The Filofax London Underground Tube Challenge

Filofax has long been associated with the city of London, their headquarters offices were there for many years, although not these days. They had shops in London, but again now sadly closed. A lot of the Filofax organiser names are places, districts within London. 

During a quiet moment during my stay in London this last summer, I happened to be looking through the London Underground Tube map and I started to note down the station names that were also Filofax model names. 

I was initially surprised at how many there are. Sure some of them need a little 'adjustment' to match the station name to the Filofax model name, but I'm sure that is allowed!. 

This lead me on to thinking of a new London Tube Challenge. Visiting all of the stations listed in the least possible time. A visit basically means that the train you are on stops there. You don't have to physically get off and exit the station and reenter the station, although you can if you wish. Also you can use bus and walk between stations as well. 

Where did I get this idea from? There are plenty of other Tube Challenges already, the main one involves visiting all of the underground stations (270+ stations) in London. This as you will see currently stands at under 16 hours! An on-line friend of mine Geoff Marshall has held the record twice, he has also done several other public transport related challenges including 'All the Stations' which was an epic trip around UK visiting all of the railway stations with his partner Vicki Pipe. 

There are lots of 'Alternative Tube Challenges' as well, I wonder if we could get the Filofax Tube Challenge added to the site!

Naturally I've created a diary insert for our own Tube Challenge!

This is in Personal size, so just print it on to a single sheet of personal size paper and you are ready to go. 

You might need to do some planning ahead of time and reorder the stations in to your own preferred route, so I've made the page available in Word and PDF format.

• Philofaxy Tube Challenge - Word
• Philofaxy Tube Challenge - PDF

It would a fun challenge for a future London Philofaxy meet up may be!??

London Meet Up - September 2018

I had lost count of the number of meet ups that we have hosted in London since the first on in November 2010.

I went back through my photo album archive and the most recent one last weekend was the 18th meet up in London. Although I think I've been to as many again in other cities in Europe and the USA/Canada.

Each one is special in its own way. You would think with eighteen of them in London, they would be the same, but I don't find that. They are different because there are different people there each time, the different mix of people brings together a new flavour to the recipe!

This was the most recent one last weekend. I found it very enjoyable chatting and sharing thoughts and ideas with the people in attendance, lots of laughter too!

As you will see from the photos below, people had brought along quite a variety of planners and organisers to the meet up.

The meet ups generally finish at about 5-6pm, well we were still in the restaurant at 5pm, so this one went on a bit longer than most. We did venture out eventually to look around John Lewis and a few other stores before finishing off at the Kiki K store in Covent Garden before that closed at 8pm. We eventually said our good byes around about then!

Thank you to everyone who came along to the meet up, it was a brilliant long weekend for me in London.

L-R Ian, Jenny, Maud, Ana, Claudie, Elaine, Steve, Emma

Max, Karina, Julian and Claudie

Amy explaining her set up to Maud

Ian looks on bemused as Emma hugs her planner!

Jenny and Ana in Kiki K

Jenny and Ana in Kiki K

Thank you to everyone who came to this meet up and all the previous ones... I'm looking forward to the next one in 2019!

The London Stationery Crawl

What is a Stationery Crawl? Sounds like a bit of a contradiction, yes it would be if I had mis-spelled it Stationary Crawl!  Think of a pub crawl, but you visit different shops for stationery and other related items!.

Confused? As always a picture saves a thousand words.



I created this map a couple of years ago from a listing during National Stationery Week and then 'enhanced' it over time.

We will not be attempting to visit all of these establishments on Saturday, but if you are in London for a few days and you want to know where the best stationery shops are then I hope this map helps you.

If there are any updates/missing shops, please let me know in the comments below.