The NUMBER 7 Route

 East Acton (Brunel Road) to Oxford Circus  

Thursday November 1 2018

Here we were reversing the direction and therefore the order of buses we took in early 2009 close to the start of the Project. This means we had already travelled from South Kensington to Roehampton where we had a short but extremely wet walk to access the 72 for onward transit to East Acton. Fortunately there was no problem in finding the start of the 72 in Roehampton as we were kindly guided to it by a former resident of the large estate back to visit his mum. He seemed intrigued by our Project so we said we would mention his gallantry under fire (well rain) otherwise he won’t get mentioned for few months yet. So much  for the preamble.

The 72 & 7 share a terminus and stop and we did not have long to wait … That’s a nice clean bus, said Jo (the cleanliness of the windows affects the quality of our photos) so we climbed upstairs only to find it smelled strongly of wee… Some mouth breathing followed by an open window   helped a little but distracted us from the early stages of the route of which we had seen very little given the mistiness aboard  the single decker 72 that doubles up this early stretch.  

Once over the crossroads we passed both Erconwald  (whom we had encountered two weeks ago  in Barking on the 5), and Wulfstan   and here they form part of one of the LCC’s (London County Council) cottage estates. Both were early Bishops of London.  

Then on further to pass the series of buildings that belong to Hammersmith Hospital  – Queen Charlotte’s  has a nearly 200 year history offering maternity services though only here on Du cane Road since 2000. The hospitals come under the auspices of the Imperial NHS Trust.  We have always presumed that Nightingale House on the corner was some kind of nurses’ home, but it seems to have gained a modern Ziggurat style building over its shoulder.

It must be handy for Wormwood Scrubs to have a hospital nearby, we thought,  then on past North Pole Road – did I hear right? said Jo: yes. I suggested the smell of pee was dissipating but Jo thought we were just getting used to it...

Onwards to our next hospital, though no longer a full one – St Charles. There is a good history here, 

but we were both quite relieved that it is now more of a mental health resource on a hopefully smaller and cleaner scale than the ward we had visited in the  late Nineties. If it’s St Charles it must be Notting Hill and sure enough the other Saints come thick and fast: St Michael and St Laurence follow on before we arrived at Ladbroke Grove.  The facilities under Westway  have always been interesting though there seemed to be fewer fruit and veg than we remembered – and the Kensington Park Hotel, though brightly painted, looked shuttered., and has certainly closed since we were last round this way – another local pub bites the dust, and this one had some musical history

Perhaps this is why as you turn the corner the two stories over Nu-line builders have musical heroes in their windows – someone has given them a home after being evicted from elsewhere? Nu-line look to be an excellent local resource for paints, ironmongery etc. though not so new as they have been here since 1965.

I suspect some of their paints may have been used for the row of ‘ice-cream sorbet’ houses that we passed and which are typical of the now very expensive Notting Hill.

Having started at Brunel Road it was only fitting we should pass the famous engineer’s estate – once Westminster’s  it now seems mainly privately owned?  Continuing along Westbourne Grove with its range of small shops, galleries and eating places we passed the Prince Bonaparte so we could remember he was exiled, or expeditiously chose to move here during one of France’s several revolutions.

If we could see Bishops Bridge and Westway before us Paddington  Station could not be far behind. There is still a fair amount of Crossrail/Elizabeth Line building disruption here so it is hard to believe anyone thought it could have been ready last month.  Progress along Praed Street in front of Paddington and then St Mary’s Hospital is always slow and today was no exception. You can see the ‘dusty’ window of Sir Alexander Fleming’s lab from the top deck – a museum visit which is worthwhile.

The traffic was no faster when we joined the Edgware Road and much slower than it had been last week – no matter, we could see other things.  The pub sign for the Old English Gentleman remains though it now adorns a Lebanese restaurant. Also ‘As Nature Intended’ is not quite what you might expect  (something for the English Gentlemen perhaps) but in fact a rather pricy looking health food shop.

