The Number 293 Route

Morden Station to Epsom General Hospital

Friday November 5^th 2010

This was our second bus of a major 6 bus marathon and though we boarded in dry weather we had rain on and off all day with a heavy grey sky contrasting strangely with unseasonably warm temperatures.

Morden, as most of you will know, is the Southern end of the Northern line and the tube map indicates toilet facilities so we approached the barrier staff who kindly, but firmly pointed us towards the ‘carbuncle’ (their words) by which they meant the civic suite where we used the washrooms and Linda was able to buy a poppy (with Jo’s small change). By the end of the day Jo had lost her poppy so could reclaim Linda’s.

Talking of change, a youth boarded the bus offering a £10 note so there was some delay while a passenger, rather than the driver, managed the change. The lad then sat at the back on his phone promising his mate that he was ‘nearly there’.

This route, like most we rode during the day, was a timed service running 3 times an hour. The 293 is of course a close relative to the 93 for which I had had a personal guided tour by a friend who was born and continues to live in this area. Like the 93 it gets itself from Morden to North Cheam but by a different route, taking in more of the suburban streets that make up Lower Morden and Worcester Park, rather than major roads (A24).  The striking features hereabouts are the huge cemeteries and crematorium. At this point Garth Lane is so narrow that there is a sequence of ‘PRIORITY OVER ONCOMING VEHICLES’ notices and other traffic calming devices. Clearly a car had ignored this as we encountered the tail end of a traffic incident with the police still lingering and two ambulances and an ‘ADVANCED WARNING’ car about to depart.  You would have thought that the rows of graves might have offered some subliminal warning?

 Out we came to a crossroads named for ‘The Beverly’ as round about here the Beverly brook begins and can be followed for several miles finally joining the Thames near Fulham.

From the major road junction at North Cheam the 293 forges on alone as by now the rather bad-tempered 93s have ended their routes. It then follows the side of what is now Nonsuch park but was of course formerly the Royal Palace of  Nonsuch.

I see that the park is managed jointly by the two local authorities, that is the London Borough of Sutton and Epsom & Ewell Borough (part of Surrey), by which you will gather we were approaching Ewell. 

Royal connections are clearly reflected in local street names, and a tendency to build more recently in what is known, perhaps unfairly as the ‘pseudo-Tudor’ style, that is with a bit of half-timbering which is generously on display on the houses facing the park. There are cottages both round Cheam and Ewell village that do date back for centuries. Here are some captured earlier in the year on a stroll through the village, which still has its ‘lock-up’. The erstwhile mills on the Hogwash River also have changed their function.

 The modern focal point of Ewell village is Bourne Hall, (library, museum etc) which looked very modern when it was built some 40 years ago.  It makes for a very pleasant village atmosphere with water birds to be fed, and the local pub still open. The fact there is a by-pass for non-local traffic doubtless helps.

By now the bus, one of only a couple coming through the village, was pretty full and it was clear that most of the passengers we had taken on were heading for Epsom. This stretch of road between Ewell and Epsom is characterised by small industrial estates – called the Nonsuch of course, second hand car dealers and a local Leisure Centre.

This route in fact sails through, or more properly round, Epsom (there is a strict one way system) where we glimpsed the Playhouse. We did feel rather sorry for Abele Cottages: charming but situated now so close to a busy road it was obviously hard to keep the exterior colour washes fresh enough – even in the gloom of today they glowed pink and a light minty green.

A few hundred yards further past the town centre the bus terminates at Epsom General Hospital where the last passengers – most had got off at Epsom town to shop – disembarked. The hospital looked neither imposing nor very characterful, but later in the day following a major rail incident at Oxshott (no fatalities but some casualties) I noted the walking wounded had been brought to the A&E department there. 

A pretty and historic route that might repay repeating in different weather!

  

The Number 292 Route

Colindale (Asda) to Borehamwood 
Thursday February 2^nd 2012

This was something of a last minute addition to our pre-planning as for some reason we had no 292 on our Master List, but then I spotted it on the most recently published bus maps routes both in and out of what is now known as the ‘Colindale Superstores’. By this they mean mainly ASDA, but there is also a Wickes and the head stops were in an unpromising road wedged between the two.  We had just left a 303 and this was the longest wait of the day – really only about 10 minutes – but in the biting cold felt longer. The assembled queue of shoppers threw themselves onto the big if rather shabby double decker and we all warmed our feet in the efficient heating. Looks are not everything.

