The H 26 Route

Wednesday 2 July 2013

Linda and I, hoping Mary was feeling better, met at Hatton Cross Station, where there is a neat little bus area and large ‘Welcome to Heathrow’ signs.  This, numerically, was the second of two H buses that go from Hatton Cross, but since it is only three an hour, and arrived promptly, we climbed on, at 10.25, bound for Sparrow Farm.  We wondered whether this would be some kind of rural idyll, but it is in fact a large residential area outside Feltham.

We headed out and along past the end (or start) of one runway and then skirted the airfield for several hundred metres.  The Duke of Wellington Pub is here, possibly named for the former pub in Staines Road which is now a Sainsbury’s.

 We also passed the Marjory Kinnon School, which caters for children with moderate learning difficulties, but their website does not mention who Marjory was.

These houses and the school are so close to Heathrow that we had to assume they had amazing double glazing, or just suspended all communication other than sign every two minute as a plane went over.

St Mary’s Church, with its church hall on the other side of the road, has a fine wooden spire.  Then we came to the Bedfont Lakes Commercial Estate, next to the Country Park of the same name and apparently housing the BP pensions office, Cisco UK and parts of IBM.

We also passed the Silverdale Kennels as the route went semi-rural again, and wondered if they were close enough to Heathrow to minimise the time animal and owner were apart. 

As we pulled into Feltham Young Offenders’ Institute, several young people got off, though whether they had been on day release, or were visiting friends, we could not tell.  We also met the H26 going in the other direction and using the same bus stop.  Here there were fields but also a startling number of flats, surprising since, though we were near the railway, we were not near the station.  Then we were back into residential areas again.

After these narrow streets, lined with parked cars, despite the hardened front gardens, where no-one wanted to make use of the Hail and Ride facility, we came along Rochester venue to reach Feltham:  first a Tesco, then the war memorial and pond, then the Red Lion Pub, as well as several shops.

Passing Feltham Station, we noted that Hounslow Homes, one of the first ALMOs in Britain (go on, guess:  yes! Arms Length Organisations…. ) have offices in what was once a church.  I suppose all the great institutions of the past, local government, church etc become ALMOs in time.  Once we had gone over the railway we saw the Lahori Karahi Banqueting HQ. They specialise in Asian and other weddings and started in Birmingham before expanding south to Hounslow. Having headed past one or two of the huge hotels of the Heathrow area, we turned into narrow residential streets, like The Drive, much of it clearly in the hands of Hounslow Homes.

We spotted a pink ‘black cab’ in a driveway; I suppose it would be stereotyping to postulate a lady driver.  Then we carried on to reach the Central Parade of Sparrow Farm at 11.00, a journey that had taken less than half the time we took to arrive at the start of the route.  The Parade was looking somewhat depressed, though there was a Londis store for everyday food purchases.

linda has explained our problems when we tried to walk between the end of the H26 and the start (or end) of the H25.  She did not blame me, though I blamed myself a bit:  but I had phoned Hounslow Council (or rather the ALMO which controls their parks and gardens) and spoken to a young woman who said she 'believed' we should be able to follow the river from Feltham into Hanworth.  Clearly we were on the wrong branch or something, and Hounslow Heath is so overgrown and untended that there was no chance of picking up clues like distant views of buildings.  So we looped around and caught the H26 again.

Ah well, and we shall never visit Hatton Cross again!

The H25 Route

Hatton Cross to Hanworth (Betts Farm) and back again 

Thursday July 3^rd   2013

H is for Hounslow or possibly Hatton Cross or even Hanworth. For once we did not get lost in Hounslow, looking for the right bus stop to start our trip, but instead managed to go round in a useless loop somewhere between the Sparrow Farm Estate and the railway. To explain:

The day started well if not brightly at Hatton Cross Underground Station – very glitzy but lacking in basic facilities.  We orientated ourselves around the correct bus stop and opted for the first bus that came – it was the H26 (see later next week), a Felthamish route which finishes in the rather picturesquely named Sparrow Farm, now Sparrow Farm Estate. After a bit of erroneous wandering we asked a local who directed us to where we could find the River Crane – it being our intention to walk a stretch of the Crane in order to access the end of this route H25.  If the plan worked we could finish at Hatton Cross and not need to ride both routes both ways.

