The Number 86 Route

Romford Station to Stratford Bus Station

Thursday March 5 2020

The weather, if anything was worse than last week as we met (unusually) for a Thursday outing. Almost the biggest thrill was the journey from Liverpool Street to Romford which was on a brand new TFL train (formerly C2C?) with the new upholstery colours designed for the Elizabeth Line, and of course walk-through carriages.  It was a smooth and quiet trip and we did remember where all the buses stop and lo! an 86 drew up.  Essentially we retraced our route passing most of the stations we had come through on the train.  Please admire the Wallace Sewell moquette – one of the driest pictures.

We were upstairs and the bus was pretty empty until Ilford where it filled up and stayed busy.  The bus, like all Romford ones, makes its way round to the shopping centre, or at least one of them, and the market (which for us is always a bit of a unicorn as we’ve never actually seen it functioning).  There are many multi story car parks, some used, some looking a bit derelict – but that might just have been the weather which was NOT mythical but biblical.  The Brewery complex includes entertainments (and car parks) and then we were heading out back south to inner London.  There has been much new building in Romford, noticeable from 10 years ago and visible from the train too – and with improved connections why not?

The next landmark seemed to be Romford (now Coral) Greyhound Stadium (dog racing being a south and east London specialty) – at least if you are going to bet let it be on something you can see happening in front of you as opposed to endless web sites.  It is no coincidence that the richest woman in the UK owns a betting site/ shops, and many folk are rendered the poorer through extensive betting habits . Enough with the moralising.

I had spotted a newish block called St Edward’s Court and then came the announcement for  St Edwards Academy, so it is no surprise to find out that the reason St Edward aka Edward the Confessor is a local hero is down to his having had a country residence at Havering atte Bower (after which the whole borough is named)   By now we were nearly in Chadwell Heath and as far as we could see (NOT very far) there were school playing fields on one side and heath on the other.

There are small clusters of shops along the way and several closed pubs – the White Horse looking dead, desolate and vandalised so quite an eyesore.  Not so dead is the Eva Hart pub, named for a local resident who survived the ‘Titanic’ sinking.  Nearly next door was Mapson’s, an old fashioned family jewellers with a ghost sign dating back to an earlier generation but sadly the weather meant we had no possibility of capturing the match.

Goodmayes to Seven Kings was a mixture, from what we could see (and I include several total mystery photos), of smaller local shops and a huge 24-hour Tesco’s which is cited as one of the main employers for this area.  The name has no royal connections but a modern version of something Saxon., which is a deal less interesting .

Seven Kings once had a huge Gin palace called  The Cauliflower  which looked very derelict but seemingly only since 2018 when it was destroyed by a fire. Anyone who has read VS Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ will think of ‘insure and burn’….

Not far is the Mandir Temple.  Also only a little way on is the General Havelock pub – strange to keep the pub’s name of the general who ordered the slaughter of so many Indian soldiers at the 1^st war of Independence in an area whose population includes Indians?  Calling it the Cauliflower would be more ‘woke’?

Having negotiated the roundabouts we got through Ilford relatively smoothly, taking on lots of passengers and passing the Library with its excellent museum.   But then the slowness began – there were successive road works but of course with the weather so bad no one working on them and Jo managed to capture at least two violations of the cycle lanes plus the fact the bus lane only worked for the early rush hours.

We crossed over the River Roding – liable  to flooding unsurprisingly – and under the North Circular which really indicates a return to Inner London.

Still following the rail line we had taken to get to Romford, progress continued slowly through Forest Gate and the University of East London.  At least the former pub the Pidgeon had escaped dereliction by being converted to a Tescos.

Stratford had begun its transformation just before we started project 1 (2009) and the building work is still going – we passed a whole block being demolished presumably to be turned into yet more flats?  The University of East London has some of its campus round here too.

The odd glimpse of bobbing daffodils or a nice beech hedge was encouraging but not enough to press on…

Ten minutes over the hour predicted we pulled into Stratford Bus station – we had intended to transfer to the unique 108 Route but the weather was so bad and vision 1/10 that we abandoned the idea and headed our separate ways.