The Number 117 Route

West Middlesex Hospital to Staines
Friday November 5th 2010

For reasons too complex to explain at this point we were for once ‘bussing’ on a Friday and on an extended trip at that – this in fact was the key route for the day but came wrapped around by 5 other outer South West London buses. Of the six this was in fact the least interesting, overlapping as it does very much with the 116, so finding novelty is something of a strain…



Well, there we were, having arrived at the West Middlesex University Hospital by a route so rare it only runs once an hour (well worth the wait but you will have to be patient for another 300 or so routes before you hear about that one). The 117 itself only runs three times an hour, so not surprisingly was from the off pretty full, taking both passengers and employees from the hospital to points west and south.

Once we had turned off the Twickenham Road along St John’s Road we knew why this was only a single decker – the roads are narrow, quite lane-like at points, and very soon we passed under a very low bridge that takes a railway line to Isleworth. This led to some speculation as to why it is pronounced (IZAL-worth) (NB older readers may remember quite nasty school toilet paper with that name) and not ILE-worth – after all we don’t live in the British Izals?

Once back on the main road into Hounslow (not again they cried) there was the usual run of empty office blocks (a theme for today) and small sandwich shops struggling to survive once the office workers have upped and gone. The Noshery tries by dint of ‘as much as you can eat offers’. Also along here – inevitably called the London Road – was a fire station, not striking today of all days, and West Thames College.

Passing through Hounslow was very slow today, probably contributing to a slight headache, and we ticked off our familiar landmarks – Hounslow Bus Station, which in our view needs an upgrade, our magic bus stop C near the fruit man, a chicane through the High Street (small buses only), and then out along the equally slow Staines Road – this is where Hounslow is trying to renew itself with sites reduced to rubble and other new builds springing up. Further along is the Folium development, which seemed a strange name to call anything though it seems to relate back to Descartes algebraic curve – help me out here some-one? Haven’t seen it but I expect it has a bendy roof?

The road narrows by Hounslow Heath and over the River Crane at Baber Bridge, part of the London orbital loop. Today the overhead planes are more to be heard than seen given the very low cloud and poor visibility.

The 117 turns off the Staines road – direction Feltham and from here is the only route for most of the way to Ashford. Unfortunately these bits of border country between London and Surrey are very similar to other bits. Feltham schools line the road with Feltham Hill Junior. Though subdivided into boroughs round here called Spelthorne, the county of Surrey is a very large local authority and speaking to a friend who works for them the employees describe it as stretching from Heathrow to Gatwick airports – think about it.

The road signs also promised us Chattern Hill. Hill, what hill? I humphed to Jo – it’s all as flat as a pancake round here otherwise they would not have built an airport, but she maintained she saw a slight rise in the contours, and thought I had been spoilt by living on a (real) hill in South London. Even more surprising was a shop offering tackle for deep-sea fishing? If hungry you could try the ‘Rumblinging Tum’ – not sure if this spelling is deliberate or not

The shop names were excellent – in quick succession Ashford and Knowle Green offered me Lookrite Hairdressers trumped by ‘Streaks Ahead’ and the 'Stagger-In' fancy dress shop.  Inevitably vampires seem in the majority but I noticed a Kermit in there and more to the point an Ali G, whom we all know hails from Staines. Staines, which only this week has decided to revamp (as opposed to revampire) its image and is considering calling itself Staines-on-Thames.

Staines upon water seems more appropriate because of all the nearby reservoirs, which we had passed on other routes on other days.

I suspect this one will run and run, which is what we had to do as we arrived at Staines bus station which appears to be nowhere near the Thames, to catch our last bus of the day, and our last bus out of Staines, back to Kingston (upon Thames).

Enough yet. Bring on the 118 which we completed some few hours earlier.

The Number 116 Route

Monday18 October 2010


Although it had been quite a long day (see the 110 story for the difficulties of even starting our journey), Linda and I felt that we should take advantage of being in the area to experience the 116 as it nips between Hounslow High Street and Ashford Hospital. I hoped it might clear up the geography: I do know that this is not Ashford, Kent, but I thought the other one was ‘Ashford, Middlesex’ and yet here we were popping into and out of Surrey.

