The Number 31 Route

Thursday 3 January 2019

Aiming at the 16, which goes, as you know, from Cricklewood, we started from Camden, to enjoy the 31 as it winds around north and west London to get to White City.  London is still startlingly empty, so we twiddled around Bayham Street (one of several dozen Charles Dickens Blue Plaques) and up the High Street.

I pointed out to Linda the craft shop which has opened among all the other money lending and phone shops of this unprepossessing thoroughfare, and then we were in amongst the more remarkable shop fronts which line the street view of the Camden Lock area.

Chalk Farm Station is where people like me get to if we fall asleep on the tube, but we have never deliberately got out there.

We then passed King's College Court, offering new penthouse apartments, which puzzled us as this is clearly a 1960s construction.  But lo! they have put the new penthouses on top, and you could have a 3 bedroom one for £4,200,000.  Words briefly fail me, so here are the details.

There were other new build flats nearby, with that Tudor 'save the footprint' style which gets wider at the top, and we saw a sign for 5 exclusive Grand Design houses, but were past before we could spot the details.

This reminds me to say that London is clearly not yet back at work, as we were nipping along smartly, with few delays.

Swiss Cottage's famous Basil Spence Library was a haunt of Linda's when she was studying, and we noted that the Overground (of which we are both fans) has its HQ here.

Just as we were remarking upon the turn off to the theatre, our bus plunged left down the steep hill which takes you towards South Hampstead Station and then of course to Kilburn Park Road, with a mix of  mid 19th century and later housing.

The Oxfield School is a language school, with a splendid website (my opinion, perhaps coloured by the time it takes to get past all the advertising on my search site to find the one I actually asked for), and we also passed the RSPCA's War Memorial Dispensary and Kilburn Park Station, before getting among the huge development that is the Telford Estate, with building sites in between to fill the gaps.  These appeared to be houses being built at least in part for  Brent Council.  

When we came to a pub called The Union, with a fine ghost sign proclaiming Fuller, Smith and Turner, we realised we were crossing the canal. 'We could have walked along the tow path from Camden', I said, but we were more comfortable on a bus on this chilly day.

We passed Westbourne Park Station, and the Bus Garage, before noting the Bayswater Children's Centre in bright blue.  This was an area with many small mewses off the main road, a sign, we supposed, that we were on a main thoroughfare which had once had a need for horse-servicing facilities.

A number of the shops had more-or-less seasonal plastic garland around them (we had noted some of these on previous trips, and wondered if there was a firm that supplied and changed seasonal offerings.

Portobello Road had little to offer today, and soon we were in Notting Hill, travelling straight west to pass Holland Park Station and the Road in which our Mother/in-law lived.


The green of Norland Square was cheering, though the Nannies are now in Bath.  But don't worry that standards might slip:  they are still in uniform even though it is a university.

After the horrible roundabout at the end of the road, we were nearly there, with White City marked on the road and we turned into the historic Bus Station at 10.55.

This had been an interesting journey, with much changed since the last time we rode this way.

The Number 30 Route

Thursday 4 April 2019

Well, it's April, so we had a mix of heavy and very chilly showers, with sunny spells, though not much warmer.  Our route began in Portman Street, where I had time to notice that they have abolished the C2 route, replacing it with a massively extended 88.  The 88 will now go from Clapham Common to Parliament Hill Fields, instead of collapsing from exhaustion in Camden Town.  I'm only mentioning this now, as we might not survive to the 'letter' buses this time.  But on with the 30.

We set off north, past the gated and green Portman Square, and up Gloucester Place, now two way and pretty well sorted, unlike Baker Street, where the works are still in progress.  Being Westminster, the splendid wider pavements are not accompanied by improved cycling facilities, but every little helps.  There is an LCC blue plaque along here for the novelist Wilkie Collins, famous for The Moonstone and The Woman in White.






We turned right at Baker Street Station, passing the soggy queue for Madame Tussauds 

and headed straight East, passing The Royal Academy of Music (which has a very enjoyable Museum, by the way) University College Hospital and the Wellcome Trust before turning into the cramped and dingy bus space at Euston.  The huge and lavish taxi area which is part of the HS2 works merely rubs salt into the wounds of bus travellers.

Having wriggled through here, the bus comes back out into the Euston Road, past the HQ of Unison, and on towards the British Library. Their new exhibition, Writing, will open this month, though it is hard to imagine anything equalling the splendour of The Anglo-Saxons.

Still going straight, we passed St Pancras and Kings Cross hading along the Pentonville Road in the kind of rain that meant photos were very hard to come by, before we finally turned north, just before Angel, into Baron Street. Here, we had a change of driver.  Our first driver had been anxious to press on, crossing a number of lights as they changed to red, but this second one was more relaxed.

Along Upper Street, we passed the Town Hall, as well as the Dead Dolls House, a 'venue' which makes no attempt to explain its odd name. We also saw a Blue Plaque to Gracie Fields (click here for a taste), and the charming Screen on the Green Cinema.Then, of course, we came to the works at Highbury Corner, which have been going on since time immemorial but is scheduled to finish really soon.

