The H 20 Route

Thursday 27 June 2013

Another day, and another brief trip on the H buses.  Linda and I met at Twickenham Station, in order to travel from the Twickenham Tesco's to the Civic Centre in Hounslow.  It was one of those days when the most that can be said for the weather was 'at least it's not raining', thouigh at least we had some blue sky.  We walked up past the stadium (yes!  heading in the right direction) to reach the Ivybridge superstore where, happily, a bus was waiting.  Sadly, Abellio does not regard cleaning their buses as a priority, so don't blame Linda if some of her photos are a little smeary.

We turned out of Tescos, and into the large estate behind it, which may still include some public housing, and admired the Ivybridge mural, created by the Children of the Ivybridge Estate, with support from Hounslow Council.

Then we headed along the main road towards Isleworth, passing the Isleworth Library and Leisure Centre, and glimpsing a blue plaque on a house to the right.  We think this may be to remember Ian Riches, a post-impressionist artist who moved into Isleworth in 1876, but I can't find anything else about him.

At the Royal Oak pub, we crossed The Duke of Northumberland's River, not a river at all, and frankly rather puny in the eyes of those of us who know the New River between Ware and Stoke Newington. Then, passing a small green space inhabited by crows (Linda does not like crows), we came into residential streets again.  Some are in the process of being improved, and we admired the punning nature of the builder's van, hoping the force was with him (or her);  some have already been improved, and almost all had hardened from gardens.

The small parade of shops as we came towards the railway bridge did at least have several food shops, of varying types:  too often we see dry cleaners, betting shops and kebab places, leaving people with no choice but to take the bus to the superstore.


By now the noise of aeroplanes was very loud, and they seemed to be flying much lower than they were last week.  Also the bumps in the road were extremely aggressive around here, and out bus was jumping in the air quite often.  We came to the Shire Horse Pub, which seems to have had a chequered past, and is apparently closed now.

The Sun pub, on the other hand, with its bright sun, looked fairly prosperous, and brought us into Hounslow.  We had not previously noticed that Hounslow has a market in its pedestrianised area, but we did not pause to shop, as our bus driver headed on towards the Civic Centre, a bit out of the town, where out journey finished at 11.05.

We gave him a card, and told him we were impressed with his handling of the Hounslow traffic calming bumps, and had time to look at the warning anti-rat signs around the attractively landscaped grounds of the centre, before hopping back onto the bus to get to our next route.