The NUMBER 71 Route

Chessington World of Adventure to Kingston (Cromwell Road Bus Station)

Friday November 15 2019

Well, the last time we rode this suite of three routes it was Spring time whereas today was a grey, cold and drizzly day where the inside windows of the bus were as misted up as the outside, even though we were the only passengers.

Linda caught the train from Vauxhall with just three minutes to spare (Jo had been half an hour early) and Chessington South is the end of the line – we took a 71 to get us to the start of the route – the impressive entrance to Chessington World of Adventures, looking more than a little bedraggled.

The bus stop indicated a journey of 35 minutes which seemed a bit optimistic, but the pleasant and chatty driver said it would probably take about 40 given the road disruptions in Kingston – as Jo had guessed correctly, these are down to creating newer safer cycle tracks and triggered a discussion as to whether cyclists actually use them: eventually seems to be the answer.

We set off past all the large and clean-looking industrial units that line this part of the route and then turned right to serve first the station and then a large and tidy-looking estate, which is where the first passengers got on, with buggies or shoppers.  As we approached Chessington North ( Do NOT alight here for World of Adventure) there were clusters of shops round St Mary’s Church and clear signs these used to be more scattered villages ‘filled in with 19^th- 21^st century homes.

Through the raindrops you could just about make out some fine autumn colour, though the Chessington Oak pub seemed to lack one – perhaps ‘sizzled away’ as one of the chain of pubs that promises to ‘sizzle’ all their food.

Soon Chessington merges into Hook, also in its time a village but now blighted by the Hook interchange, where we crossed the A3.  Hook Parade advertised itself with one of those boosting and bracing banners exhorting the locals to, well, shop locally and seemingly much loved by local authorities trying to boost forgotten corners of their areas, but the shops were mainly of the tyre and battery variety.

‘The Maypole’ is the name of both a pub and a bus stop – always slightly risky as the pubs can re-name or disappear quite suddenly , but this one seemed to be safe for the time being.  Also between Hook and Surbiton was another stop named Lovelace Gardens (there was a school too) leading us to speculate as to whether Richard Lovelace, the poet ever lived round here but even the very detailed Wikipedia entry seems unclear as to where he was born, offering me Holland, Woolwich or Kent but in his colourful 40 year old life he does not seem to have passed or dwelt here.  Someone suggested maybe the Lovelace connection was Ada, but there is no obvious link there either.

After that digression, on to Surbiton which, in its steady way, has remained largely unchanged since we last passed hereabouts; we see it as a ‘gateway to Kingston’.  Passing the back of Sainsbury’s is unedifying but we were cheered to see a trio of workers putting up Surbiton’s Christmas tree and though they had a small crane on the back of their lorry they were insisting on hurling the light garland at the tree, in a rather dissolute way…  As someone who has enough OCD to make sure the tree lights are well distributed I found this casual approach a bit unnerving, but I expect the end result will be good enough.  Surbiton is one of those centres that went in for a town clock - this one is free standing and still keeping time.

The work to improve Kingston’s cycle lanes was now obvious and they seem nearly complete though with some gaps still to fill between Surbiton and Kingston.  As this route passes bits of the Kingston College (now in new premises), the Crown Court and the County Hall employees of those three establishments should find the additional cycling routes helpful?

Very soon we were passing Brook Street from where our next route was due to leave but the 71, after losing most of its by now numerous passengers to the main shopping streets of Kingston, pushes on past the station to the well laid out Cromwell Road Bus station, which we had reached in 37 minutes.

This pretty straight and straightforward route which will always serve the outlying suburbs and bring their residents into Kingston for shopping work or further onward travel had brought us nearly to the start of the 65, which you will already have read!