As we travelled out of Islington and towards Hackney, we came to the Hen and Chickens

Theatre Bar, as well as the Alwyne Castle Pub, before coming to the Balls Pond Road, apparently named for the man with the pond in his tavern grounds during the later Stuart period (in case you've ever wondered).  We also passed a Taproom and Deli where you could bring your own wine bottles to be filled.

All this brings the bus to Dalston Junction and along Dalston Lane, where there is a pub called the Three Compasses.  Before you ask why ay traveller could possibly need three, let me reassure you that the sign showed geometry-set things, not the kind that point north.

We passed Navarino mansions, and then Hackney Downs Station.  There is of course a lot of new build around here,  with street-side banners announcing that 'Living' around here has been fashionable since 1850.

We came past Hackney Central Station and along Mare Street, thinking we were nearly at our destination, but it is a long way along Wick Road before you reach Hackney Wick.  We like the fact that some of the older housing survives the arrival of all those luxury apartments

We also came past Cardinal Pole RC School. It's an interesting name for a school, since he was Legate at the time of Queen Mary I, whose treatment of Protestants ensured that Catholic had rather a bad time after her death, not achieving full emancipation until the 19th century.  but you don't need my views on 'faith schools'.

Finally we reached St Mary of Eton Church, with its huge church hall.  The brickwork is multi coloured and there is some rather fine graffiti which we took to be official.  And this is where we finished our trip.  The sun was out, the sky was blue, though it was still cold.

What with foreign trips and Easter holidays, there will be a brief hiatus in this travelogue, though there will be 'one we prepared earlier' to fill the gap.

The Number 29 Route

Thursday 24 January 2019
This was the start of the journey which would lead us to the Number 20, waiting coyly in Debden Broadway, so we made a prompt start, making use of the facilities in the National Gallery before boarding the bus at 10.10.

Up the Charing Gross Road, we passed a couple of theatres, before spotting the Blue Plaque for Al Bowlly. You can see and hear him here.  This 'British' singer was born in a Portuguese colony of Greek and Lebanese parents.  I only mention this because of the ridiculous fake and damaging nationalism being touted by some of our more random politicians at the moment.

Then on, past Leicester Square tube Station, to spot a clothes shop called 'A Child of the Jago'. The clothes look pretty nice on the website, but it seems an odd name for luxury goods, since the title of that of an 1896 novel about a child born and dying in one of the Shoreditch rookeries.

There is also going to be a great new retail-and dining-thing called Central Cross.  I have a feeling it is on the site of the former Central St Martins Art College.

Then we came to the slow traffic which is the identifying mark of the Elizabeth Line works. We liked the hoardings advertising Foyles and providing glimpses into the future residential-retail-and-dining development which will be above it all.

Proceeding up the ~Tottenham Court Road was also slow, because of the continuing transformative works of the West End Project. They are also building a new Proton Therapy Centre at University College Hospital, which also slows the traffic.

But in due course we arrived at Heals and then Warren Street, and crossed into the Hampstead Road. Here we ignored the works connected with HS2, possibly the most pointless infrastructure plan (in its southern incarnation) ever.

On towards Camden's High Street, we passed the former Carreras building, still embellished with black cats from when one of the best selling cigarettes was Black Cat.

The Lyttleton Arms used to be the Southampton Arms, involved in the 1920s gang violence depicted in Peaky Blinders.  It's now named after Humphrey Lyttleton, so you can read about the great man here.

Traffic was not nearly as slow as it sometimes is, and soon we were over the Regent's Canal and passing the playing fields and the terraces built when the Jewish Free School moved to Stanmore.  Given the odd meaning of 'free school' these days, they mostly just call themselves the JFS.

Along here, an inspector came on board, though this is not a bus with multiple entry points, and so we doubted if he 'caught' many people.

Before long, we were up towards Holloway and the Nag's Head, where many public housing blocks were financed by the City of London in the 1950s, since they had plenty of money and no land, and Islington had the land but no money.





Up the Seven Sisters Road, unchanged since we were here on the number 4 a few weeks ago.  But we liked the fabric and clothing shops, and they kept us happy till we reached (but did not divert into) the Finsbury Park interchange, as the bus station is now called.  Strangely, the clothing stands under the railway bridge were not operating.  Perhaps they are on holiday.

Finsbury Park is amazingly extensive, and has been constantly used by local families since it opened in 1869.  As the bus headed up Green Lanes, the traffic was, as always, sufficiently slow for us to enjoy the green outlook. We crossed over the New River, and I reminded Linda what an excellent walk it offers.

Green Lanes is a splendid mixtures of Greek and Turkish shops and businesses.  We could not help feeling that, if negotiations about the future of Cyprus happened in this area, things would get sorted quite rapidly and pragmatically

We find ourselves surprised at the frequency and regularity of this route, since it parallels tube lines all the way: Northern Line to Camden, and Piccadilly Line all the way to Wood Green.  And here we were, at Wood Green Station at 11.10, after a shorter journey than the predicted.