The NUMBER 33 Route

Fulwell Station to Hammersmith Bus Station

Thursday March 21, 2019

This seemed to be the perfect route to combine with a fresh Spring day, even if the weather could have been sunnier, as we passed some of the leafier suburbs of SW London.

I had no recollection where Fulwell was, and certainly it is hardly a transport hub with only two trains an hour out of Waterloo; its station looked very rural, in a bit of a time warp and of course not staffed. (Though we have been here before before  So naturally we set off in the wrong direction finding the rather handsome Fulwell Bus Garage, which is impressively grand, having been built originally as a tram depot and now shared between two bus companies, also occasional host to historic displays.

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The 33 when we located it is unsurprisingly a single decker but as the first boarding passengers we secured window seats. I saw this as very much akin to a country village bus (even if the villages are called Fulwell, Teddington, Twickenham then Richmond) and it was at the villages that the passengers boarded , with fewer between these ‘hubs’. The passengers too were very homogenous being largely white women of a certain age…

Leaving Fulwell behind, we sort of followed the river for a while if you can imagine a sinuous blue snake with the 33 as a slightly straighter red one, and with very occasional glimpses of water. 

Teddington is famous for its lock but today we saw its more 19^th & 20^th century side, complete with blooming forsythias and blossom trees.

Teddington Memorial Hospital is now a walk-in centre but started life as a cottage hospital then rebuilt as a ‘memorial’ after World War 1, and it is good to see these local centres still offering community services .

Also offering to the community are Cavan Bakeries , clearly a very local and well established small chain.

Also local, though more normally associated with Chiswick, the Hogarth Pub reminded us of the artist who never missed an opportunity to comment socially. 

However the nearby Blue Plaque was for an Edward Whymper , whose life proved to be more colourful than some of this era.

Waldegrave Road, which the bus follows, is named for the aristocratic family whose main local connection was to inherit nearby Strawberry Hill from Walpole. This absurd Gothic vanity project merits a visit , which we did not manage as part of the Museum Project, but have been there  nevertheless.

Close by is the extensive campus of St Mary’s University, not to be confused with Queen Mary’s in East London. This one specialises in teacher training and sport and is fundamentally RC. Some of their students boarded, heavily into revision mode clutching their guides and notebooks.

Other signs referring toAlexander Pope indicated that we were closing in on the site of the satirical poet and Georgian celebrity’s villa, now part of Radnor private school , where lately they discovered a purpose built grotto.

A block of flats called Thames Eyot gives you a clue as to how close we were going to the river and the next landmark – Marble Hill House – can be seen quite clearly from the opposite bank along the Thames Path; once the home of George II’s mistress it is run by English Heritage but has rather restricted visiting times. The bus is rarely requested to stop here so we always have blurry photos…

On to Richmond , the busiest of the town centres we passed but of course there are plenty of other buses (and trains) on offer here. The High Street can be slow but commerce is currently slow too, so with fewer idling shoppers we passed through quite quickly and out in the direction of Sheen passing the Christian Science Centre which is decidedly less lovely than the adjacent gracious homes full of blooms and many signs of spring.

Sheen High Street, which is essentially a stretch of the South Circular Road, is quite elongated and somehow continues to support a variety of businesses, independent and other. This included an ice cream parlour – a venture I would usually view as a folly in London between the climate and the pollution – who would like sprinkles on their ‘gelato’?

Before the bus has a chance to get entangled with Putney’s traffic it turns left and across the very walkable Barnes Common, the route of the Beverley Brook comes through here. The daffodils were on the decline but were still rewarding as we sped along the bus lane of Castelnau passing endless stationary traffic . The bus was really busy from this point and we were pleased to have reasonable weather – it is not long since we had passed along here on the 270 in such bad weather we needed the on board announcement to tell us where we were….so this was far more pleasant.

Castelnau ends at Hammersmith Bridge, which is not really designed for heavy traffic, but is one of the delights of this route so there we were back in North London and an inner London borough which has packed in its social housing wherever it can. Talking of which, we passed a block with a stylish embellishment.

By the time we reached the flyover most passengers were preparing to get off for the station – though Richmond offered some connections Hammersmith Underground was clearly where most of the passengers were heading.

Unsurprisingly the modest 33 is offered a berth downstairs in this two storey bus station and that is where we got off all ready to catch our route of the day: the 27.

This had been a most enjoyable unhurried but steady trip which included two river crossings and two grand houses as well as clear evidence that Spring had arrived.