For most of the route we actually had a travelling companion who was familiar with the route and offered a limited commentary. An adult with some degree of learning difficulty, he was friendly and appropriate.  His main contribution was to tell us, more than once, that the Job Centre which used to be in Burnt Oak had now moved to Edgware and the premises taken over by Santander. It felt very much as though he had been pressured at some point to present himself at said Job centre.

Almost immediately we ran into the slow traffic which had held us up on our previous route (the 303 into Colindale Superstores), but from the height of a double decker we could see a little more easily what was happening – it seemed there were some ?emergency road works outside the Edgware Community Hospital. Jo said she saw some cables so perhaps there had been a cable theft needing a quick repair? Traffic was down to a single lane but more significantly all other traffic lights had been suppressed, and there is a major junction where Deansbrook and Camrose cross the Broadway.  This gave us all too much time to spot empty offices / defunct pubs / Peacocks the fashion chain closing and a Barclays Bank now a casino (ironic or what?). Just opposite the Dementia Care Home Mary spotted Sydney Hurry the undertaker. More unusually we saw a shop called Bukovina – Jo thought it meant meat and wine while I though it was a place and so indeed it proves to be: part of long disputed territories between Romania and Ukraine and indeed Moldavia.  The word actually means beech tree – but perhaps the shop sold meat and wine though from Romania!

We finally made it to the Station Road cross roads and what is normally slow appeared fast by comparison – we were into Edgware Bus Station and through the driver change in no time. This route continues along Hale Lane, and almost immediately the surroundings improve – well maintained blocks of flats and we crossed over the Deansbrook River.

Once through a trio of major roundabouts – Apex Corner for example and over the M1, which has just got going, we flew up the Barnet by-pass, a dual carriageway with no bus stops. Who would want to get off here, Jo wondered? Well there is a large Golf Course (where the Deansbrook rises) and some small woods, one of which has the delightful name of ‘Clump of Trees Wood’ – a bit like calling London ‘Lots of Buildings City’? By now we seemed to have passed beyond TFL domain as all the bus stops and bus furniture looked strangely green, being maintained by Hertfordshire. We had reached quite an elevated point, which I have subsequently learnt to call the South Hertfordshire Tertiary Ridge - a most unromantic name for a hill and one only a geographer could have thought up.

We had also caught the 292 in front, which would account for the dearth of passengers. Our travelling companion was still with us – he had been telling us that he preferred living in the country as people were more friendly and we were not sure what he had in mind until he got off at this point – firstly there was the Sterling Retail Park and then a vast estate looking to me like what we used to call a London overspill… built to house families displaced by World War II bombs or those wanting a better life, as indeed our travelling companion had found. After the housing came the light industrial areas and this seemed to consist mainly of rows and rows of second hand cars – Jo dropped off at this point (and who can blame her?) and came to as we passed a block called Cardif Pinnacle – she wondered at the spelling mistake of Wales’ first city and I assumed it was something to do with all the cars we had passed – both wrong as it is something to do with credit card risk assessment.

The next section of the journey took us through Elstree, which is famed for its studios and they now have a heritage walk with little signs to match. Until I Googled this I was not aware that it was initiated by the ‘On the Buses’ website – a coincidence I promise you. Certainly all the lamp posts are now hung with images from Elstree’s illustrious history of film-making and we had good fun as we tried to identify them as we swept through: rather too many of those C3POs and Darth Vaders and much Stanley Kubrick (the director who never left the UK and recreated all sorts on these film lots, Vietnam included).

 

The station, to which we would return very shortly, has a dramatic mural which detracts from the rather ordinary frontage. The bus plods on past the Kinetic  Shopping Centre (get it) and through a further housing estate looking a bit deserted in the bleak midwinter, crossing a small stream and some local ponds that today were frozen, though the catkins were nice. For some reason all the streets were named after Northern towns and locations so we shuddered to a halt at Gateshead Road – the signs had said beware of road humps to save pedestrians but our driver was by now in haste to finish so we bounced our way over rather than round the humps.