So we waited at the magic Bus stop C  and were on our fourth single decker of the day, just before 3.00pm. This will be the last time we use bus stop C, unless we live long enough to attempt the ‘H’ buses.
The 116 snakes through the chicanes of the High Street rather than going round the edge as the other buses have, but we soon rejoined the mainer road past the Treaty Centre, where the pyracanthas were looking particularly fine. Clearly, this is being an excellent autumn for berries of all kinds.

Lots of new housing is going up on the outskirts of Hounslow, built by firms with names like ‘Catalyst Communities’  and ‘a2Dominion’. Shops, however, look a little depressed: there is the Treaty Centre, and there will soon be the Blenheim Centre. But we hope some small shops will survive, notably the 60s sounding ‘Gaylites’ which, sure enough, has been going since 1969.

Over the River Crane, not for the first time, our bus began to fill up with school students as we came into Bedfont and Bedfont Green with a range of different types of housing.

Having passed signs to Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution, said to be in Middlesex, though we were clearly heading into Surrey, we made rapid progress, past a large cemetery, and the grounds of Knyvett College, all very green and attractive. The College is an 11-16 Surrey School, part of a partnership with Howard of Effingham School. Its website does not say anything about Thomas, but he might well be the one who arrested Guy Fawkes, since he is said to have opened a small school in Stanwell.

Within 30 minutes of leaving Hounslow we arrived at Ashford Hospital. It is about to be downgraded (if that’s the word) to a walk-in centre, with serious A and E moving to Chertsey or Isleworth. A pleasant little journey to round off our day.

The Number 115 Route

Tuesday 2 March 2010

This was the first sunny journey we had had for weeks, and the pleasure was enhanced by the company of Kate, back from Tenerife and waiting to start her new job.  We have not had many paying passengers on our trips.  I think she is the fourth.

Aldgate Station was closed - for works, rather than an emergency -  so there was a pleasant bustle of people wondering how to get to Canary Wharf (the 135 was the answer given by helpful bystanders)  The bus stops opposite the station had both public convenience and a sculpture, so all needs were catered for.

By 10.20, Linda had arrived, and the three of us climbed aboard, and swept east along Commercial Road, past many banks, as well as the Whitechapel Gallery.  We noted numbers of garment outlets - and a few workshops as well - as well as the Skyline Plaza Building, whose style made us uncertain whether it was public housing or not.  And the answer is emphatically not:  according to this website, a one bedroom leasehold flat sold for £232,000 in August 2009.  The attractive Mulberry School for Girls, on the other hand, is a local authority, namely Tower Hamlets, School.

We passed some historic sites: first, Sidney Street  and then a plaque commemorating Victor Mclagen, son of a Bishop, who became both a  boxer and a film star.

Soon we were at Limehouse Station, and crossing the Regent Canal and the Limehouse Cut, with fine views of St Anne's Church, still clearly a Hawksmoor Church despite its restoration after a fire in 1850.

The Queen Victoria's Seamens Rest is a reminder that this really was dockland in the past, as is the statue of the ship builder Richard Green. 

More water in the form of the Bow Creek (a bit of the River Lea) brought us to Canning Town, where we could see the packed platform of the DLR station as we slid in and out of the bus station, pausing to change drivers.  The scary roundabout along the A 13 by the access to the Blackwall Tunnel has a Toucan Crossing for walkers and cyclists. 

As we moved into Newham, we felt that Eastern Europe was very present, with Polish shops but also Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian and Latvian outlets.  The old east end is still there, with solicitors specialising in Actions against the Police as well as immigration, and Albins offering horse drawn funerals. 

The Red House pub has distance signs, in Gaelic and English, to Limerick and other Irish towns, and now we were in West Ham territory, with the statue of Bobby Moore, Alf Ramsey and Geoff Hurst. 

 The Who Shop  is all about the Doctor rather than the musicians;  we did not alight to buy a Dalek.

Because this is going up on the blog some months after we made the trip, it may be hard for readers to remember why we were speculating on where Lord Ashcroft's money had been spent, so this picture is a reminder.

