The Number 349 Route

Ponders End to Stamford Hill

Thursday January 12^th 2012

The 377, our first route of the day (Jo had had her planning hat on – similar to the sorting hat but more useful), had left us at Ponders End all ready to cross the road and leave Ponders End (forever) on the southbound Route 349, which proved to be a somewhat dispiriting experience. First sight was a Wetherspoons pub called the Picture Palace Pub; usually they have a line of history but this one only explains the beers and gives photos of the quite nice inside. The outside was curiously nondescript.

Further along is the Boundary House pub, doubtless a reference to the boundary ditch, now more likely a culverted sewer /  former river which is a very common fate for these old waterways.  Also fairly charming was the row of villas all named for trees – Willow/Pine/Poplar/Chestnut/Cyprus (sic) and alongside the Conservative Working Men’s Club, something which would have been considered a contradiction in terms back in the day (on which subject, by the time we had reached the end of this route the poverty on view was such as to bring to the fore all revolutionary tendencies).

Back to the bus route, which was gathering more and more passengers below but as many were quite disabled the upstairs remained fairly empty. This route offers little novelty and rolls on down in pretty much a straight line from Lower to Upper Edmonton via Edmonton Green, familiar to us because of its canopied and efficient bus station.

The shop signs show that the route segues from a Turkish and Eastern ethnicity to an ever broader range of nationalities, but the properties visible along the main road became increasingly sad or derelict. Clearly the blight engendered by the whole ‘Will Spurs move to the Olympic Stadium’ followed by last August’s riots have left Tottenham looking even more depressed. Many of the shops and blocks were empty, some possibly being squatted and certainly attacked by pigeons close to the Alpha Road turning. Haringey has a difficult borough to manage and was trying to give a positive feel to what remains of the High Street with its ‘We Love Tottenham ‘ posters but it felt a bit of struggle. There was also a rather enigmatic street sculpture of a horse, and a cat?

Spurs’ stadium and the shop alongside are showing their age as well, but the club’s futile bidding for the Olympic Stadium cannot have helped local commerce. Ironically on the day we passed Spurs, having played their match in hand, had just gone 2^nd in the league and were doing as well as they ever have for very many years in the wilderness. Close to the Tottenham Community Sports centre there was a car boot sale in progress and very well attended too – adults with no other place to go during the day.  The fact that the Aldi store has gone as well seemed the finishing touch.

By the time we reached Seven Sisters things were smartening up a little – this is a very busy thoroughfare with at least eight bus routes passing through and at one point a dedicated bus lane to keep things moving.

There were some lighter moments along the way. A dry cleaners promising ‘No Mark Dry Cleaning’, ‘The Elbow Room Pub’ and some light-spirited graffiti in anti-capitalist mode.  The route also includes a Blue Plaque, which is fairly self-explanatory honouring local explorer John Williams.

This was a very straight, uncomplicated, double-decker north/south route with few twiddles and no single portion of the route which was not covered by other buses, so combined with the faces of the successive high streets a rather lowering experience.

I hope when I come to blog this later in the year things will be looking up for Tottenham – the place rather than the club. 

The Number 348 Route (Not)

For those of you with ‘fast’ computers and good capacity we are including a link to some films from the London Transport Museum Collection (also available on DVD).

Most of these are about the Tube, or Underground, and show not only what the system used to be like – pretty empty – but also show a very dated style of documentary filming. The recent BBC series about the Tube managed to be both informative and entertaining.

Without trains we would not get to some of our starting points, but this is a bus blog so if you prefer, the short  The Elephant Will Never Forget film records another jubilee this year – 60 years since the last tram, the Number 36 as it happens, ran into New Cross Bus garage. Even the veteran LWB do not really remember trams very clearly.

For those of you who really need a bus fix, the same page will offer you London on the Move, a 1970 tribute to London Transport’s tubes and buses.

Film geeks will know that the films’ producer, Edgar Anstey (1907-1987), was a very respected documentary maker, whose career started with John Grierson in the famous GPO Film Unit and included some years running the London office for the famous American series The March of Time before joining British Transport Films.

PS Thanks to Andrew for finding this link. 

The Number 347 Route

Thursday 7 June 2012

The Number 347 Route goes from Ockendon Station to Romford, and Linda and I were pleased with ourselves as we caught the 09.50 from Fenchurch Street, feeling this would be a streamlined day.  We had neither of us been to Ockendon before, and vaguely associated it with the refugee charity.  Wrong!  That's Ockenden, near Woking.