The trip took about 40 minutes but we had come over 16 miles from Central London – quite a distance for a bus that nearly wasn’t – and we would have arrived sooner but for the delaying road works near the start of the trip.

The Number 291 Route

Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital Woolwich to Woodlands Estate
Thursday October 20^th 2011

We had arrived at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital via the 244 and almost without drawing breath stepped straight onto the 291, another small single decker route that poddles round Woolwich – poddles is perhaps a little unkind because it has quite a sinuous route to follow and some narrow double-parked roads also. Being a hospital route that runs four times an hour it will always have passengers, especially during the busy out-patient morning period. This particular incarnation of the hospital dates from 2001 when it was re-built under a PFI initiative bringing together some pretty historic foundations, which date back to the Crimean War – having sent Florence Nightingale to look after the sick at the front Lord Herbert continued to be interested in healthcare back in the UK. The modern building seems faintly insubstantial (it looks like composite portakabins).

Talking of modern structures, the first sight to greet you is a largish white structure on the common opposite, which looks much like a plastic marquee (it was flapping a bit in the wind on this lovely autumn day) and proves to be the Olympic Shooting  facility. From one side it was oddly like an iced cake adorned with Smarties, and as we passed today they were adding the finishing touches to the landscaping . I suppose if there are any shooting related casualties they can get swift medical attention!

After descending Repository Road – this was a rather hilly route – we entered Woolwich town centre this way and noticed signs of post-riot recovery with the burnt out pub now boarded in, rather than cruelly exposed. .

Leaving Woolwich via Burrage Hill meant another ascent and passing the defunct Lord Raglan pub – another veteran of the Crimea conflict (the Lord not the pub) whose main legacy to leave a new way of attaching sleeves to jackets, probably because he had lost an arm during various campaigns, eventually dying like so many of dysentery complications in the Crimea.  By the time the bus climbed up yet another hill the housing stock was older – we presume the whole lower dockyard area would have been a prime target for German bombers.

Plumstead Common in the sunshine (our trip on the 51 and 53 had been in the snow) was quite a revelation and we skirted nearly two of the sides to then strike off past the Garland Road clinic.

The bus destination had been ‘Woodlands Estate’ but it was far from obvious when or where this was – only eagle-eyed Jo spotted when just after the clinic the destination indicator changed back to Queen Elizabeth Hospital: the bus loops slightly round the houses here but back down by the clinic to rejoin the route out.

As we came back round the common we noticed all the parked cars and were not sure why that might be – there were some dog walkers but not enough to justify all the cars and it seemed a bit far from the station?

The route back allowed us to see in more detail the different bits of the army which still have homes round here – an Artillery Division and DSG, which look from the outside rather like a light industrial unit. 

Finding out what they do – basically light repairs for the Navy and Air Force – means somewhere service men are sitting on base waiting for the guys with their spare parts to arrive to get the ‘washing machines’ to work…

You can access their site here but might want to refer their prose to the ‘Plain English’ campaign:

‘Our wide range of capabilities plays a key part in the provision of cost-effective through life capability management.’ ???

The presence of a few guys in combat fatigues (said she who finds a man in uniform most attractive) indicated that these were real sailors/airmen not a PR dream from the Ministry of Defence.

That just about brought our round trip back to the starting point having taken us 45 minutes there and back.

Since taking this route not long ago Greenwich has become a  Royal Borough to reflect its historic royal links from dockyard  and palace days. See also route 286 

The Number 290 Route

Monday 18 October 2010

Linda and I had arrived at the Garryowen Bar in Twickenham on our first bus of the day, the 110, and the 290 uses the same stop, so we sat on a wall and waited. The bus timetable calls it the Twickenham Rugby Tavern, but it has been the Garryowen for some time, as we know from previous visits.  I had thought that the ‘up and under’ type of forward kick was called after a person, but it seems it is a club in Limerick.

Anyway, we were pleased when a double decker 290 appeared; but our delight was short lived, as a single decker rolled up behind, driven by an engineer, and the driver swapped:  this was to be an entirely single decker day.  Still, we were off at 12.45 and were the only people on the bus till we got into the middle of Twickenham a few minutes later. 

