The Number 29 Route

Thursday 24 January 2019
This was the start of the journey which would lead us to the Number 20, waiting coyly in Debden Broadway, so we made a prompt start, making use of the facilities in the National Gallery before boarding the bus at 10.10.

Up the Charing Gross Road, we passed a couple of theatres, before spotting the Blue Plaque for Al Bowlly. You can see and hear him here.  This 'British' singer was born in a Portuguese colony of Greek and Lebanese parents.  I only mention this because of the ridiculous fake and damaging nationalism being touted by some of our more random politicians at the moment.

Then on, past Leicester Square tube Station, to spot a clothes shop called 'A Child of the Jago'. The clothes look pretty nice on the website, but it seems an odd name for luxury goods, since the title of that of an 1896 novel about a child born and dying in one of the Shoreditch rookeries.

There is also going to be a great new retail-and dining-thing called Central Cross.  I have a feeling it is on the site of the former Central St Martins Art College.

Then we came to the slow traffic which is the identifying mark of the Elizabeth Line works. We liked the hoardings advertising Foyles and providing glimpses into the future residential-retail-and-dining development which will be above it all.

Proceeding up the ~Tottenham Court Road was also slow, because of the continuing transformative works of the West End Project. They are also building a new Proton Therapy Centre at University College Hospital, which also slows the traffic.

But in due course we arrived at Heals and then Warren Street, and crossed into the Hampstead Road. Here we ignored the works connected with HS2, possibly the most pointless infrastructure plan (in its southern incarnation) ever.

On towards Camden's High Street, we passed the former Carreras building, still embellished with black cats from when one of the best selling cigarettes was Black Cat.

The Lyttleton Arms used to be the Southampton Arms, involved in the 1920s gang violence depicted in Peaky Blinders.  It's now named after Humphrey Lyttleton, so you can read about the great man here.

Traffic was not nearly as slow as it sometimes is, and soon we were over the Regent's Canal and passing the playing fields and the terraces built when the Jewish Free School moved to Stanmore.  Given the odd meaning of 'free school' these days, they mostly just call themselves the JFS.

Along here, an inspector came on board, though this is not a bus with multiple entry points, and so we doubted if he 'caught' many people.

Before long, we were up towards Holloway and the Nag's Head, where many public housing blocks were financed by the City of London in the 1950s, since they had plenty of money and no land, and Islington had the land but no money.





Up the Seven Sisters Road, unchanged since we were here on the number 4 a few weeks ago.  But we liked the fabric and clothing shops, and they kept us happy till we reached (but did not divert into) the Finsbury Park interchange, as the bus station is now called.  Strangely, the clothing stands under the railway bridge were not operating.  Perhaps they are on holiday.

Finsbury Park is amazingly extensive, and has been constantly used by local families since it opened in 1869.  As the bus headed up Green Lanes, the traffic was, as always, sufficiently slow for us to enjoy the green outlook. We crossed over the New River, and I reminded Linda what an excellent walk it offers.

Green Lanes is a splendid mixtures of Greek and Turkish shops and businesses.  We could not help feeling that, if negotiations about the future of Cyprus happened in this area, things would get sorted quite rapidly and pragmatically

We find ourselves surprised at the frequency and regularity of this route, since it parallels tube lines all the way: Northern Line to Camden, and Piccadilly Line all the way to Wood Green.  And here we were, at Wood Green Station at 11.10, after a shorter journey than the predicted.