Meanwhile, back in Essex, we had a nasty shock when we discovered that the 347 runs once every two hours!  Aagh. This is the first bus we have encountered which is that rare, though we have had once an hour routes, from Bromley North, as I recall.  Happily, we had only 40 minutes to wait, rather than a possible (I suppose) 119 minutes, and the sun was shining among the clouds.

The bus arrived with several minutes to spare, and the charming driver was interested in our project.  His day starts at 08.30 when he collects his bus from Rainham Garage. (It's logoed 'Blue Triangle' but is now part of the Go Ahead Group) then he drives his route to and from Romford twice, to finish his morning at about 13.00.

We came out of the station forecourt, turning right to reach the village green, with its war memorial, and a round towered church before heading into the countryside of Essex.  We were the only passengers as we sped past the stops, most of them named after farms (Fair Play Farm and Clay Tye Farm for instance).  We were running parallel to and east of the M 25, which enhanced out feeling of being out of London.  We were the only bus along here, and still the only passengers.


Under the M25 (briefly held up by road works and a red light) we came towards Upminster, and some more passengers got on, ending the solitude of our first fifteen minutes.  Overall, we shared our journey with about six other people, all of whom, like us, were travelling free.  in the last stages, we were joined by three young people, but they, too, travel free.

Now we were in residential areas, with a mixture of housing, including some which were decked for last weekend's patriotic mood.  There were bungalows in between semis and substantial detached properties, some of them clad with wood in East Anglian style.  What they did have in common was that they had almost all hardened their from gardens to provide car parking.

Once we were through Upminster, and past its station, we were soon back into countryside.  Through Pages Wood, we travelled along Shepherds Hill and admired the Shepherd and Dog pub.
We also enjoyed the name of the Cockabourne Bridge, which crosses the Ingrebourne.



This brought us into Harold Wood, with its rather sweet little station.  Then we turned left along the A12 to visit the Gallows Corner Retail Park (where, surprisingly, no-one got off or on) and then back along the A 12, passing what had once been the Plough Pub, very derelict but with no sign of the developers moving in.

As we came into Gidea Park and turned off the A12 onto the A118, we noted that there were many pubs:  we thought that this main road from the rich fields of East Anglia to London must (in the past) have needed plenty of watering holes for travellers.  We went over the end of the Park Lake in Raphael Park, once part of the grounds of Gidea Hall.

The next thing we knew, we were in the outskirts of Romford, where the three young people mentioned earlier got on ('this bus is too quiet' they yelled happily to each other)  We felt they could have walked to the station, where our bus terminated at 11.45.

Once again, the journey had taken ten minutes longer than the supposed time:  but given the very speedy passage between Ockendon and Upminster, it is hard to see how it could have been done any faster.

The Number 346 Route

Upminster Park Estate to Upminster Station

Thursday November 3^rd 2011

In contrast to our previous route, which felt interminable, this one seemed at the time we rode it, and still seems at the time we post it, to be a strong contender for the project’s shortest route...

We had disembarked from our key route – the very frequent and jolly double-decker 248 – on the Upminster Park Estate (Cranham) and just about managed to eat our sandwiches before the 346 sidled round the corner.  This was definitely the start of the route, although there already was a passenger aboard – we surmised it takes a slightly different route coming and going and she had stayed on in order to get closer to home.  We guessed this estate had been built as a large area of social housing but probably now heavily owner occupied: it seemed mainly to comprise clusters of houses built round greens.  You might have expected the bus to be ‘hail and ride’ but it had its defined stops on a thorough tour to take in the key streets before it headed down to St Mary’s Lane and the main road into Upminster itself.  The estate had areas of semis and then a more extensive outcrop of bungalows so we were not surprised when some more elderly and disabled passengers boarded, the driver allowing them enough time to settle before moving off.

The only site we have located for this route is the Upminster Depot. It is site much beloved of train spotters and rail buffs (as opposed to buffers) and was a popular venue when opened to the public on its 50^th anniversary in 2009.    

From there the bus starts along Upminster High Street, still largely intact and used, then encourages its passengers to descend opposite the station while it goes down the side of the station to ‘lurk’. The railway line C2C logo is more prominent than the District Line insignia but sure enough there was a green coded tube waiting to take us home after a day spent in Essex.

The trip is time-tabled as taking 9 minutes – we timed it at 10 but we were a bit slow getting off.  Does our future hold anything shorter?