This was clearly to be a day for noticing pubs, as we came to the William Webb Ellis, named for the man whose ‘fine disregard for the rules’ appears to have invented the game of Rugby. But we’re not exclusive and we also admired the village pump with clock attached or possibly clock with pump attached.

Shops were also interesting:  a Romanian Relief Fund shop, about to give up its lease, and a shop selling biltong and other South African goodies.

In Twickenham Green we came to the Prince of Wales Pub, with the Feathers on the front, but a chunky picture of Bertie, later Edward VII on the side, which I suppose dates the pub to the end of the 19^th century. 

At this stage, our driver’s radio told him that the engineer who swapped the buses had left some paperwork, so we paused until a van arrived to collect it.

We thought ‘Dirty Dogs’ a strange name for a grooming parlour, but were even more surprised that Squires Garden Centre was celebrating its 70^th anniversary.  It seemed to us that 1940 would not have been a very propitious year for starting a garden centre. But of course the sign was an old one, and Squires had actually been founded in 1935 as a result of the founder being made redundant from his former job.

‘Dig for Victory’ is clearly a strong slogan around here, as we passed a huge expanse of allotments before veering away from the M3/A 316 roundabout to pop into and out of Sainsburys, then up onto the A 316 to pass the Kempton Steam Museum based around what was once the HQ of the Metropolitan Water Board. It looks like a place worth returning to for a visit.  We also passed signs to Kempton Park Race Course, before entering Spelthorne, with its large Sports Centre and a very modern church called the Iglesia Ni Cristo This, it appears, is a Philippine-based breakaway church with mainly Roman Catholic beliefs.  We continue to be amazed at the range of religious experiences available to people living in the London area. 

 

It was in Spelthorne that we noted the Black Dog Pub .  Clearly the pub name has nothing to do with Winston Churchill’s periods of depression, because there was a cheerful picture of a mutt on the side of the pub.  The War memorial had an angel on the top, or perhaps it was a personification of Victory, but our bus was moving too fast for detailed scrutiny. 

 Over the River Crane, and along past Fordbridge Park, we entered the Parish of Staines, as identified by the very modern Christ Church, and wiggled along a real country lane (aside from the houses on both sides!) We came to Staines Station, and then into the town.

We were puzzled by the Gariba pub – why would a pub in Staines be named after a small town in Ghana – but the wonders of the web indicate that its real name is the Garibaldi. The Italian hero was popular with the public in Britain in the middle of the 19th century. It seems the pub is now closed, and if the internet reviews are anything to go by, we are not surprised. 

Passing the Elmsleigh Shopping Mall, we turned into Staines Bus Station, flanked on one side by a huge Matalan, but on the other by attractive greenery and landscaping.  It was 13.35, so the journey had taken longer than advertised, for no particular reason that we could determine.  We think that the timings on bus stops are often rather imaginative.

The Number 289 Route

Elmers End Green to Purley (Tescos)
Tuesday  February 2^nd   2010

This was the closing bookend to an earlier route and proved to be a Tesco to Tesco service – not that we are their loyal customers but they do usually have toilets. Last bus route it was Morrisons to Asda!  

On this day we left Elmers End behind us heading South west on a small single decker bus busy, inevitably between the key shopping areas. Today we had one of those occurrences, which slowed our progress early on, namely a cash paying passenger, which makes you realise how rare that is nowadays. .

Almost immediately we had green spaces in the shape of Long Heath Gardens and Ashburton Park and a very nice bicycle track called  Waterlink Way. Not restricted to cyclists of course: for walkers, it links the Wandle Way and the Green Chain walk, which we have passed on earlier routes. We crossed the tram (or rather they crossed us) at least twice and we could probably have achieved this journey more quickly and comfortably by rail, but that’s for another day.

Our driver today was very considerate, waiting for the slower older passengers and the bus was busy round the key shopping points.

Closer to the city Centre – Croydon is a city in its own right – we passed a funeral just entering the RC ‘Our Lady of Reparation’ church. On an interesting word association riff, for some this conjured up visions of cobblers and dressmakers making good, for others what the defeated nations, previously the aggressors owed the rest of us post-war!