  

We set off walking beside the overgrown but OK river knowing we had to get under the railway bridge, which we duly did, but then things went wrong: we seemed to lose the river and not find the road and then re-found the railway – wrong! – so essentially we had gone round in a circle albeit one full of bright wild flowers. We had a map but needed a better one (and needed to be better at reading it too). Though we asked a local postie (who was to be the first of three posties we saw out in their shorts today)  for directions to the bus, he was obviously a car user so in the end, not best pleased, we found our way to the H26, which delivered us back to Hatton Cross and an immediate departure on the H25.  That was by way of a preamble so here is the H25.

The first sections of the two routes run parallel along Hatton Lane to Bedfont.  Our entire trip today was within Hounslow borough and everywhere we went Housnlow appeared to be renewing their pavements, thereby spilling onto the narrow roads and handicapping the drivers.

On the right hand side of the road are well spaced semis and bungalows, and in the gaps can clearly be seen runways and parked up planes.  On the left hand side of the road are the more historic bits of Bedfont, including some curious horses (they must be totally immune to air traffic by now) peering over their fence, Greville House, whose future seems a little uncertain, the Two Bridges Centre (over the Rivers Longford and the Duke of Northumberland again), and doubtless the prettiest land mark in Bedfont – St Mary’s Church, compact with an intact wooden spire and almost dwarfed by its magnificent topiary peacocks – we noticed them on our second passing and managed to photograph them on the 3^rd and 4^th but this website is worth a  look. 

It’s at this point that the two routes deviate and the H25 takes a sharp left to cross the Green passing the Bell on the Green pub and a rather basic war memorial close to the library; also somewhat surprisingly there is a gated estate just visible from the bus.  Local networks inform me that these are in fact endowed housing (sort of almshouses really) provided by a local wealthy widow and built in the mid-Thirties. Of about the same date are a parade of shops on both sides of the road, once thriving today they seem a little ad hoc. ‘InLust’ proves to be a modern Indian restaurant rather than anything more shocking.  By this time the bus was filling up nicely.

Another right turn took the H25 down Bedfont Lane, which becomes increasingly densely built up towards its Feltham end, crossing over the little known (to us anyway) River Longford.

I always think Feltham station is back to front with its entrance tucked behind and its rear end on the main road and bridge. We rejoined the H26 and quite a few other routes along Feltham High Street , which comes complete with village pond and a rather more conspicuous war memorial. There is a modest sign to an Ministry of Defence building which proves to be the  ‘Intelligence Collection & Defence Geographic Centre’ – I imagine a sort of map mecca.

Turning off the main road again we followed Felthambrook and through what looked like an aspiring but not altogether successful industrial/business estate, with the General Roy Pub – apparently General William Roy was a cartographer who invented the ordnance survey map so was undoubtedly popular with the MOD of his time. The road narrows again and seems to come to another quite historic bit of the borough.

The church, St. George's,  has survived better than the Hanworth Castle which seemed to have been favoured by Henry VIII as a hunting lodge when out and about on Hounslow Heath (I don’t suppose he had to contend with getting under railway lines and trunk roads to get from one place to another). Not quite Hampton Court but quite a triumph for the H25.

From here on the bus does another 2 loops, crossing the Chertsey Way (Country Way) twice in order to serve two quite outlying Hounslow housing estates.  There are a few shops dotted around but by and large the community must rely very heavily on this bus route. The Bear Road flyover is all that remains of what was once a pub called the Brown Bear, and passing under allows the H25 to do its final loop round the Butts Farm Estate. Built in the Fifties it is now somewhat showing its age and our final stopping place was not enhanced by a pile of rubbish bags which had been ripped open presumably by foxes.  Shame there are no more brown bears to eat the foxes which seemed to have gained an upper hand.

Both our routes today ended in rather romantic sounding rural idylls – ‘Sparrow Farm’ and ‘Butts Farm’ – but sadly romantic is not the word that springs to mind and when you actually get there, which just goes to show you cannot always choose a route by it end destination.

To be fair this was an extremely interesting route taking us from the high octane planes of Heathrow through a variety of urban and less urban landscapes all within Hounslow borough. Map-reading not being our forte we were pleased our drivers today clearly knew which end was up.

