The E11 Route

Friday 5 April 2013.

This was our third bus of the day, so Linda and I could not really complain that it was a single decker.  

We had crossed the main Greenford Broadway from the E2, and were shivering for a few minutes before the welcome sight of an E 11 appeared.  So we were on board by 11.40.  It was a bus so small that it only had one door.  It was headed to Ealing Common.  We came out of Greenford past a fine parade of shops  and a large church  before reaching the River Brent. 

At first we went along predictable lines, past Brentside High School and the playing fields of Drayton Manor School but then we swooped right into Gifford Gardens, for a tour of residential streets, narrow and with cars parked on both sides of the road, requiring skill from our Driver.  This was clearly a ‘hail and ride’ section, though not announced as such, and the driver waited patiently for a lady of mature years to cross the road and join us.  We reached Greenford Road, and went straight for a while before  looping again to reach Castle Bar Railway Station, and the dense public housing of the area some of which is being refurbished at the moment.

We passed some allotments, and Drayton Green open space, with football being played  before going over the railway at Drayton Green Station, and we were back on ground familiar from previous routes:  the sharp right turn into Sutherland Avenue, and then Sutherland Road turning into Argyle Road, and the shops of West Ealing. These include the Cherry Pye Erotic Underwear boutique and the flats where there was once a storage facility.

 

We also noted the Soapy Suds dry cleaner and launderette, and the huge Ealing Police Station, as well as an Iranian food Emporium and the Black George Pub.  I do not know why it has that name, though I can find plenty of news coverage of its troubled past, shootings, knifings and so on. 

 As we reached The Grange Pub, and began to skirt Ealing Common, we were the only passengers left on what had been a very busy bus.

At 12.10 we reached the end of Warwick Dene, and the terminating point of the route.  The driver said it would be ten minutes before he headed back, so we got off, but since I had left my notebook on board and we could not work out which way up to hold the map, we climbed back on board, and Linda offered the friendly driver a peppermint as well as our card.

So that wraps up the E buses of Ealing;  after a brief encounter with the East London Transit system, we shall be off to the Hs.

The E10 Route

Monday 22 April 2013

The only way from the end of our previous bus (the E9) was to ride it  all the way back, so here we were (yet!) again in Haven Green, Ealing, waiting for the bus that would take us to the Islip Manor Estate in Northolt.  Haven Green was so much  pleasanter in the warm sun than it had been on the freezing cold March day when we shared the space with many school pupils, so we should not have minder a long wait.  But the E10 rolled up, only a single decker, sadly, and we hopped on with many other passengers at 12.35.

We set off left along Castlebar Road, boggling at the enormous houses, several of which had become care homes or private schools. Turning right along Argyle Road, we admired the soft green of Cleveland Park and then took a left along Ruislip Road East, which felt pretty familiar after all these E buses.  Ah, the River Brent again, we remarked in a blasé tone, but it is a remarkable waterway, after all.

As well as the Gurnell Leisure Centre, there were many residential properties of all kinds as we came into Greenford, passing shops demonstrating the varied ethnicities of this area (we have talked about the Sunjam Caribbean takeaway in the past, but we also liked the way the Raghif supermarket benefited from Ealing's municipal primulas)

Then it was out of the town centre, passing the war memorial as well as signs to the London Motor Cycle Museum before getting back to the Ruislip Road and crossing the Grand Union Canal.  We knew we were getting towards Northolt when a military helicopter buzzed by.

We were puzzled by the great mounds in the park to our left, and speculated about tumuli, or mottes left over from early castles;  but it turns out we were looking at the spoil from the original Wembley Stadium and White City shopping centre, turned into a facility for public enjoyment.

 As we came under the main A40 and into Northolt itself, we liked the rustic air of St Mary’s Parish Church, the first Anglican Parish to appoint a woman, according to Wiki at least. 

The Business Park is perhaps less attractive, but then we came out into the main road and were cheered by the  charming ‘countryside clock’  before heading up through the residential area that surrounds Islip Manor Park to reach the end of the route at 13.10: a pleasant little grassy space right alongside the roaring A40.


 All in all, a pleasant trip, linking some of the areas we have got to know in the past few weeks, and with sunny weather for our last visit (the E11 having been travelled earlier.

The E9 Route

Ealing Broadway Haven Green to Yeading  

Monday April 22^nd 2013

This was my first official trip (as opposed to innumerable business and compassionate journeys) since returning from Vienna, where thanks to a weekly travel card I had criss-crossed the admittedly quite small city using all forms of transport for a mere 15 Euros. What’s more no-one ever checked my ticket, nor are there any controls to enter the buses, trams or Underground system. There is the odd punch machine but no one takes much notice. I gather the fines are pretty hefty if you do get caught ticketless so perhaps that’s enough to deter the Viennese from cheating, but it all looked a bit trusting to me. Lovely trams, now smoother than the buses, which was not the case when I was a little girl.

Anyway back to Ealing in the Spring, and that was the overwhelming experience of this route – how many green spaces there are in Ealing and the tentacles its routes reaches,  all seemed to be bursting into leaf. At last a reward for travelling several of the earlier routes in Arctic blasts.