The Number 345 Route

South Kensington to Peckham
Tuesday May 11^h  2010

Our key route for the day the 70 had left us just round the corner, and the fact we found our driver seemingly dozing slumped over the wheel of his double decker should I suppose have been a warning for us. He did switch the engine on, which was kind as it gave us some heat before we set off. The fact that we needed heating in mid May was another issue.

It’s a long while since we have passed so close to the great London museums and Natural History was looking busy as ever plus two elephants from the art project running at the time we boarded this route, on our way back from two much earlier routes. Our first impression was that South Kensington and Kensington generally were stiff with Blue Plaques – we passed in quick succession:

Bela Bartok
Sir Alfred Munnings and
Sir John Millais at 2 Palace Gate

The shops also reflect the affluence of the area with Butler & Wilson’s shop showing quality vintage frocks and The Wedding Shop just oozing silver and crystal, if that’s what people really want as wedding gifts?

We also passed the College of Psychic Studies, which in a way seems a contradiction in terms but I suppose even good psychics can learn how to do better.  The housing down to Battersea Bridge is of course delightful and at this time of year covered in blooming wisteria. Some of the lesser blocks  are well crafted also. 

Once over the bridge (another bridge that is shut over the weekend) we noted some of the new building that is going up along here, doubtless trying to claim a ‘river view,’ and there remain some interesting pubs and local restaurants partly to cater for the overspill of Royal College of Art students.  Not sure if this is the new building promised following planning permission in 2008?  Battersea Park Road has its share of ancient and modern and we really hoped that someone would come forward and preserve the rather lovely semi-detached villas (Shakespere & Byron they are called) that were half-boarded up along here.

It was about this point that we started getting irritated with this route as it was so clearly NOT going the most direct way: all in all we spent much time willing it to go straight ahead and instead it would hang another left, or more usually right, just to annoy us, and all at a very slow speed.  Up we went, past Clapham Junction and part way along Lavender Hill, noting that the library, previously encased in scaffolding for cleaning, had emerged rejuvenated though we were not sure for how long it would remain pristine, given the volume of traffic and number of buses.

After Lavender Hill we left the Shaftesbury Estate, built as railway workers’ cottages and now much sought after, on the left we headed up the fine wide Cedars Avenue to Clapham Common. Lambeth Council has housing both sides of the road but we noted at the beginning and end much older mews passages where the ‘ghost’ writing indicated first horses were stabled and shod here and later motor cars, and in fact they still seem to do some servicing work.

Clapham Common was reassuringly green, but not surprisingly – given the temperatures – the children’s paddling pool had not been filled. Once past Clapham Old Town and the Northern Line tube station we were astonished when the bus turned north again and headed for Stockwell.  It has to be said that for most of our journey this far we had been ambling at a very leisurely pace, and by the time we got to Stockwell we stopped altogether and waited, presumably to regulate the service but no reason given.

We have no objection to Stockwell, but to take this route seems an absurd dog-leg for a part of London pretty well served by transport already, so maybe our friends or followers in Stockwell might enlighten us as to whether they need this route too? Since we last came this way about five months ago the temporary shrine to Jean Charles de Menezes has become a permanent tile memorial by the station. Round the roundabout, with its signpost to the (Type Museum  no I didn’t know there was one either) we went direction Brixton, crossing the High Road which at least spared us the nose to tail that is the Brixton Road. We then headed off up to Camberwell. At this point the 345 closely follows, as it has done for much of the route thus far, the 35 and 45 but now also pretends it’s a P4.

Outside Loughborough Junction we loitered some more (not the best of places to stop) and then again in Coldharbour Lane we stopped and the driver warned us he would take three minutes or so – most passengers heading for Camberwell Green just got off and walked. We meanwhile had all the time in the world to admire the eating joints of the Green, including the quaintly named (Rock Steady Eddies though those who have taken breakfast there seem to agree the name is best thing about the café: a true ‘greasy spoon’

Sugar Momma, however, proves to be a dress shop. We had passed a nice range of hairdressers today, which I have ‘collaged’ to compress them.

As routes go the 345 has a comparatively short history (1995) and really duplicates a whole lot of other routes but I suppose its unique selling point is that it joins up the bits…rather like beads on a necklace…

Once through Camberwell, where the 345 has its own lane to turn right, we were heading straight for Peckham, passing Cambwerwell Arts College (a 2 Art College bus!) and the Harris Academy, and so right into Peckham Bus Garage.