Travelling this way the bus does not have to go right round Marble Arch (only the cavalry and royalty can go through) – on the contrary you get a rather good close up of the somewhat misplaced  ornate entrance originally designed for Buckingham Palace. Talking of good views from the top deck, we realised we had been riding alone  upstairs for the entire trip – either  there were very  few passengers or  the smell had percolated downstairs; then it struck us: suppose  other passengers thought it was us – two incontinent old ladies on the top deck. We promise you we are very clean , or as clean as you can be after crossing London twice.  

In spite of the road works we progressed well down this stretch of Oxford Street to stop just short of Oxford Circus in just under an hour, not bad given the 55 minute estimate for a run that really wriggles its way west through some of the most interesting and colourful bits of West London. Have a go but take an unsmelly vehicle!

Random mahonia I forgot to mention

The Number 6 Route

Thursday 25 October 2018

Our previous bus having dropped us conveniently round the corner, it was not long before we were on a 6, heading for Aldwych.  Willesden Bus Garage is spacious, but the buses pull out and around, so Linda thought we were heading in the wrong direction at first.

The weather was again splendid, with cloudless blue skies and, while there was a nip in the air, the bus was pleasantly warm.

The Global Co-operative University seems to be based here, but I have found it quite difficult to discover its actual status. It seems to have something to do with the actual Co-operative Movement.

The Willesden Centre for Health and Care was more identifiable, and we thought it might once have been the Willesden Cottage Hospital.

 We were pleased to see the green space around the Sports Centre, the more so because almost all the residents have hardened their front gardens.  Nobody designed these neat terraces for privately owned vehicles, nor indeed for the amount of traffic that pours past them at all times.

We passed the Lexy Cinema, with its message 'I am a Cinema: Love Me'  and then were able to add to our collection of witty hairdressing names.  We were clearly in a healthy area, what with Ayurvedic offerings and a vegan cafe, and we also passed Franklin Primary School, now an ARK Academy.  It was named for the scientist Rosalind (DNA) Franklin.

 

 After some very congested streets, we admired the pretty cottages of Kilburn Lane and went past the Fierce Grace Hot Yoga Centre, which struck us as a fairly terrifying concept.

Once we got into Maida Vale, we were back among what seems to be the single significant marker for these revisited bus routes: new build apartments in huge numbers, stretching along road after road.  Some are occupied, some about to be, and some just starting.

Down towards Warwick Avenue Station, we came to the attractive Sheepdrove Organic Farm shop, and then we were into the Edgware Road, for the second time today.  We had time to notice the interesting, and possibly political statement outside a restaurant serving BOTH Iraqi and Kurdish Food.

After Church Street Market, we came to more new build.

Linda and I are fairly sure that we saw this development being...well, developed, last time round in 2009, but the answer may be that it is a very large area. We are also pretty sure that the prices would not have been quite so remarkable back then.

 After this, we made quite rapid progress, under the elevated road, and past Nutford Place, where something rather small is being built by the interestingly named Deconstruct Company.  It seems to mean that they do the Project Managing.

Once we got to Marble Arch, we headed down Park Lane, past the monument to the Animals of War, with glimpses of Hyde Park across the many lanes of fast traffic.

 

 At Hyde Park Corner, this bus makes a left along Piccadilly, past the Royal Academy, and the many tourists at Piccadilly Circus, to turn down Haymarket and get to Trafalgar Square.

The fourth plinth has an Assyrian statue made out of syrup tins at the moment, which we glimpsed as we went past. Then it's only a short distance, though quite a long time, along the Strand, past the Church of St Mary, to turn up into Aldwych and end our ride, 75 minutes after we left Willesden.

The NUMBER 5 Route

Romford Market to Canning Town

Thursday October 18 2018

Having boggled at the way the Number 4 wriggles its way, somewhat illogically, round North London this route is the opposite experience as for most of its journey it carries straight on in a rough diagonal from Romford in the NE down to Canning Town, almost on the river.

