The Number 70 Route

Tuesday 11 May 2010

A week's gap in our journeys for reasons I won't go into in case you are reading this over a meal, but Mary, Linda and I were all set this week, and walked through parts of Acton from our first bus to board the 70 at noon in Horn Lane.

A single decker bus, it was busy all the way, with people getting on and off with shopping, and a number of large buggies.  We headed down the Uxbridge Road, here called Acton High Street, and were interested to see a green grocers that had not gone over to the plastic basin sales method.  We also passed a Passmore Edwards Library, so we are able to note what an all-round good guy he was.  Without him and Carnegie, we wonder how many London boroughs would have libraries.

 We noted the EYCIS centre and the Michael Flanders Centre, opened by the great man's widow shortly after his death, and catering for the elderly.  Then we reached Acton Central Station and Acton Park, pleasingly springlike though the weather had clouded over, and then the King Fahad Academy, celebrating its silver jubilee this year.  Acton, by now East Acton, had become rather village like, with small cottages opening straight onto the pavements.

Soon we were over the A40 and passing Hammersmith Hospital and then Wormwood Scrubs Prison.  The attractive white painted blocks of flats that are called Pankhurst House and Nightingale House seem to indicate a feminist enclave, but I can't find any explanation of their names. Barlby Road brought us to the Kensal Road and the Grand Union Centre (and Canal) where we looped into and out of what we think of as 'Sylvia's Sainsbury's' before heading down Ladbroke Grove as far as Westbourne Park Road, and swung left, entering Notting Hill, with its pram shops, fine houses large and small, trendy restaurants, as well as the Portobello Road Market.

The bus took us round Whiteley's, and on past the Catholic Church of St Therese of Lisieux and the Anglican Church of St Mary Abbot, so we could have had both earthly and heavenly delights had we not been pressing on towards Kensington.  Along past Kensington Palace and Hyde Park, we turned right into Queen's Gate, with a Statue of General Napier as well as a blue placque for the ex-Hungarian Physicist Dennis Gabor.

We reached South Kensington Station at 13.00, after an hour of enjoyable West London travel.