Mary was anxious to pick up a grandchild after school and she had been somewhat spooked en route to find some of her former haunts for meetings demolished and already reduced to that fine rubble that demolition firms can now so easily do.

Thoroughly irritated (and hungry) we descended to make our various ways home glad we had ticked this route off our list – not one, we decided, to revisit on a voluntary basis. 

The Number 344 Route

Liverpool Street Station to Clapham Junction
Monday November 9th 2009

Our key route for the day, the 42, had left us at Liverpool Street so we waited for this double decker outside the Royal Bank of Scotland watching our employees stand there smoking, and even watched three of them leaping into a taxi at our, the tax payers’, expense along a stretch of road served by no fewer than 12 bus routes. By the time you read this the banking crisis/recession may well be over (hollow laugh – June 2012) but even when well into it, it seems outrageous that people should do this.

Our ‘taxi’, that is the estimable 344, took us back into the City past  Heron Tower and St. Ethelburga's

with its centre for peace and reconciliation – the poor City churches that survived the Blitz or, in this case, IRA bombing are very dwarfed by business. The upper stories of some of the not so new buildings have some interesting friezes both on this building and later as we passed the Vintners’ Place. Near Fish Street there was a 1709 clock, so still working after 300 years.

We did an exciting wriggle actually round the base of the Monument and back across the approach to London Bridge so that we could cross  Southwark Bridge 

the ONLY BUS to do so! Tide was very low and still going out and there we were across back in South London.  These bits close to the River are a strange mixture of the new and spruce such as the Novotel and others strangely Dickensian like Marshalsea and Quilp Street. – Dickens seems to be claimed by most London boroughs as having lived there and Southwark is no exception. The bus was not busy – few passengers so far even though it’s the only bus traversing this bit of Southwark. We liked the look of the Island Café at 1 Flat Iron Square SE1 being more in the line of a traditional caff but it too was not busy today.


We did the inevitable but today pretty swift circuit at Elephant & Castle and swept along St George’s Road and not only past the side of the Imperial War Museum but rather grandly along the front so we could fully appreciate the guns and the dome. bathed in autumn leaves amidst the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park. William Bligh of the Bounty infamy once lived (and therefore has a Blue Plaque) along here – ‘such a loser’ as Jo says. At this point we headed back to the river, passing the Marine Society from 1756 and arriving alongside the Lambeth Garden History Museum which is one of the more attractive sites of the Albert Embankment that tends to the featureless, be it residential or business. The River is magnificent though and worth the ride. Next bridge along ('Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew, twenty bridges or Twenty Two’) is Vauxhall topped with Mr.Tradescant’s pineapples. Then comes the really scary 6 lane one way system which even the buses would have to brave – only a suicidal cyclist would attempt this I fear: they need their own underpass or bridge?? Dominating Vauxhall also is the MI6 building.

 

Talking of features, still the most ‘stand-out’ one along Nine Elms is Battersea Power Station which from this proximity was looking fragile and decaying – it is a lovely outline on the horizon – perhaps we just need a cut-out and not the real thing?

As already noted it was quiet today but we still did not expect a full size lorry to behave like a white van and do a U-turn in front of us on Battersea Park Road. Strangely an old ILEA school has now bee n taken over by the private sector and is a preparatory and pre-prep school, which tells you something about the gentrification of this area over the last 20-30 years.

Turning away before we reached Battersea Bridge (otherwise this would have been a 5 bridge bus) instead we headed uphill towards Latchmere – the bus was getting pretty busy by now with more passengers – with a range of shops and services going from the beautifully restored George Blunden Almshouses to Barking Betty (hair care for dogs) and the Islamic Cultural Centre which has both a shop front and house converted to Mosque.

A last push uphill and under the railway bridges and there we were at our destination of Clapham Junction, having taken just about the prescribed time – never wildly exciting but plenty to keep one interested in this fairly extensive east to west trip. Always looking polished, The Falcon (pub) keeps the flame of the lost river Falcon flying and reminds us many road routes follow the valleys of even older now lost rivers.

The Number 343 Route

New Cross Gate to City Hall
Monday October 19^th 2009

 Author Note: It being 2 years nine months since we rode this route we have lost the photos. I have plugged some gaps by borrowing photos off other routes which cross this one but gaps remain. If we find them we will add them later.

  Our previous journey (the Number 36) had left us just opposite New Cross Bus garage, and we used the facilities at the New Cross Sainsbury’s - a site very much designed for the motorist with the need to cross a vast car park before you can enter the store and use its facilities – there are plans afoot to re-design this area and bring it down to street level, incorporating more Housing.

