Tube Challenge - History

History

The first recorded challenge took place in 1959. Although many people have attempted the challenge and held the record since, they have not always been credited in the record books. In the earlier days of the challenge, participants were permitted to use private forms of transport (such as a car or bike) to move between stations. This led to times of less than 16 hours in some earlier records, and Guinness later changed the rules to ban private transport.

The following is a list of record holders that have appeared in the Guinness Book of Records. The record did not appear in the book until its eighth edition.

Between the 1960s and 1990s the record regularly appeared in the Guinness Book of Records, initially listed under "Underground Railways - circuit of", but later just under "Railways" and then "Trains". Since the change of publishing style of the book from the 2001 edition onwards, the record - although frequently broken - has only once appeared in printed form, in the 2008 edition. More recent records have tended to be published online instead.

On 3 April 2002 Jack Welsby set a new record time by traversing the system in 19 hours, 18 minutes and 45 seconds. Welsby made just one attempt, starting his route at Heathrow and finishing at Amersham.

This time was beaten on 4 May 2004 by Geoff Marshall and Neil Blake who achieved a new record time of 18 hours 35 minutes and 43 seconds. Their attempt began on the first train out of Amersham on the Metropolitan Line and ended at Upminster, and took Guinness World Records four months to ratify it. A previous attempt had been broadcast on TV as part of The Tube TV series and another attempt had been televised as part of an ITV1 programme Metroland: Race Around the Underground on 16 October 2003.

Although this time stood for two years before being beaten by just five seconds, it was not until Håkan Wolgé and Lars Andersson (both from Sweden) set a new record time for a network of 275 stations that it appeared in the Guinness Book of Records again, in the 2008 edition. They set a new record of 18 hours, 25 minutes and 3 seconds, on 26 September 2006.

Changes to the network (and the total number of stations) meant the record was 'reset' and broken three more times during 2007 and 2008. In March 2008, Heathrow Terminal 5 opened as a new station and 'reset' the record with the total number of stations to visit now at 269. Shortly after Andi James, Martin Hazel and Sara Wearn set a new time on 8 July 2008 of 17 hours, 56 minutes and 11 seconds. Although the total number of stations to visit became 270 in October 2008 when Wood Lane station opened, Guinness ruled that it was not a significant enough change to warrant a record reset.

On 14 December 2009, previous record holders James and Hazel, accompanied this time by another former holder Steve Wilson, achieved a record time of 16 hours, 44 minutes and 16 seconds. This record has won an unusual accolade: in February 2013 it was announced that a Turner Prize-winner, conceptual artist Mark Wallinger, had created a set of 270 enamel enamel plaques of unicursal labyrinth designs, one for every tube station, to mark the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. Each plaque will be numbered according to its position in the route taken by James, Hazel and Wilson.

This record remained unbeaten for 17 months, until Marc Gawley from Denton, Greater Manchester set a new time of 16 hours, 29 minutes and 57 seconds on 21 April 2011. As a fast marathon runner, he revealed that he did not use any buses on the day, preferring instead to make all his connections on foot.

Gawley's record was beaten a month later, when previous record holders Andi James and Steve Wilson completed the challenge 44 seconds faster, setting a new record time of 16 hours, 29 minutes and 13 seconds on 27 May 2011.