Route 56: Whipps Cross to Barbican Location: London northeast, inner Length of bus journey: 8 miles, 50 minutes
Last year I didn't ride my birthday bus route, I only walked it.
I have now ridden it end to end, because I thought I ought to before I'm 57.
It was much as I described before, but a lot faster.
You didn't miss much...
• I managed to get a top front seat (because the heavily-tattooed bloke who looked like he might take it decided to sit at the back)
• A small dog boarded near Bakers Arms (but with its owner, so nothing anecdoteworthy)
• On Lea Bridge Road the man in the other front seat spotted his friend on the pavement and they waved and ran over to board the bus, and my neighbour kept craning round to see if they were coming up the stairs but in fact they'd decided not to get on, and I knew this because I was sitting on the left-hand side but they couldn't see anything and only understood when their friend rang up and explained (and that's my best story from the trip and narrativewise it's really dull, sorry)
• The iBus display wasn't working (so you couldn't see what the next stop was, only hear it)
• The Lea Valley Ice Centre is currently a freshly-rebuilt shell open to the elements (this time last year it hadn't been demolished)
• The cycle-lane-less stretch of Lea Bridge Road (which I moaned about in my 48 and 55 write-ups) is finally getting a bypass (currently half-tarmacked, half not) through the adjacent park
• At Clapton Pond a man smelling of mothballs sat behind me (and stayed on until the end)
• The exclusive bit of road served only by route 56 took just 3 minutes to traverse (but did gain us 3 passengers)
• Beyond Dalston Junction interest in catching the bus dwindled somewhat (because a number 30 was hoovering up the passengers)
• On Essex Road I spotted a man in a supermarket casually dropping 3 lemons into his bag (on reflection I decided this was a supermarket that offered its customers shopping bags rather than shopping baskets, thereby negating any interest in the anecdote)
• Traffic was quite light (we sailed round the Angel gyratory into the duller backstreets of Islington)
• Frustratingly the bus terminated before its usual destination at St Barts Hospital, dumping us three stops short with my narrative incomplete ("From 12:00 Monday 28 February to 23:59 Sunday 13 March, route 56 is starting and terminating at Barbican, Museum of London due to electrical works")
• By rights I should have walked the last bit (but I did that last March so I decided not to do it again)
Hopefully next week's trip to Kingston will prove at least marginally more incident-packed.