We passed both East and West Croydon stations and the bus does a loop north to take in Thornton Heath, where the drivers changed at the garage.  Round the Mayday hospital there is an intense South Indian belt with the Nanak Centre, the Croydon Mosque, the Chat Patta, Chennai, Chennai Dosa and Taste of Kerala restaurants and Neelam Fabrics. Body and soul catered for. So we were a bit puzzled to find the Belgium Fruit and vegetable Market – ‘name 5 famous Belgians’ has perhaps become name 5 Belgian vegetables? 

 Then down the Ampere Way, which of course passes the Croydon IKEA and other large retail outlets.

Going straight ahead and uphill (you begin to notice the climb and potentially the view from the North Downs) the 289 proves to be the only route passing the site of Croydon Airport  complete with its de Havilland Heron plane (the last flight went in 1959), famous for being the airport to which Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938 and where he waved the piece of paper claiming to have achieved ‘peace in our time’. However the Battle of Britain memorial  along the Purley Way indicates quite how wrong he was.

Croydon is famous for its large Shopping Centres: the Whitgift and along here the Colonnades and to some extent this impacts on all the little shops. This is where the hairdressers come into their own and today we had:

• Salon profile
• Kriss Kutz
• Kiss Kut
• New Salon
• Cutting It Fine

                                                       Beefy Boys on the other hand proves to be a café!

The bus seems to run out of steam here in Purley: having made the ascent it seemed scared to progress on to more rural Surrey and so left us adjacent to the Purley Way Tescos and Purley Station up on its hill.

A trip to Purley was something of a sentimental trip for Jo as it was her substantive UK family home during the Sixties – two very high bus numbers will eventually take us even closer but today was not the day to get out and have a nostalgic wander around.

Talking of ‘cutting it fine’ I managed to miss my train back but still feel quite kindly disposed towards the very friendly 289.

PS Bit pushed for photos here between the rain /condensation and low windows things look poor. 
Thanks to Tim for updating the index.

The Number 288 Route

Queensbury (Morrisons) to Broadfields Estate (Edgware)

Thursday February 2^nd 2012

A surprisingly bright but bitingly cold day found the three of us ready to go in front of the large Morrisons store adjacent to Queensbury station. The single decker 288 seems to be allowed to wait in the store’s car park but not to take on passengers there, and we were by no means the only ones stamping our feet to keep warm.

After turning, we passed by the station named for the area. Queensbury was apparently chosen by public competition in the 1930s, when this was all new housing for sale out on the Bakerloo Line.  In 1978 the line became the Jubilee line, now probably the fastest service with most trains.  A roundabout or a circus greets the arriving passenger, which in its time was surrounded by thriving shops – today few remain.

This was clearly a route to serve the homes back from the main roads as we headed along a series of residential streets generous enough to take a single decker bus; Camrose Avenue appeared to be on a bit of a ridge as we sailed along. Many of the house owners had given their front gardens over to growing bricks and car ports as is often the way, though we did see some large conifers. As we approached Little Stanmore, a recreation ground, we spotted the Krishna Avanti school – the first state funded Hindu School, which opened in its own premises in September 2009. That it was greatly oversubscribed gives you an idea of both its popularity and the local community.

Shortly after this, the only landmark in an otherwise homogenous area of housing, we emerged onto the Edgware Road at this point disguised as Burnt Oak Broadway, though we were well past the eponymous station. We made quite rapid progress (I only say this as later in the day we made painfully slow progress along this stretch of main road) and joined a clique of other buses heading to the crossroads and into Barnet Borough, one of London’s largest, and towards Edgware Station. We had recently heard a news item saying that nail parlours were the only new shops that are not part of chains to thrive on the high street and sure enough we passed three in quick succession.  It is also an unregulated business. On the plus side it employs mainly women.

