The Number 81 Route

Hounslow Bus Station to Slough Bus station

Friday 31 January 2020

With a historic departure from the EU lurking later today we tried not to be too depressed on this 3-bus winter’s day…  We had started in White City and been through Uxbridge to arrive in Hounslow to find the departure bus stop (no passengers allowed in the horrid Hounslow Bus station ) in the same place by the lovely fruit and vegetable stall,  remembered  from years ago, which of course at this time of year is mostly full of exotic imports.

But I digress.  Our route out of Hounslow mirrored our route in so we had our camera poised to snap not just the rather forbidding Treaty Centre but the patch of soggy grass hosting a series of fairground attractions including nicely painted roundabouts – perhaps they are waiting for a sunny day to offer rides as they looked too well preserved to be abandoned.  Also hereabouts was Carpatica Cuisine, which offers ‘meat-centric traditional Romanian cuisine in a family setting’.

Hounslow House looked very new and shiny and is indeed a bringing together of civic services, leaving the old council offices for redevelopment and housing , so hopefully Hounslow’s plans will benefit the community.

The 81, like many other routes, follows the Bath Road up to West Hounslow station – pausing long enough to take on many passengers and give time to admire the station façade: a Charles Holden collaboration in Portland Stone.

The next stretch of the Bath Road is dual carriageway and bordered first by some shops but then a series of hotels and accommodation suites – for travellers with early/late or complex flights we imagine.  The bright neon of Moxy (though we read it as Maxy) proves to be low budget Marriott so yet more Heathrow friendly accommodation.  Needless to say the planes were coming low at a very steady rate.

At one of the major crossroads we noted that three of the four corners retained the original cupola rooves that the designer of the shopping parades had added in a stylistic flourish.

After the bustle of planes and hotels suddenly there was a field of cows, then one of a cereal crop – such contrasts within 2 bus stops!

We crossed over into Hillingdon Borough and then left the busy trunk roads behind to become the only TFL bus route through a series of villages starting with Cranford, then Longford with its village pump and older cottages.  I have included a more detailed map to show how close to Heathrow (and the M4/M25 interchange) they are, and where presumably any proposed third runway would go?

There were few passengers boarding but speed was restricted due to the narrow winding village streets, so the driver could slow for running passengers, which he did more than once.  The route crosses both motorways and small streams; not far off are the reservoirs which must be more than full after what seems like non-stop rain since October.  Although this is as noted the only TFL route in these parts, we noticed from a bus stop that Slough has ‘borrowed’ the Number 10 (discontinued by TFL, though in a very different part of London).

After Colnbrook, now irrevocably linked with the infamous Detention Centre, the 81 rejoins what looks like smaller version of the Bath Road .

By now we were clearly on the outskirts of Slough with a couple of schools and their pupils spilling onto the pavements and some on board – perhaps Upton Park Grammar and St Bernard’s finish a t Friday lunchtime?

This approach to Slough was very residential so I am not sure where the large and famous Slough Industrial estate might be.  Slough of course is famous, partly as the location of ‘The Office’ and before that for the Betjman poem invoking – well – bombs to fall.  It seems to me on re-reading the poem that Betjman was an arch snob: nowadays MANY people would be grateful for a home for £97 down payment and 2/6 (12½p) a week thereafter, as the prices were in 1937.

Mercifully fairly few bombs fell on Slough but the developers haven’t half made their presence felt and there are major town centre changes afoot to include both residential and retail    (though who would want to build retail with failing shops and closing department stores?).  The bus did a kind of circuit round a futuristic metal tube and then sidled into a demarcated spot in the bus station, slightly in quarantine away from Berkshire buses.

After an hour’s journey overall  we got off to find that the metallic tube was a bus shelter with cosy looking waiting areas and a café, so Slough must value its bus users.

We then went into the pretty red brick station and while Jo was wrangling her passes and I realising I had left my purse at home the railway official opined we could travel free into London provided we didn’t take the ‘green train’ (GWR) but the mauve one aka the Elizabeth line which now seems to run every 15 minutes through to Paddington.

At this point I will say that I was given a pair of London Transport Museum gift shop Elizabeth line socks for Christmas which I vowed I would not wear until I could ride the eponymous line so there were mutterings of ‘you can get your socks out now’.   However we were in something of a hurry and hungry (never a good combination) and so boarded the GWR train prepared to pay the difference to West Drayton.  At Hayes & Harlington our train drew alongside an actual moving, with passengers, Elizabeth Line train and very pretty it was too, but for now the socks stay in storage…

We had had an interesting day circling round Heathrow, where I suspect we shall soon be returning…