sign for.
It was nearing dinner time and Arvi had to head home soon, so we decided to cover one last property — Park Lane — before he left. This is the second most expensive property on the board and it was very difficult to find a sign for it too. After walking all the way to the end of the street though, we did succeed.
And at the station we saw him off at, we found a better sign for Bond Street!
We were also hungry by now and made our way towards the nearest Honest Burgers branch, covering Oxford Street and Marlborough Street on the way.
It was already around 9pm by this point, so we started heading back to King’s Cross. Euston Road was on the way.
I saw Muyan and Onkar off at King’s Cross and called it a day. Besides four of the eastern properties and Marylebone Station, we’d covered everything. The rest was for another day.
Day 2
Feb 18, 2023
The next weekend, I decided to finish what I’d started and set out to visit the eastern properties: Old Kent Road, Whitechapel Road, Fenchurch Street Station and Liverpool Street Station. Arvi had warned me that some of these areas were a bit shady, so this time I persuaded another friend to tag along. Once again, buses and tubes between properties were disallowed, but we were allowed to choose the starting point and take the tube there. The distance between properties was much longer today and we spent most of our time just walking. It was a gloomy day and it kept drizzling intermittently, but we were determined. We walked for about half an hour from the start point, Borough, to the first property of the day, Old Kent Road.
This was the only property south of the Thames, so we now had to head north. Coincidentally we chose Honest Burgers again, as our lunch stop/rain shelter.
The next stop was Fenchurch Street Station. I’d forgotten that this was actually a station and not just a street, so I took pictures in front of the street sign and started walking to the next property before realising that I actually needed to find the station and turned back.
After another fairly long walk, we reached Whitechapel Road. The day’s coffee was long due, and so we sat down at a small shop called Club Coffee for a break along the way.
It was still afternoon and we had plenty of time to get back home, so we took a short detour through Spitalfields market while moving towards our last stop, Liverpool Street Station.
And like that, day 2 of the Monopoly Board Walk came to the end with only one property remaining.
Day 3
Feb 19, 2023
Marylebone Station was the only property left to visit on the board, and Onkar was visiting London again with some of his friends. We had planned to have brunch together, and conveniently, he was staying not too far from Marylebone. I was going to meet him at the station directly, but some internet issues made it difficult to communicate and we ended up running into each other quite close to Baker Street. A visit to the Sherlock Holmes museum was totally called for.
After brunch came Marylebone Station and the Monopoly Board Walk hereby came to a grand finish.
While there was absolutely no point to this undertaking, my friends and I had fun and I will continue going on random adventures and writing about them :)
