Marble Arch: Scaling London’s six million pound mound

The Man Who Pays His Way: touching the void in London W1H 7EL

Summit to see: Simon Calder after his successful solo ascent of the Marble Arch Mound (Simon Calder)

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.

Fate, as any mountaineer will confirm, can be cruel. You must know when to admit defeat.

My training regime involves trekking, unroped and without using the escalator, from the Central line platform to ground level at Marble Arch Underground station. With each of the 146 steps, I gain in strength and hope. Yet my dreams are soon to be shattered.

Fate intervenes in the form of an attendant blocking my path to the new artificial mound that fills the void on the traffic island beside John Nash’s triumphal arch. “You have to book in advance,” she insisted – adding that all tickets were gone for the day.

Retreating to base camp is the only option. I cross the road to Pret a Manger.

So far, my pain has yielded no gain. From the mezzanine, I gaze at my still-unclimbed adversary – and survey my dwindling supplies.

A few smears of beetroot are all that remains of the falafel and crushed chickpea wrap that was intended to see me through the morning.

Time to dig deep. Buried in a pocket of my all-terrain trousers is a credit card. Within minutes, a wholewheat avocado, olive and sun-dried tomato roll is mine, along with a latte. My spirits are lifted.

Talking of credit cards: Westminster City Council now has a £6m void in its accounts. Residents are footing the bill for the Six Million Pound Mound, which is costing twice as much as estimated.

I log on to the Mound’s website to see that, in fact, some tickets are available for early evening. Ping! Not an instruction to self-isolate, but an email attachment with a barcode. I wonder…

Sometimes you must hold your nerve and take a chance. I shrug off the comfort and wifi of Pret and try again. I am technically seven hours early, but the bar code gets me in.

A deep breath (I am not carrying supplementary oxygen) and the ascent begins.

The Incas were on the right track, fashioning steps from bare rock to make journeys through the towering Andes more feasible. But frankly the South American civilisation missed a trick. A steel staircase with a sturdy handrail makes for a much easier trekking experience than taking the Inca Trail over the 14,000-foot Dead Woman’s Pass to Machu Picchu.

Mountaineers can focus so closely on the prize waiting high above that they fail to appreciate the surroundings. I pause to appreciate what the council calls the “green aesthetic incorporating a foliage overlay, encompassing grass, trees and associated greenery” – a feature notably absent from my last mountaineering attempt on bleak, treeless Aconcagua in Argentina.

As I make a final push on the peak marked enigmatically on my map as W1H 7EL, my altimeter edges towards 79 feet – and informs me that, had I brought a kettle, water would have boiled at just 99.79C, rather than the full sea-level 100C.

Just as you can see Mount Kenya from the summit of Kilimanjaro, anyone conquering the Marble Arch Mound is able to view the pinnacle of the Shard and the London Eye.

I imagine the view from either of those perches of the artificial hillock is less impressive. But with one-fifth of shops in Oxford Street permanently shut as a result of the pandemic, and footfall below half pre-Covid levels, something had to be done.

The project may be well over-budget and, well, underwhelming, but it has got people talking. And, unlike Aconcagua, it is within Zone 1 of the London Underground. If you are in the capital before September (when a £4.50 charge comes in), check out the Six Million Pound Mound.