Newham's magnificent Town Hall indicated that we were near the end of our trip, and we reached the Central Park stop at 11.15.

The Number 114 Route

Ruislip Station to Mill Hill Broadway Stations

Tuesday October 26th 2010

Typical half-term weather – what started as a grey and chilly day soon turned into a ‘rainfest’ so our appreciation of the features on this lengthy cross-country trip were pretty restricted.


For once I beat Jo to the rendezvous and thus had time to admire the now Grade 2 listed frontage of Ruislip station which welcomes both Piccadilly and Metropolitan line trains - the latter of course were originally proper steam trains and this 1905-built station would have brought public transport to the Edwardian middle classes. We were then both able to admire it as the next 114 took over half an hour to arrive – he was clearly late as he did not have time to rest and turned round immediately. By now the queues had built up both at the beginning, and, we noted, right along the route.



Much of Ruislip retains undamaged Broadway facades with flats on top and High Street shops below which eventually followed the houses and commuters out here.

Gymophobics caught our eye; it seemed to offer ladies-only classes and a rather random inflatable lady footballer dressed in the England kit waving from an upstairs balcony?


The bus heads down the very straight and potentially very fast Victoria Road, which is generously dotted with ‘Curb Your Speed’ signs from Harrow Council, announcing they had cut the annual casualty rate from 65 to 50 this year, so worth doing. Apart from the odd roundabout (these roundabouts are very much a feature of this period North West London) the road was lined with furniture outlets in amongst the schools and libraries.


Just through Eastcote we passed a small cemetery looking really uncrowded: lots of spaces between the graves, which reflected the houses really – nicely spaced out and not overcrowded – but both very different from their inner London equivalents/counterparts.


We had been nipping along quite happily but, as we turned into South Harrow and made our way up the hill towards Harrow on the Hill, we ground to a halt due to road works restricting the traffic to single side only. Perhaps this accounted for why the route had been delayed? The driver became ever more impatient with other traffic hereafter. Not surprising really.

Harrow seems to have 2 shopping centres – St George’s which we passed and St Ann’s which is marked on the bus map so not sure which saint won the contest to sell us more goods? The bus does a wriggle into the bus station which seemed to be full of H buses (a bit like E-numbers they are purely local additives) with the 114 the lowest number calling round here. Many passengers descended at this point including a young woman who had conducted her fairly intimate call in 2 languages without taking breath even as she descended the stairs.



From Harrow we were heading further east again towards and through Northwick Park, expecting to pass its large local hospital, which tended to get itself in the news for the wrong reasons, but not offered on this route. Kenton Lane had something of a police presence hovering but not enough to impede our progress so perhaps the excitement had already blown over.


Talking of blowing over the rain was pretty steady by now and the breathing passengers had misted up the windows so visibility as ever was much reduced – a further blur of suburbia.

More lanes and roundabouts brought us through Queensbury where the Jubilee Line station has a very clear Underground sign at the roundabout and on, just crossing the Edgware Road which is Burnt Oak Broadway at this point. The local market my mother favours was looking rather sad in the rain though someone has completed some cheerful looking murals towards the end of Stag Lane.



Its other claim to fame, there no longer being a Burnt Oak, it was the site of Mr Cohen’s first shop which he soon named Tescos – the rest you know.


We moved on, passing the Northern Line (4 if not 5 tube lines in one trip – can’t be bad) station then through the fairly extensive Watling Estate and its hidden rivers.  This is immediately recognizable as one of the London County Council’s ‘cottage estates’ of which South East London has quite a few. With the trees in autumn colours and the grass very green it all looked quite scenic through the misted up windows, so it was quite a shock to emerge suddenly at Mill Hill Broadway Station (trains only), which lurks, forever in the gloom under the M1 Motorway. An unlovely end for a challenging drive with stretches of fast straight but significant amount of manoeuvring along meandering lanes – if I list them you will get an idea of how countrified this area was:

Eastcote Lane, Sheepcote Lane, Bunns Lane, Stag Lane, Kenton Lane .... all convey a bucolic country idyll now firmly settled and well established suburbia, which suddenly ends in the third circle of hell...