Last time we were In Romford we got lost and the same happened today. As the buses are mostly on the perimeter, that is a ring road, or by the station, logic dictates you should be able to walk across the middle but somehow that never works out.  Jo asked a couple of shoppers who looked blank, Google Maps on my phone did not help either, thinking I was a car, so only the 2015 NE Bus Map saved the day

We completed the circuit from ‘Romford market’ (see comments from last time) and exited along something called the Rom Valley Way  The local authority (I think it’s Havering round this way, a fair description of our map reading) makes little of the source of its name and we barely saw water that might be the River Rom from the top of the bus. More arresting was a woman totally haranguing a bus inspector/controller by the station – she kept pointing at her watch so we presumed some delay had annoyed her.

The main divergence from the straight and narrow is into the Queen’s Hospital, mainly modern now with a car park; opposite are handy commercial outlets such as Mothercare so there clearly is a thriving maternity department.

With more and more passengers boarding , and by now we were passing some schools or colleges too, the area was quite built up, the numerous new builds of Romford giving way to older housing and the fringes of the Becontree Estate which now has its own historians -quite rightly. What was noticeable was that the estate seemed to have been built with few shops – there was a cluster at Wood lane/ Becontree and then again at Faircross. Hence we supposed the proliferation of cars in front drives so supermarkets can be accessed?

Today, unintentionally, was something of a West Ham FC day – having passed their substantive ground on the 339 we now passed their training venue at Rush Green and with some folk loitering outside we presume the team was practising?

The other feature of this part of the trip seemed to be the proliferation of Turkish shops, in particular Turkish barbers (DARTH FADERZ anyone?) offering a Turkish shave – apparently a wet shave with a ‘cut throat’ rather than safety razor – who knew?  Handy for their customers there was also a range of Turkish food and grill places. Inevitably we passed some closed pubs – now an advertising site for Hydroponics, swapping one stimulant/depressive for another?

As we approached Barking a sudden rash of EL buses appeared – all three numbers serve Barking so the Number 5 suddenly seemed very old hat. Barking has undergone some road changes and quite an extensive building programme – the Number 5 came behind the High Street and was briefly held by a 4 way light as the road was taken up by building works. It gave us time to notice the face-off between the Spotted Dog and the Barking Dog pubs, and that we were crossing the River Roding.

Apart from the barbers there was a range of churches – earlier St Botolph and Erkenwald may have had links to the erstwhile Barking Abbey though in fact it was Erkenwald’s sister Ethelburga who was the first of many abbesses here. At different points we spotted the Fullword Church and the Great Commission Church, not to mention a few Islamic Centres, or center as they seemed to call it. These all favour ‘shop-fronts’ as a starting point and thus populate many of the high streets along this route. In turn you see the travel agents – Hajj and Umrah (a year round Hajj trip) – the clothes shops and food outlets that would cater for the different congregations. Dieu voit tout seemed to be a generic grocery store but doubtless God had passed a benevolent eye over the goods for sale?

Upton Park was of course the former home of West Ham FC and as expected the demolition gangs had been in with several cranes in sight .  Barratt have the contract here but unlike the homes at the former  Highbury there seems to be no trace of the old stadium. So the statue of Bobby Moore and friends seems a little stranded?

Having negotiated Barking in a timely fashion we pushed on through Newham admiring the excellent Town Hall and adjacent library. 

The route from Newham into Canning Town was the most congested of the journey: although the major roadworks which had dogged our journeys last time round were now complete the roads are narrower and busy. Usually there is a good view of the Millenium Dome close to Canning Town – not so today (have they demolished it? asked Jo) but Canning Town Bus Station has had a slight re-furb.

It was passing through here back in the summer on the search for the Trinity Lighthouse that made us realise we rather missed the buses, which is why we have come full circle and decided to ride them again. .

Not a circular route today but an old established link between the families and generations who moved out east from this inner city corner to points East & Romford; for us a metaphoric coming home.