The E9 is one of the routes which starts as what we had come to recognise as the ‘posh end’of Ealing – mansion flats overlooking the common, a huge Victorian red-brick church, and large double-fronted detached homes up the aptly named Eaton Rise, with bright pink cherry trees.  After that the homes get even more fanciful and large with turrets and driveways but these are the sort that by now have been turned into multiple flats/schools or care homes.

St Barnabas (‘a mate of St Paul’s’ Jo said helpfully for the heathen amongst us) church marks the start of Pitshnager Lane which wends its way nearly to Greenford, in true country lane style. Further along the shops, with flats above, were built in more unified style and this stretch certainly has the feel of a village, with more independent than chain shops.  ’The Director’s Cut’ proves to be a hairdresser, ‘Hook & Cleaver’ a butcher’s and Navarros a wine merchant.

Rounding the corner to drive along Scotch Common and what proves to be an extensive green space variously called Pitshanger Park with some golf course hangers on. As the River Brent is very evident through much of this trip I suspect the green spaces were left as possible flood plains, but whatever the origins we delighted in the avenues of  visibly budding trees. In one corner lurks Pitshanger Football Club which offers competitive games for 7 year olds upwards – today all there was to be seen was a solitary walker. 

If exercise is what you are after then rounding the corner brings you to the extensive car park for the Gurnell Leisure centre, and the Ruislip Road East running alongside the aforementioned river Brent, as eulogised by  John Betjeman.  You can tell that spring has gone to my head.

However there is nothing like the diversity of Greenford to bring one back down to earth, or market day. The pavements close to the Greenford crossroads are wide enough to take some market stalls. It is a wonderfully mixed area with shops adorned by different languages – as Jo said last week our Polish is improving no end but we’ll struggle with the non Latin scripts and cannot even guess what the corner greengrocer was offering without a helpful picture. Fara Charity shops  prove to be there to help fund raise for abandoned Romanian children.  The E9 has been pretty busy for its length and Greenford meant a significant interchange of passengers. Ruislip Road West is well used and by now the E9 is one of five bus routes along here, necessary I suspect to take the people from the various blocks of social housing to school, work, shopping etc.  

After crossing the Grand Union Canal (cue more greenery) the bus leaves the busy roads behind and heads down into Yeading, that is Yeading to rhyme with heading (as in football) rather than reading (as in book) but like Reading (on the way to Swindon) I am ploughing (as in plowing, not ploffing) my way through a book on the origins of English spelling but I think knowing more is making it worse. A case of less is more perhaps.

Please feel free to ignore last ramble. Talking of rambling we were by now into ‘Hail & Ride’ territory as we drove through a large 60s and 70s estate probably built over the brickworks which used to be Yeading’s main industry. There is a Yeading brook too but the bus comes to a halt alongside some local shops rather than anything more watery.

As this was the easiest way back to Ealing we got off politely for 4 minutes while the driver ‘rested’ and then returned with him to our starting point. On the return trip we spotted ‘the Civil Engineer’ presumably a tribute to Brunel, whose work helped build up the main railway lines from the West into the centre of the city.

With a trip of about 40 minutes this is one of the many E routes on offer from Ealing town centre. On the whole though we blogged our number buses in order we did not always ride them in order so having to ride 10 different but overlapping E routes has meant something of a challenge to ensure that we, and therefore you do not pass out with boredom.
Two more to go….

The E8 Route

Ealing Broadway Station to Brentford (Commerce Road) 

Friday  April 5^th 2013

Our 10.00 departure plans had been slightly thwarted by the ‘Severe Delays on the Central Line’ that characterised today, but 10.25 saw us boarding the double decker E8 outside the very unimpressive exterior of Ealing Broadway Station. This route is classed as frequent, which sometimes equals popular, and certainly for a cold mid-morning it was full enough.

Just past the station was the ‘Eight Treasures’ Chinese restaurant which led me to wonder what these might be – it seems they represent the most treasured symbols in Chinese Art though it might have been nice for Wikepedia to include the calligraphy too.  

Ealing Broadway, apart from offering us the usual range of shops, has a ‘Civic’ stretch with non-working clocks, Town Halls and Civic Centres all boasting signs saying ‘Council Tax Frozen for Another Year’. I am not sure this is altogether a good thing as underneath presumably will lurk cuts in services (we see, for example, that Wandsworth have axed meals on wheels – on the basis that the elderly can just order in their food via the Internet?) and most people’s wages have also been frozen for three years or so. The other banner was ‘Save Our Hospitals’ with NW London now facing similar struggles to keep A&E services accessible as have already played out in SE London.  This was not our first trip through Ealing so we needed some politics to keep us warm and alert.

At a time when certain sections of the media are talking about the negative aspects of immigration it was interesting to see a very omni-purpose Polish shop offering not just the usual delicatessen display but also accounting services, tailoring and hairdressing all in one, which seemed pretty enterprising to us.