The Number 113 Route

Edgware Bus Garage to Oxford Circus   

Tuesday June 23rd 2009

Glorious summer’s day with temperatures in the twenties.

This route was in fact the third leg of a trip hinged onto the 18, and not surprisingly duplicated a significant part of the 13 route, which Mary and Linda had covered only four weeks earlier. It was therefore a slightly jaded trio that boarded at Edgware with a first priority of eating lunch, so the notes and photos may reflect this inattention to detail during the start of the route. In any case it went so fast along the dual carriageway bits it was quite hard to pinpoint the sights.

At 1.30 PM we drove right out of Edgware bus station to complete the High Street – largely fast food – and before we could focus we were on the Watford Way, heading back into town. Just before Apex Corner (these days more a major intersection than a humble corner) we crossed over the MI Motorway far below and then past the Barnet Copthall school playing fields (originally a school of the same name but with a cinder track built in 1964 used by Sally Gunnell when she was in training for her Olympics) and Mill Hill Circus and park. However, the 113 is not a bus to mess with hills so does not venture to seek out any Mills on Hills as it feels a need for speed so carried over Bunns Bridge Lane and 5 ways corner – at least that one is a more accurate description of yet another major road junction.

Although this is largely a residential area with small parades of shops (Kosher biltong anyone?) the only way for pedestrians to get across the road would be by the occasional subway or very tall footbridge. Throughout this is a Red Route so out of the rush hour we did not linger and passengers were not that numerous.

We did slow down towards Hendon – The Burroughs – its war memorial and what remains of the 1930s architecture that graced the approach to Hendon Central Station, a spacious colonnade (see photo of Colindale also) with nearby cinema that was so typical of Metroland. The bus then flew past Brent Cross, that North London temple to Mammon and one of the first out of town mall type developments, which was in the planning stage while I was growing up nearby. The fact the 113 does not detour for shoppers indicates its wish to be taken seriously so it continues up what is by now the Hendon Way (are we noticing a pattern here?) and past my lovely old Primary School, Wessex Gardens Junior Mixed and Infants – classes of 48, multi-cultural and no sign of a national curriculum – notwithstanding we all made it through thanks to Middlesex County Council education!


We watched the way the Palm Hotel was extending itself along the Hendon Way, then the A1 joins the Finchley Road meaning we were firmly back on the Number 13 route, where we were offered Orthoworld (not a theme park – get your teeth fixed here). Adjacent to the Finchley Road & Frognal Station (we were well away from Brent or even Barnet councils and firmly back in Camden by now) is the O2 centre comprising cinemas and eateries. The trees on the Finchley Road obscure the back of South Hampstead School – my other old school: both in one trip! – and then we were at Swiss Cottage. Jo was instructed to note the QK school (the logo even has an archery target as part of the logo) and told its origins and then we were on past the private hospitals, the flowers on the balconies of the Wellington looking very colourful.

The Lords Pod looms though it is hard to capture on camera, but we did manage with George and the Dragon at the Roundabout, a tribute Great War memorial by Charles Leonard Hartwell which is in fact a copy of one already in Newcastle. Landmarks come thick and fast – is that gorgeous house and garden on the corner ambassadorial or merely the London Business School? – over the canal and past the very gleaming Central Mosque.

Nipping into Regents Park might have been a rather more pleasant prospect than sitting on a slightly sticky bus, which was about to go very slowly. We think the LBS has bought up some very nice shop fronts. Further along Baker Street is the Lighthouse Building, allegedly the M&S headquarters, which during the war they handed over for use as the Special Operations Executive (SOE) headquarters: today it seemed to have a reception desk but absolutely no sign of what was there so either the recession has emptied it or it continues to be anonymously secret. Portman Square looked cool and quite inviting and stepping out to the left would have got us into Manchester Square and the Wallace Collection.