Refreshed,  we crossed the road and boarded a double decker 343, which surprisingly for the first third of its journey goes through some comparative back streets. It starts by climbing up Pepys Road (which locals used to be in the habit of calling ‘Pepp-is’). The bus is the only permitted vehicle to do this, as there is some ferocious one wayery round here. Then up and over (Telegraph Hill ),   passing both the Haberdasher Aske’s schools once we were past the park This is a substantial conservation area built in a planned way to include fine villas, schools and churches on a patch that was once a market garden until the railways came.

From there the route passes through the very large Honor Oak Estate, still in the process of being upgraded, and past Avignon Road where Mary had once lived with a deranged landlady who read all her mail and reported back to her parents so she eventually fled to another flat in North London.  We hope the landlady stopped taking tenants.  By the time it leaves Lewisham borough behind the 343 turns through the older bits of Nunhead and close to Stuart Road.  Mary pointed out her allotment on a good south facing slope in Elland Road. From there the 343 skirts the edge of Rye Hill Park and Peckham Common, arriving at the crossroads junction formerly known as King’s on the Rye, and then up and into Rye Lane – this was a Monday afternoon and actually very quiet as some days there is no room left to walk so busy are the pavements.

The ‘Co-Op’ apartments are about the only new building round here and they are in a thirties tribute style and the rest of Rye Lane dates from just about every decade. The bus then turns left into Peckham Road, dominated now by the new Harris Academy, and a newly demolished pub. The bus does not stick to this main road, however, but works its way through the Aylsham Estate and to Burgess Park, once an oasis for Peckham but now in need of something of a face-lift.  The former Camberwell Public Baths adjacent to Wells Way library are of course famed for the huge tile mural of the Camberwell Beauty butterfly which came from the demolished gummed paper works of Samuel Jones. This site offers a closer look at what else is worth stopping for round here. Special mention for the Chumleigh Gardens Almshouses a hidden gem with café!

This bus alone services the huge Aylesbury Estate but today there were not many takers. The Charlie Chaplin centre looked deserted and the Heygate estate now emptied – so we eventually arrived at Elephant & Castle (we need a tick-off list to count down the 26 routes passing through).  Unusually the driver was hooting round the roundabout (perhaps he recognised some-one) before we drove up to the Borough complete with mis-spelt signs telling us of roadworks in Marshalsea,  which made us think of ' Little Dorrit'. 

The courts are close by in Newington causeway and we pushed on stopping only in the street for London Bridge station, and not up and down where most buses go. By now it was clearly lunch-time with all the office workers out and about to mingle with additional tourists heading for all the delights along here – Hays Galleria,   HMS Belfast, the tacky London Dungeons beloved of school groups and the curious ‘Britain at War’ – I always wonder why pay when you get the same or better for free at the Imperial war Museum.

Anyway the bus stops behind City Hall – a name we struggle with as it’s NOT the town hall for the city of London but merely the administrative headquarters for the Mayor, who is Mayor for greater London? Anyway this part of London and the river offer unequalled photo opportunities to the bus passenger and pedestrian alike and this 343 only took 50 minutes. 

PS Apparently said Mayor and others at City Hall receive more complaints about this service than many others, and I have to confess I have in my time stood alone and friendless in Frendsbury  Road waiting over ½ hour for this particular number – when I don’t want it of course it runs in positive convoys…

PPS Quite a bit has changed in the nearly 3 years since we rode this route:
Boris has been re-elected as mayor, but you knew that.

The roadworks and traffic re-alignment at Elephant & Castle have finished and make negotiating the double roundabouts easier.

The Heygate Estate is very empty, and the Aylesbury partially and both beloved of filmmakers who wish for a gritty location, to which the remaining tenants object, not wishing to be portrayed as crime hotspots.  Some of the promised rebuilding is finished – ‘Strata’, notably – but other sites continue to languish

The Belfast has been closed and re-opened (following unplanned collapse of gangplank) The Imperial War Museum has been open but is about to close (planned rebuilding works for the first half of 2013) 

Peckham has fairly continuous roadworks,  the results of which are never very clear!

Burgess Park has been getting a make-over which is nearly complete.

John Lanchester has written a novel called ‘Capital’ whose characters live round New Cross…in Pepys Road .

We celebrated the  200^th anniversary of Dickens’ birth this year.