The Number 31 Route

Thursday 3 January 2019

Aiming at the 16, which goes, as you know, from Cricklewood, we started from Camden, to enjoy the 31 as it winds around north and west London to get to White City.  London is still startlingly empty, so we twiddled around Bayham Street (one of several dozen Charles Dickens Blue Plaques) and up the High Street.

I pointed out to Linda the craft shop which has opened among all the other money lending and phone shops of this unprepossessing thoroughfare, and then we were in amongst the more remarkable shop fronts which line the street view of the Camden Lock area.

Chalk Farm Station is where people like me get to if we fall asleep on the tube, but we have never deliberately got out there.

We then passed King's College Court, offering new penthouse apartments, which puzzled us as this is clearly a 1960s construction.  But lo! they have put the new penthouses on top, and you could have a 3 bedroom one for £4,200,000.  Words briefly fail me, so here are the details.

There were other new build flats nearby, with that Tudor 'save the footprint' style which gets wider at the top, and we saw a sign for 5 exclusive Grand Design houses, but were past before we could spot the details.

This reminds me to say that London is clearly not yet back at work, as we were nipping along smartly, with few delays.

Swiss Cottage's famous Basil Spence Library was a haunt of Linda's when she was studying, and we noted that the Overground (of which we are both fans) has its HQ here.

Just as we were remarking upon the turn off to the theatre, our bus plunged left down the steep hill which takes you towards South Hampstead Station and then of course to Kilburn Park Road, with a mix of  mid 19th century and later housing.

The Oxfield School is a language school, with a splendid website (my opinion, perhaps coloured by the time it takes to get past all the advertising on my search site to find the one I actually asked for), and we also passed the RSPCA's War Memorial Dispensary and Kilburn Park Station, before getting among the huge development that is the Telford Estate, with building sites in between to fill the gaps.  These appeared to be houses being built at least in part for  Brent Council.  

When we came to a pub called The Union, with a fine ghost sign proclaiming Fuller, Smith and Turner, we realised we were crossing the canal. 'We could have walked along the tow path from Camden', I said, but we were more comfortable on a bus on this chilly day.

We passed Westbourne Park Station, and the Bus Garage, before noting the Bayswater Children's Centre in bright blue.  This was an area with many small mewses off the main road, a sign, we supposed, that we were on a main thoroughfare which had once had a need for horse-servicing facilities.

A number of the shops had more-or-less seasonal plastic garland around them (we had noted some of these on previous trips, and wondered if there was a firm that supplied and changed seasonal offerings.

Portobello Road had little to offer today, and soon we were in Notting Hill, travelling straight west to pass Holland Park Station and the Road in which our Mother/in-law lived.


The green of Norland Square was cheering, though the Nannies are now in Bath.  But don't worry that standards might slip:  they are still in uniform even though it is a university.

After the horrible roundabout at the end of the road, we were nearly there, with White City marked on the road and we turned into the historic Bus Station at 10.55.

This had been an interesting journey, with much changed since the last time we rode this way.