We’ve all done it. Trains from Charlton not running or you’ve just missed it. Need to get to the Jubilee Line. Let down by the 161 bus, or can’t rely on the 486. What do we do? We stand outside The Antigallican and wait for three different buses to grab whichever one comes first.

The swift jog eastwards towards the 161 stop. The shuffle back as you see the 486 finally coming down the hill. The side step and shimmy as you negotiate five lanes of traffic as you realise that 161 is actually a 472. Before you know you it you’re jigging, you’re boogying, you’ve got more moves than Lionel Blair!

Behold – an answer to the ‘dance of death’ across a busy junction. The Charlton Rail Users’ Group met last month and has proposed a solution. The 161 and the 472 could be made to turn into Charlton Church Lane. They’ll then do an immediate U-turn (using the bus lane), bringing them back round to the 486 stop outside the southern entrance to the railway station. One bus stop will serve all three buses to North Greenwich Tube Station.

What do you think? If anyone has any other ideas or views or anything about Charlton station in general, let us know.

Ever wandered over to Asda on foot through the alleyway opposite Victoria Way? Ever thought your life seems a little duller for it? I can’t help thinking that the Woolwich Road would look completely different if something more pleasing to eye was placed here.

This spot used to be an old industrial estate and retail park, playing host to 80s giants such as Queensway furnishings and Harris Carpets. Indeed you can still see the turnings in the roads that used to funnel traffic from Woolwich Road, but these have now been blocked off by fencing. Now it’s just broken tarmac, mounds of earth and scrub-land topped off with a rather dirty looking willow tree.

Sightings of rats there are fairly common, and it is also provides a shelter and pedestrian highway for a man selling knocked off DVDs.

I’m told this plot of land is worth well over a million pounds and is actually owned by a bank. There’s no way that Greenwich Council will be able to buy this land so the bank is just sitting on it and waiting as its price rises and rises. Every time I walk past this wasteland I think to myself, every second I’m walking past this land someone out there is getting slightly richer. Whilst my life is slowly getting duller.

I asked the council if the bank had any plans or if there had been any interest to build on it. There isn’t, although my enquiry did bring something else to light. About fifty metres further down the road, past the set of isolated houses as you travel eastwards down Woolwich Road, an extension to the Millennium Business Park is to be built. Here’s a map highlighting the two areas if you’re not sure where I mean:

Just behind Sports Direct, the council has granted outline planning permission for redevelopment of the site comprising 4,160 square metres of retail units, 6,715 square metres trade units, 20 residential units (16 x 2-bed, 4 x 1-bed) and associated access and car parking. For more details please visit Greenwich’s planning site.

All this seems rather exciting. A rejuvenated business and retail park – but they have done the right thing and lined the north side of Woolwich Road with houses and convenience shops. There are even plans for a piazza.

A piazza? Between the retail park and the houses, perhaps there’ll even be cafes and restaurants. Have you ever imagined eating ‘al fresco’ on the Woolwich Road?

No talk of the wasteland I was originally referring to though. As one site is beautifully sculptured into a multi-purpose residential/ commercial complex, another site remains desolate scrubland.

So what do we want? Are they sitting on this land in case the up-and-coming O2 and Greenwich Millennium Village floods into New Charlton and we become part of the Las Vegas of London? Is there a more simple purpose that this wasteland could serve? I’ve heard someone say that it should be a children’s playground. A creche for their parents to take them to whilst out shopping. Personally I wouldn’t mind if it was at least just levelled, the fence taken down and we could just have it as grass. Perhaps we should do something. We could urge them into selling up or building something.

Perhaps we could even break in there and doll it up with some guerrilla gardening. Who knows, but a walk to Asda will always be dull as long as it’s kept the way it is.