Wednesday 27 March 2013

The E1 Route

Monday 25 March 2013

'E' is for Ealing, though I am not sure what Gove and his phonetic readers make of it, and we had arrived at Ealing Broadway, or at least round the corner at Haven Green at 3.45.  This was an afternoon trip, as I had a previous commitment in the morning, but Linda had tolerantly fitted in with the plan.

It was cold.  No, it was very, very cold, and the bus stop area of Haven Green was heaving with people, shoppers and schools students mainly.  There was good cycle parking, so some people were going to get home more easily than the bus passengers.  Linda's phone (at least one of us is modern... ) told us that two E1s were due, but the first one arrived at 4.05, and was besieged by about 100 people, so I persuaded Linda to wait for the second, and at 4.10 we climbed to the upstairs of a restfully quiet bus, and got the front seats.  This was to be a short trip, taking us only as far as Greenford.

We came rapidly into residential streets, several of them with attractive plasterwork and tilework details.  Some of these substantial properties have been divided, but several seemed to be single homes.  Some had optimistic solar panels on their roofs.

Going along Sutherland Road to cross Argyle Road made us assume that the road namers knew the old counties of Scotland, and then we turned right into Drayton Green, which has nothing to do with Scotland.

We saw the Ark of Noah Bilingual Nursery (it has taken me a while to ascertain that the two languages are French and English, as they don't seem to have their own website) and then Drayton Green Station and the Gurdwara next door to it.  There was a fine statue of a Sikh Warrior in the car park, but we could not get a photo as we were heading towards Drayton Manor High School and a fresh input of pupils who had clearly stayed a little later.  We came to Cuckoo Lane, and had time to notice that the Havanna Cafe offered Polski Kuchnie, which may explain the extra 'n' in the name.



We were heading down hill, now, with extensive views to the north. As we came past the smartly painted White Hart Inn, we caught up with the E1 in front, the one we had declined to squeeze into.


We went past Brentside High School, which we had visited from a different angle on the first bus of our afternoon, and over the River Brent, to get to the terminus on Greenford Broadway at 4.30.  The journey is meant to be 18 minutes, so this was pretty close.





No comments:

Post a Comment