The H22 Route

Hounslow (The Bell) to Manor Circus (Sheen)

Thursday June 27^th  2013

H is for Hounslow – again, and again we, that is Jo and I, had some difficulty locating the start of the route.  We spotted the H22 resting so asked its driver where we might board (he could have taken pity on us and let us on there and then) but  he waved in a  left handed sort of fashion. We passed ‘The Bell’ pub after which this bit of Hounslow is named, and then fell onto a further clutch of bus stops: ours was opposite the ‘Budget Ibis’ (ouch: the ordinary ones are budget enough I thought) and spent a happy 10 minutes watching doubtless jet-lagged travellers wheeling their luggage into the hotel while a constant stream of planes passed overhead. We had been in Hounslow last week so you would have thought no excuse for being confused but it is a real bus hub and the bus station (which could solve all our problems) is off limits to bus users. By the way, in case anyone wonders whether we will be riding the N for Night buses I refer you to the BBC 2 documentary called ‘The Route Masters’ – I suppose the night drivers have (slightly) less traffic to deal with but this is more than compensated by the number of night life passengers they get to meet…

Off we set past the Treaty Centre and the afore-mentioned bus station and out towards Whitton. There are in fact two routes which go from Hounslow to Richmond, but they go very separate ways, this one taking a significant dog-leg through both Whitton and later Twickenham.   It was also a popular route, filling up steadily all the way along. After the Clock Tower Industrial Estate there are several terraces of smaller and older cottages, which remain from the era before the inter and post war expansions of residential housing.  Reapers Way sounds quite countrified and the area’s most famous resident was probably Sir Godfrey  Kneller, the 18^th century painter after whom several streets are named, and Kneller Hall, which is not on this route. The Lord Nelson pub however still has its rather good and garish pub front sculpture looking for all the world like a ship’s figurehead.   The website boasts of its proximity to the Rugby Stadium but remains silent as to its origins. What looked like a village sweet shop turned out to be the Hollygrove Flooring Company.  Whitton also has a charity shop whose name we had not seen before = The Kathryn Turner Trust.  

By now the H22 was servicing another slice of the Ivybridge area, with its more dense housing, so it was not altogether surprising that   there was not only a newish school, the Twickenham Academy, but also a modern looking Health and Social care centre. 

Staines Road has two nurseries (the children as opposed to the plant variety) called Tic Tocs and Teddies leading one to speculate about Twickenham tongue twisters?

Twickenham Town as opposed to the Rugby Stadium has quite a lively High Street; for some reason our previous routes through here had all been close to Christmas when the shops have little trees poking out at odd angles; to fit the season this time there were some attempts at hanging baskets but this seemed less co-ordinated than their winter efforts. Twickenham Green had signs of hosting cricket matches and the Sainsbury’s windows, which overlook the Green, pick out bits of local history.

The Prince Blucher pub reminds us that the Duke of Wellington would not have achieved his Waterloo success without some help from the Germans.

The Alternative Paint Company seemed an odd choice of name – but as Jo correctly guessed it is rather upmarket offering all those ‘heritage ‘ brands. Having spent the weekend deep in Sugar Soap and Dulux Vinyl Gloss I would go for any brand that does not give me a raging headache. 

St Margaret’s is almost a suburb of Richmond but as such is only served by the H buses, and the H22 does not even pass the quiet station for this area of London.

Rather tantalisingly this is a route which flirts with the River Crane in its early passage and on this its last run into Richmond passes really quite close to Teddington Lock and the Thames, but you really would not know this from the road, so after just glimpsing Marble Hill House through the trees it can come as a surprise when you sail across Richmond Bridge. We had passed this way last week and for no very good reason there was much slower traffic through the Quadrant and High Street, which plays host to far more bus routes than there is really room for.

Richmond Station is fairly unlovely; it seems to have a Thirties frame with a later 'canopy'  but does have excellent connections, so we are always pleased to pass through. 

This route, like quite a few, passes beyond Richmond Town Centre and out to the Manor Circus Roundabout where there is more space for several routes to have a break before turning round. Covering this stretch of SW London took just over 40 minutes.

The H 20 Route

Thursday 27 June 2013

Another day, and another brief trip on the H buses.  Linda and I met at Twickenham Station, in order to travel from the Twickenham Tesco's to the Civic Centre in Hounslow.  It was one of those days when the most that can be said for the weather was 'at least it's not raining', thouigh at least we had some blue sky.  We walked up past the stadium (yes!  heading in the right direction) to reach the Ivybridge superstore where, happily, a bus was waiting.  Sadly, Abellio does not regard cleaning their buses as a priority, so don't blame Linda if some of her photos are a little smeary.