As we inched past Selfridges we noticed they had forsaken their lovely windows (see the 13) for brash SALE signs.  There was a Blue Plaque for William Pitt known to have outstayed his welcome, which is a bit how we felt as we inched our way along Oxford Street (not again they cried) – another example of  ‘if we weren’t on the Project we would have got off and walked’ but taking the day as a whole we covered three entire routes, this one taking 1½ hours.

The Number 112 Route

Brent Cross to Ealing Broadway
Monday September 13th 2010

I think it’s just as well this little bus was not the main feature of the day as it barely warrants star billing though as a way to get back onto the Central Line from Brent Cross it was efficient enough.

The first challenge faced by most routes leaving Brent Cross is actually to leave, because more likely than not you will just sit in a queue waiting to get across the North Circular and onto the Staples Corner series of roundabouts, currently nearing the end of a 12-week road repair programme, which reduces the lanes

Appropriately enough Staples stationery (today perhaps stationary?) supplies now hold the corner but the original factory here was for Staples mattresses, which used to be the UK standard issue mattress before the days of IKEA (see later), World of Beds etc.

The range of shops on the opposite side of the North Circular has expanded considerably and includes some tempting resources like Borders (there is NO bookshop anywhere inside Brent Cross) and Lakeland but on the whole if you want to access them you are probably better off walking – fumes and all. The bus actually picks up quite a few pupils from outside Next (as Jo said it must be hard not to lose your pupils to commerce in the lunch hour round here) from the nearby Whitefield school. The Barnet dustcart was beating a hasty retreat also.

Once past the interchange the bus picks up speed, nevertheless stopping in little bays for its passengers. It was a weird experience travelling along here rather like white water rafting through a canyon – the steep concrete support of the flyover on one side and the vast metal slabs of the huge wholesale units that characterize this stretch of North West London on the other completely dwarf most of the local traffic, especially when in a small bus. No photos then until we emerged out of the narrows by Ikea. Still having such huge stores on both sides of the road must be preferable to the ‘blighted’ housing we had spotted on an earlier route (the 102) where the roar of traffic must have shaken the older homes to bits.

Ironically, although I can see the outline of Wembley from hilly south London, the weather today was so grey by now that it just faded into obscurity though we were as close as anything.

The bus itself, never empty was really filling up as it cuts a swathe along Western Avenue leaving Park Royal on the right – this was not a bus to service all the small businesses to be found on the extensive trading estate but rather the few brave pedestrians who made it to the bus stops along the continuation of the North Circular. Jo had been over sensitised to sofa shopping having spent the weekend helping Tim to buy a lifetime’s supply of sofas so of course spotted the World of Leather also along here.

The whole bus became aware as I leapt across the aisle to photograph D-Link – Jo had to restrain me from launching a missile, verbal or other – as only last week we had bought a router to serve the newly acquired lap-top and it does not work very enthusiastically. Wi-fi in our house means sitting in adjacent rooms or occasionally in the same room. 
 
We assume most of the passengers  must have been working in the large outlets along here – the Hoo Hing Chinese Emporium is quite striking, as is the Bestway Building, which sublets offices. Developers seemed to forget whereas once we all needed acres of office space for our filing and filing cabinets; now all we need is a laptop, if they weren't such a sore subject.  
 

This driver took the Hanger Lane gyratory with a rare confidence and we hardly paused so swiftly did we get onto Hanger Lane itself, where large groups of schoolgirls, probably from the Ellen Wilkinson School, joined us for the final leg of the journey into Ealing. So standing room only from here on. There were works strengthening the bridge over the District Line, but so nearly complete as not to be disruptive. Ealing Common is quite substantial and offered a welcome glimpse of green after the concrete canyons we’d passed through. Ealing was buzzing with after school shoppers.

The bus does not seem to have a final focus for its end of journey, as though a daily encounter with Brent Cross interchange/the North Circular and then Hanger Lane gyratory was all it could manage before staggering to an exhausted halt near but not quite by the Mall.  It took just over 45 minutes most of which were spent trying to leave Brent Cross. Not the most enticing of trips but I can see where it might come in useful

The Number 111 Route

Tuesday 28 September 2010 

Since we were going to Kingston and back, we had decided to take whichever bus came first, and almost before we had time to glance round the not-very-attractive setting of Heathrow Central Bus Station  (how different from the Terminal 5 bus experience!) the 111 pulled up.  So Mary and Linda and I were off by 11.40. 

