The Number 69 Route

Friday 29 November 2019

After our long journeys of last week, we enjoyed two brief trips around North East London today.  Our first bus had brought us to Canning Town Bus Station, with its useful facilities, and we were onto the 69 towards Walthamstow by 10.10.  It made a lovely change to have blue sky after the dreary weather of the last few weeks.

We headed out under the A13 to travel along the Barking Road towards Plaistow. We passed the Celia Hammond Animal Trust, which helpfully neuters feral cats. Celia was a model in the 1960s; interestingly, Brigitte Bardot also turned to animal welfare in her later life.

Turning left along Hermit Road brought us past some little patches of green, where we admired the bright foliage of autumn, and then to the extensive East London cemetery.  The 69 is the only bus along these mostly residential streets, and there were many people boarding, presumably for shopping in Stratford.

We came over the Green Way which, as Londonist says in his walk notes, is an excellent walk, and a good use of the embankment over the great sewer.

 

Plaistow High Street has some new building about to start, as well as its charming little station and some rather fine wall art.

There is also one of those self catering hotels, its signage offering untroubled sleep.

 

So now we were in Stratford.  Am I the only person 
who thinks of the Nun Prioress* every time I come into Stratford? Probably!

*Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,  After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,  For Frenssh of Parys was to hir unknowe. Almost all of Stratford seems new since we were first here,  though not of course in more recent visits.  The London Academy of Excellence is a 6th form college,  with a fine new building, which fits in well with the idiom  of the rest of post-Olympic Stratford.
The building with Moxy written above it is a Marriott Hotel.  We passed the bus station without waiting any time at all:   surely the clouds used to be all silvery grey?   We quite liked the shiny green and blue. The Picture House announces that it is in the heart of  Stratford's Cultural Quarter, and we did notice the  University of East London, with links to Birkbeck here too.

On our way north, after passing Maryland Station, we spotted the Cart and Horses Pub, which identifies itself as the birthplace of Iron Maiden, You can get a taste (of the group, not the beer) here if you want, But we were clearly not out out of Stratford yet, as a block of newly built flats declared itself to be 'stylish apartments set in fashionable Stratford'.

But we were soon into Waltham Forest, and so supposed that the road works were to do with cycling infrastructure,  Certainly Leyton Station, which we passed after Draper's Field green space, boasted the kind of cycle parking which we associate with the TfL £30,000,000 grant

After all the newness of Stratford, we enjoyed the pretty terraces both along the route and glimpsed across the Leyton Sports Field.

Gullivers seemed an interesting name for a shop selling East European specialities; maybe it was called that before the current people took over.  There were also a couple of shops selling 'modest clothing'.

Among the pubs we noted was the Pepper's Ghost.  This is not the ancient name:  it's been The Shoe Laces recently.  The William IV, on the other hand, is an older name:  a good King to name a drinking place after since he was the monarch who ordained that people in the Royal Navy could drink the 'loyal toast' sitting down. (He had been in the navy himself while his father and brother were on the throne, and was tired of cracking his head on the deck above when standing to drink their health)


The other remarkable business we saw round here was  a cupping clinic. In fact, we saw two, but I have no comment to make about this strange treatment.

But that was it, really.  We reached Walthamstow's excellent and well designed bus station at 11.05 and ended our journey, sighing for the poor buses at Euston and King's Cross which have no such simple and clear layout.