The bus of course calls in at Edgware Station, where the drivers changed, but at least covering this route we did not have to backtrack on ourselves but could head straight out again and down Edgwarebury Lane – this is one of the more historic bits of this stolid North London suburb and the village, as it was then, probably served as a resting place en route to St Alban’s for pilgrims heading that way – not quite Canterbury but still significant. Now Edgwarebury Lane has Grodzinski's bagel factory and other similar ethnic food outlets.  L’Chaim means ‘cheers’ or ‘your good health’

The other place which caught our attention was a shop called we think ‘Paperiffic’ selling paper table stationery. Being more of a lover of the other sort of stationery I thought you might like this apparently unrelated blog some-one who can clearly use IT and blog but loves  old fashioned pens and paper as well. As for the shop there are suffering from using a funky but over-elaborate font!

The bus emerges onto the very busy, dual carriageway A41 just before an impressive footbridge (you really do not want to be a pedestrian in this bit of North London) and almost immediately turns off up Broadfields Avenue. It might have been more interesting to follow the lane to its end at the Edgwarebury Cemetery but the living need the bus more than the dead as was obvious from the number of passengers getting off, and to our surprise (given that we thought there was only one stop to go) on.

20 or so minutes had passed and we were already at our destination and ready to go, but in fact the 288 turns out not to stop at a definite end-point like most routes.  Instead at this end it does a loop round the estate so we turned and headed back the way we came but along the alternative Kenilworth Road, where the rather jolly local shops were, and then back across the A41. Being wished good health and to be fruitful all in one day seemed very bounteous.

We needed to be back in Edgware for our next bus and on a warmer day might have walked but this circular loop suited us as we saw all there was to see and arrived where we wanted to be.

The Number 287 Route

Barking Station to Rainham (Abbey Wood Lane)

Monday April 18^th 2011

 Jo had a short wait as I was running a bit late but we were still able to be off at 10.10 on our double decker Route 287 which starts opposite the attractive and well-served Barking Station: 2 Underground and 1 Overground lines and a pleasant bridge.

This route does a range of one-way options to get itself facing out of Barking and heading south closer to the Thames, passing the impressively large Barking bus garage on the way.

Both of us had picked up a ‘metro’ newspaper with an article claiming the local pedestrians needed yellow lines on pavement but we peered in vain as we passed. In fact this route clings hard and fast to Ripple Road even passing through Rippletown. Sadly it was not a case of raspberry Ripple on this warm spring day, but rather passing over rail and streets on high built bridges and then alongside the A13 flyover, so the unusual sensation swings from one of being ‘King of the World’ from the top deck to being rather dwarfed by a heavily used trunk road. Housing Blocks alongside main roads always look a bit desolate and we noted some CLASP built ones remained hereabouts.

The  Rippleside Cemetery dates from the late 19^th Century inevitably when there was a big boom in cemetery building, and this one still has ‘vacancies’ it seems. 

Though not actually the A13 the major road we were following was impressive, fairly new and with several lanes enabling the bus to go at quite a speed.  Out of the rush hour and during half-term the route did not seem very popular but we surmised at times it must be busy enough to justify a full double decker service.

Goresbrook seemed to be the next landmark with its leisure centre and then another major interchange, after which we hit the whole stretch that once housed the Ford works – the workers’ car parks remain weedy and overgrown, local shops have folded and what was once a bustling industry seemed to have little more than some scrapyards.

The CEME - a college for mechanics and engineers – has a campus here in what seems to be referred to as the Thames Gateway, a cross-river cross-local-authority regeneration education training sort of thing. It seems an enormous task given that all the land between this bus route and the River Thames, once filled with industries built around the motor works, is now desolate: that is a lot of space and a lot of jobs to find./create.    

The 287 takes a right turn away from the main road and emptiness and enters Rainham Village which is a composite of an old Essex village overlaid with later developments but retaining a villagy feel nonetheless.  It still has a village church and school, a Working Men’s Club and war memorial with quite a few shops indicating links with the nearby River Thames – a chandlers shop and Chandlers Corner – and it is really not far along the Rainham creek to the River Thames.  However the old rural farming village having been overtaken by the 20^th and 21^st century needs something of an uplift and there seem to be plans afoot called the Rainham Masterplan. The residential parts  had the usual mixture of paved over front gardens or unusual trees – a sprightly monkey puzzle. 

The bus having made excellent time lurked for a while in the village High Street where they changed drivers before heading on through a pleasant and well maintained development largely built up with bungalows to finish at Abbey Road close to a dog exercising field in just about 40 minutes.