We noted the instruction, or possibly warning, that ‘buses straddle the central line’ in the tunnel, and were soon past the Emirates plane parked in the traffic island and turning right along the A4 Bath road to speed past many hotels.  

Why does the Radisson Edwardian hang the union flag with the long side against the post, we wondered.  Other airport attractions were also available including the fine HQ of the Unite Union.

Meanwhile someone was having a mobile phone business conversation behind us. ‘I can’t close this deal’, he said, ‘I’m on the tube.’  Why?  Mrs Thatcher is long gone, and there is no longer any shame in being on a bus after the age of 35, if there ever was. (Younger readers, ask an older person to explain this reference).

An announcement told us that we were reaching the end of the Heathrow Airport  free travel zone, which puzzled us a little as we had also seen staff shuttle buses around the place. 

We were repeating our earlier 105 route as we crossed the River Crane and passed the leafy Cedars Primary School, which proves to be a Special school for SEB children.  Lovely surroundings, we thought.  The Queen’s Head Pub, with its Elizabeth I sign, seemed to be thriving.  We noted all day that this area has fewer dying pubs that the eastern reaches of London.  This one has a Thai kitchen.  As we got into Heston, we admired the Rising Sun Pub which, it appears, had a narrow escape and is now under new management.

Livability housing  has a block round here:  we thought they might be retirement homes, but they are simply designed to be fully accessible.  Heston has a Controlled Drinking Zone around its attractive, villagey centre and the handsome church and graveyard of St Leonard.  You may all already know who he was;  but for us Tour de France watchers, what is at least as interesting is that his home village, in the Limousin, is the home of Raymond Poulidor, the greatest rider never to win the Tour. The war memorial  stands on a sort of traffic triangle.

Heston Community School is having major redevelopment works, and we can only hope that they get to complete them.  We travelled along through well maintained residential roads, to reach Hounslow East Station, and pass the bus station, sad to see that the Ruffletons Fabric Shop has closed, but noting several more thriving pubs, including the Cross Lances.  The pub sign had some impressive Lancers, but as usual I have been unable to find the reason for the name.  The area was delightfully green on this murky day, with Hounslow cemetery and other open spaces.  As we came into Hanworth we crossed the London Loop.  Jo and Andrew have walked it, and would recommend it; but don’t try to access this part of it by bicycle as the so-called cycle lane was occupied by parked cars.

As we came into Hanworth, we saw our first shuttered pub of the day, the Horse and Groom;  but at least the cycle track here was safe and segregated from the roadway.  Left along Hampton Lane, we passed lots of Victorian and slightly later houses, together with the infill blocks of new flats. The new Hampton Academy proclaimed itself to be ‘A Learning School’ which somewhat begged the question about what other schools are for, not least because its close neighbour, Hampton School (motto Praestat Opes Sapientia) makes no such public claim, simply announcing that it was founded in 1556 (though its website says 1557).  That sentence should have given you plenty of time to work out that its motto means ‘wisdom surpasses wealth’. Its website does not give the level of the fees, so I can’t make further comment about the link between wealth and wisdom.

As we headed through Hampton we came to the Shooting Star Hospice, whose Charity shops we also saw during the day.

  We went over a level crossing (we haven’t experienced many of them) as we came to Hampton Station and then the attractive area around Hampton Green.  Then on to the river, and views of Hampton Court Palace, first the coach parking, then the mews and a Blue Plaque for Sir Christopher Wren at the Old Court House, and finally the Palace itself.

We passed an air monitoring van  and then zipped alongside the Park, spotting a few deer and a number of horses, to Kingston Bridge dominated by the new John Lewis.  We twiddled round the pedestrian shopping area, and over the brick areas, to reach Cromwell Road Bus Station in Kingston at just after 1pm.

This had been a most attractive ride, with pretty villages and interesting sights.  Being on top of a double decker merely added to the pleasure.