We turned out of Tescos, and into the large estate behind it, which may still include some public housing, and admired the Ivybridge mural, created by the Children of the Ivybridge Estate, with support from Hounslow Council.

Then we headed along the main road towards Isleworth, passing the Isleworth Library and Leisure Centre, and glimpsing a blue plaque on a house to the right.  We think this may be to remember Ian Riches, a post-impressionist artist who moved into Isleworth in 1876, but I can't find anything else about him.

At the Royal Oak pub, we crossed The Duke of Northumberland's River, not a river at all, and frankly rather puny in the eyes of those of us who know the New River between Ware and Stoke Newington. Then, passing a small green space inhabited by crows (Linda does not like crows), we came into residential streets again.  Some are in the process of being improved, and we admired the punning nature of the builder's van, hoping the force was with him (or her);  some have already been improved, and almost all had hardened from gardens.

The small parade of shops as we came towards the railway bridge did at least have several food shops, of varying types:  too often we see dry cleaners, betting shops and kebab places, leaving people with no choice but to take the bus to the superstore.


By now the noise of aeroplanes was very loud, and they seemed to be flying much lower than they were last week.  Also the bumps in the road were extremely aggressive around here, and out bus was jumping in the air quite often.  We came to the Shire Horse Pub, which seems to have had a chequered past, and is apparently closed now.

The Sun pub, on the other hand, with its bright sun, looked fairly prosperous, and brought us into Hounslow.  We had not previously noticed that Hounslow has a market in its pedestrianised area, but we did not pause to shop, as our bus driver headed on towards the Civic Centre, a bit out of the town, where out journey finished at 11.05.

We gave him a card, and told him we were impressed with his handling of the Hounslow traffic calming bumps, and had time to look at the warning anti-rat signs around the attractively landscaped grounds of the centre, before hopping back onto the bus to get to our next route.

The H18/H19 Routes

Wednesday 22 May 2013

This, our second circular trip round Harrow, was again to be one of the two linked buses, which follow the same route but in different directions (if in doubt, please see the Rules Committee decision outlined with  the H8/9 routes).

 

Mary and I were thinking of Linda, having fun in the eastern counties of England though not, we suspected, sea bathing.

We were off at 10.32, and chose the H18 for its more convenient departure time. Our route took us past the St George’s Centre and towards North Harrow, passing The Harrow Hotel, as well as Shayona Sweets and Savouries. Our fellow passengers were predominantly British Asians, and we thought Linda, who loves Indian sweetmeats, might have hopped off and gone shopping. As we turned off the A 404 to go up Headstone Lane, we were into semi land again, with many hardened front gardens.  Headstone Manor Recreation Ground had signs to the Harrow Museum.  This link is to the Museum of London version, since we gave you Harrow’s with the H9.  We also noted Headstone Horticultural Society’s base  (it does not have a website to share with you). Sadly, the Headstone Inn  has closed, but their Waitrose seems to be doing fine, beside a Household Discount Store.

After this brief interval of commercial activity, we were back among the prosperous houses, several of mammoth proportions, and some with more cars than a carpark. 

Passing the Steiner Training Academy, we thought it might be a place where teachers learn Rudolph’s methods;  but no, it is an organisation for training and deploying fitness staff on cruise ships.  We passed All Saints Church, Harrow Weald, with its handsome hall next door, and then came to the Cemetery extension, before reaching the Seven Balls pub, embellished with those foliage balls (yes, seven of them) that people buy in garden centres:  a neat interpretation of the name, we thought.

  

The next place we came to was Belmont, where we spotted a tile shop which seemed to have strayed from its original home. There had been several parades of shops on this route which offered Asian wedding planning, Ayurvedic medicine, tutoring in maths and even a Post Office, but almost nothing in the way of food shops.

Near to Kenton Station, we liked the thought of the 'Gentle Dental' Practice. We were impressed with how close the golf course is to the town centre, and noted that last tee-off time was 7.30:  the light evenings being one of the few promises of summer.

As we came into Harrow from a different way, we were saddened to see that the Fat Controller, which shut near the beginning of our project (well, when we first visited Harrow on the 114), has still not  become anything.

We reached the bus station at 11.20, not exactly feeling giddy, but ready to chant ‘round and round the Harrow borough’ after our second circuit of the locality.