Further along the Uxbridge Road come the two cemeteries, one each for the neighbouring boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.

By now we were heading to Hanwell with frequent signs to Hanwell Locks, almost certainly worth a detour if you are a fan of industrial heritage as Mr Brunel was involved – more recent enthusiasts have installed additional attractions (click here for a gentle giggle ) for smaller furry friends…

We also enjoyed ‘Noah’s Joinery’ thinking he must have had a busy year through 2012; with all that rain we had there must have been customers queuing up for his prototype ark?

By now the E8 had turned down Boston Road, named neither for Boston Lincs, nor for Boston Mass, but for Boston Manor House which somewhat to my surprise now belongs to Hounslow and can be visited. 

Further along Boston Road we were stopped briefly by some road works with a range of hard hats peering hard at something by Clitherow Road – the Clitherows having been the long-time owners of Boston Manor.

Boston Manor merges into Brentford once you’ve passed under the M4, and we approached from what I would guess is the more historic (library/war memorial) end.  Fullers, the Chiswick-based brewery, own several fine pubs along this route and they are always beautifully maintained; I can’t vouch for the beer, but certainly we were charmed by the Beehive, complete with its Griffin delivery lorry, as we approached Brentford High Street.

Brentford has a long and distinguished history as we indicated on our accounts of Routes 195 and more particularly the Number 235. Today, however, although we crossed the Grand Union with grand views we did not stop in front of the County Court but crept round the aptly named Commerce Road at the back which was full of lock-ups, trading estates, spare tyre outlets and the considerable building site for the ‘new’ Brentford.  It was also where this short  (22 minute) route terminated and we immediately boarded the altogether longer E2.

The E7 Route

Monday 25 March 2013

This was to be an afternoon trip, and Linda and I met to take the Metropolitan line to Ruislip Station, in order to get on the E7.  The weather was horrible:  grey and freezingly, face achingly cold, so we were not looking forward to waiting at bus stops.  But as we came out of the station, the E7 glided smoothly from its resting place to the convenient bus stop, and we were aboard.  The single decker was so filthy that I thought it might be an Arriva bus:  but First London has also clearly sacked its cleaners.  So you will be impressed with the photos that Linda managed to produce through the semi-opaque windows.  It was 2.55 as we left.

Turning right into Ruislip’s High Street, we were surprised to see a lot of TfL operatives but we were not clear what they were doing:  perhaps preparing for some rail replacement or other work?

The minute we turned left into Ickenham Road, the cafés and charity shops (though Age UK is now doing so much work which councils used to do that they really don’t fit the 'charity' label) were replaced by  detached and well maintained houses. These continued as we turned left again at the White Bear Pub which has the kind of website all pubs should have, full of history and jokes; and headed gently down Wood Lane to join West End Road.

There were red MoD signs to the Northwood HQ.  In the days of the Cold War, the place was called Eastlant,  and was the NATO base for the Eastern Atlantic.  Those of us who lived in this part of the world were sure that the first bomb of any nuclear war would target this and wipe out the whole area (though I never accepted impending Armageddon as an excuse for incomplete homework).

Next we came to The Bell Pub, one of several healthy looking hostelries we saw today and went over the Yeading Brook to arrive at Northolt airfield, once a significant Defence Ministry site.  The Polish War Memorial was a reminder of at least part of the history of the area. 

Once we were over the Grand Union Canal, the traffic was very slow and we realised that we were involved in the school run:  and the bus was filled with chatty school students.  We had not experienced this for many months, since we usually travel during the later morning.  The reputation that school students have for behaving badly seems to us mostly related to noise, and to be a function of several people together talking in a way that would be unnoticeable if only one or two people were doing so.  We thought we might make a collection of school strap lines: Greenford High School is ‘learning to achieve’, while Brentside High School prefers ‘learning and achieving together’.

It was still fairly green, with Ravenor Park bright with daffodils and succeeded by some allotments, not all well tended:  but as Mary and Eliza tell us, when the earth is either sodden or rock hard and anyway freezing cold, the early season digging is impossible.

Over the River Brent, and alongside Perivale Park, we came into an area of public housing, and signs to Gurnell Grove Leisure Centre, before following Argyle Road to West Ealing Station, noting the council’s polyanthus, or are they primulas,  beds.

At first I read ‘Divine Mercy Apostolate’ as ‘Apostate’, which seemed a bit unlikely and indeed was. The place is run by the Marian Brothers. We also thought that ‘Dents and Chips Away’  might be a food outlet, but it s obviously a car repair place.  We noticed, with an elderly shudder, that the Cherry Pye Boutique specialises in ‘Hen and Stag Night Novelties’, and I don’t think I can put a link to their website on what is, after all, a sober blog, and passed a former depository, now apartments.

This had been rather a residential route, so it was a novelty to see Ealing Cross, some fine new offices available to let: on other trips, especially around Croydon and Hounslow, this has been a staple. 

Finally, we came in a loop around Haven Green to reach Ealing Broadway Station at 3.45, just about the length of journey specified on the timetable.