My new Oyster Card

London residents enjoy wonderful transport facilities for getting around the capital by bus, tram, underground and regular national rail. Services are frequent, use modern high-tech vehicles and trains, and go to all parts of the city.

The fare structure has long been simplified, and payment has gone electronic: nowadays cash is not accepted, at least not on buses.

A lot of people use an Oyster Card. This is a plastic smart card you load up with credit, which you gradually use up with whatever travel you do within London. You just tap it against a special terminal when stepping onto a bus, or going through an underground barrier. When the credit runs low, you just top it up. You use the same card until it gets lost or damaged. The credit lasts forever, or until you want to stop using Oyster, when you get back whatever unused credit remains.

You can instead pay contactlessly, briefly holding your credit card (or phone) against the same terminal. But that means exposing that precious credit card or phone to a lot of people passing very close by, some of them running, and who knows which of them is to be trusted? If your card or phone were whisked out of your grasp, you wouldn't stand any chance of a successful pursuit. So one of the attractions of an Oyster Card is that your potential loss is strictly limited. That's all the public sees.

Another is that, unlike with ordinary contactless payments, you can get the benefit of any concessions allowed. So one can go to a Transport for London travel office and - having produced the necessary concession card and some ID - get one's Oyster Card linked to (say) one's National Rail Senior Railcard, and secure a useful discount on most off-peak routes. That's what my cousin Rosemary has done.

It all seems a very reasonable scheme. There's a website Oyster Online where you can top up your credit very quickly, and do other things, including plan any TFL journey and track where you've been to, and how. Some of that can be done or seen on the linked app for your phone.

Rosemary visits London from Kent as much as once a month. I have been avoiding travel to London altogether. I haven't visited central London since August 2013 - five years ago. But that is going to change. Not only are occasional visits to see my friend Roz on the horizon, but I want to see things at the museums and galleries, and generally do the 'tourist thing' on day trips now and then. So a way of getting around central London by the underground (mostly) or a bus (sometimes) without constantly shelling out money for full-cost fares is most welcome. Plus I want the valuable convenience of never having to queue for a ticket.

I've taken a leaf out of Rosemary's book, and got myself an Oyster Card. You don't have to be a London resident - anybody can apply for one, wherever they live. The scheme is for visitors too.

I applied online, and it took only a day to arrive. It came with £15 worth of credit I'd bought when applying. That should be quite sufficient for my first two visits.

With the card in my hands, I then installed the TFL Oyster Card app on my phone, and having registered the card number, the app showed my opening credit. 

That figure will reduce as I make use of the card. When, and how often, don't matter.

So, I'm all set up for my first trip to central London for years. I'll take the ordinary train to (say) London Victoria station, and then step forth from there, ready to take many photographs. And I mean 'step forth' - I will want to do 10,000 steps or more while there, and I'll have the gadget to record the achievement! It may be that my Fitbit will help me make more of an effort to get around by foot than in the past. Even if it rains.