Now that the Elizabeth line is open, getting to London is easier for me than it ever has been. By London, I mean central London: the area of the metropolis which usually comes to mind when you hear the name. When I first moved here, it struck me as odd when I heard Londoners talk of London when referring to the city centre, as if it was a separate, different place from where we were. Yet now, I know what they mean and have started to think in the same way. The metropolis is so vast that London feels like a different place, or rather it used to. The Elizabeth Line has made it far easier and quicker for me to get up into the centre of the city; I have found I can just go up there on a whim, whenever I fancy a trundle around the royal parks.

This morning, for instance, I got wind that the extended Bond Street station is now open, so I thought I would go take a look. Of course, Bond Street is on the Jubilee Line too, but the station did not have step-free access so I could never get off there until 2017, and when it did I never particularly needed to. The Jubilee Line is also quite a bit slower and less direct than the Elisabeth line, so places like Bond Street always felt quite far away, even if they were still in London.

Thanks to it’s £300m upgrade Bond Street Station is now fully accessible though, so today I was curious to go and see what the fuss was about. Thus I simply got a bus to Woolwich and hopped onto the Lizzy Line. Twenty minutes or so later, I was in London, looking forward to a pleasant stroll through the historic parks, and remarking to myself how a place which once seemed so vast and alien now seems so compact and homely. Thanks to the opening of the Elizabeth Line London – central London – now seems within touching distance. It feels like I can really start to get to know it, like I once knew Congleton, the town where I grew up. I find myself in one of the world’s greatest cities, a global cultural, political and economic hub. Vast areas, until recently quite hard for me to get to, have suddenly been brought within my reach, and the prospect of really getting to know this city in all its fascinating diversity fills me with excitement. People around here might refer to London likes it’s a different, separate place, but that place has suddenly come much closer.

Projects like the Elisabeth Line, eye-wateringly expensive though they may be, are slowly opening up the metropolis for people like me. While it still has a very long way to go, wheelchair users like myself can get around this city like never before. That’s what makes it so welcoming, so exciting; I can’t wait to see what it does next.