Route 404: Caterham-on-the Hill to Cane Hill, Coulsdon Location: London south, outer Length of journey: 8 miles, 40 minutes
The 404 is a minor (and extremely twiddly) bus route scaling the foothills of extremely-south London. Two years ago its route was diverted in the middle and extended at one end, its frequency was doubled to half-hourly and it gained a Sunday service for the first time. Unfortunately this coincided precisely with the start of lockdown so most of that investment went to waste for many subsequent months, plus I never got the chance to blog a ride.
Instead I posted an entirely virtual account of a 404 journey, based on Streetview and hearsay, and have only now got round to riding the whole thing for real. In this updated reportage anything you've read before is in red and all the new stuff is in black.
Our starting point is just outside London, in Surrey, specifically Caterham-on-the-Hill. This is a lot like actual Caterham but higher up, indeed the hill between the two is a 1 in 6 and plied only by non-London buses. I had a bit of an explore before starting my journey so can confirm that the East Surrey Museum at the foot of the hill is still a little gem, that St Lawrence's at the top is seriously old and that the uphill slog is knackering. Most of the decent shops are down in the valley but Caterham-on-the-Hill has a decent selection including the chance to buy vinyl records, ballet shoes, summer blouses, gift boxes, air rifles, saveloy and chips.
The 404 kicks off its journey in the middle of Westway Common, a recreational greensward not far from the library. Mobile reception is excellent because three tall masts erupt alongside. If you wanted to go anywhere fast you'd catch the 466 to Croydon or even the 400 to East Grinstead, but for the full twiddlybus experience you need to wait for the driver to put his phone away, flip open the doors and welcome his only passenger.
We start with a spin round the common, part of a big triangular loop that gets the bus back on a northbound track. This delivers the delights of the Caterham Community Recycling Centre and a run of sturdy terraces that could easily be in London but aren't. At the mini roundabout we turn from Chaldon Road into Coulsdon Road, and I note that this route seems unduly concerned with places that start with the letter C. As if to prove the point the next pub is the Caterham Arms, a solid suburban edifice complete with Carvery and Children's Play Area. If there's a memorial to the 1975 IRA bombing that injured several disco-going squaddies it's probably inside.
This is where Caterham hides its big Tesco which makes the meandering 404 ideal for the car-less to pick up provisions, indeed one such shopper slowly clambers aboard. Our surroundings remain built-up until the boundary of Greater London where, in a reversal of what you might expect, development stops dead and thick woodland takes over. This is Coulsdon Common, home to the southernmost pub in London, The Fox, where the lunchtime crowd is already parked up beyond the dandelions. If you've ever walked London Loop section 5, which by my reckoning is the finest of the lot, you'll have crossed our bus's path on your way to the delights of Happy Valley.
So far our route has been identical to the double decker 466 but at Lacey Drive the 404 embarks on its public service remit and veers off to tour the backstreets. This is part of TfL's commitment to keep as much of London's population as possible within 400m of a bus stop, indeed you'd never send a bus into these hilly avenues otherwise and the size of our single-door single-decker reflects this. Initially it's all white-walled bungalows, then more substantial semis nudge in as we plunge into the valley avoiding a reversing Volvo and an over-optimistic Hyundai. Every day is a driving test when you're behind the wheel of the 404.
TfL planned to divert the route down even hillier Shirley Avenue to better serve the houses there, but that road's narrower and needed new bus stops and nobody tackled the necessary works so that deviation went by the board. Local residents can't complain, their backwater enclave already has a better service than several provincial estates. One young woman flags us down, thereby ensuring this meander wasn't an entire waste of time. You can sense the driver's relief when we meet an approaching 404 on a brief stretch of broad flat road rather on the squished Tudorbethan climb back to the main road.
To tackle the 404's latest new loop we cross Coulsdon Road and start trawling the backroads on the other side. TfL try not to do double-running (i.e. following the same streets in both directions) but here it's the only sensible way to reach the Tollers Lane Estate. I'd never realised it was up there, hidden behind a shield of trees, whenever I've been hiking through Happy Valley. What a blissful spot to have at the bottom of your road, and what an odd place to have wedged an unglamorous postwar estate. Our bus is tasked with running a clockwise circuit of this distant tongue of flats and social housing, bringing 250 properties within 400m of a bus stop for the first time. For our disembarking Tesco-shopper it's a gamechanger, and for the rest of us on board the bus an extra six minute detour.
Back on line of route we finally reach the shopping parade in Old Coulsdon. This feels very much like a village centre, based as it is around St John's church and the Tudor Rose pub, with the added benefit of Stella's deli and a homegrown bakery. The pillarbox outside the chippy has recently gained a crocheted topper featuring several colourful eggs and is getting a lot of approval. This would be a good place to switch to a quicker bus, be that the 60 or the 466, because the 404 has one last big twiddle to complete. All looks promising as we aim direct down Marlpit Lane, indeed the Legoland houses at our destination are suddenly illuminated on the far slopes, but then we veer right up Stoneyfield Road to serve the big semis on the hill.
If you've ever stood on the ridge at Farthing Downs and been gobsmacked by the view, that steep bank of white houses to the east is where we are now. First we ply to the top where the biggest houses are, then sweep back down the unlikely switchback of Rutherwick Rise. At one point we're only a few metres away from the rim of a quarry - a quarry which now contains a Waitrose distribution centre and the Ullswater Industrial Estate. Although the street is lined by parked cars it's very much the place potential bus passengers might live, and indeed do, the 404 cementing its social credentials as a needle threading through the community.
Finally we reach the valley bottom and round the recreational treasure of Coulsdon Memorial Ground. Here a couple of passengers nip off to catch a train from Coulsdon South station and a boarding shopper flusters as she (nearly) gets caught in the closing doors while looking for her Freedom Pass. Now for the final contortion. The extension bolted onto the end of the route requires the bus to be passing southwards down the high street so we're about to do something no other bus does and wheedle round the by-pass. The Coulsdon Relief Road was slotted in beside the railway in 2006 to extract through traffic on the A23, and its northbound bus lane lay empty for fourteen years before the tweaked 404 finally arrived.
Brighton Road has the best shops this side of Croydon, including a proper Waitrose and an even bigger Aldi, and is much more pleasant since the bypass opened. Everyone still aboard alights here and three more board, including one woman who appears to have bought two copies of the Daily Mail. Nobody ever needs to go all the way on the new 404 because the final extension is merely a courtesy to residents of the hilltop bastion of Cane Hill, a former mental asylum.
Cane Hill Hospital opened in 1883 as the Surrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, then the largest in Britain. It finally closed in 1991 and was left to decay, with a decision to demolish most of it being taken in 2008. The land has since been used for an estate of 700 quirky three-storey Barratt homes, retaining only the water tower, chapel and (burnt out) administration building from the original layout, and TfL have kindly deemed residents worthy of a bus route. It's only a fifteen minute walk from the shops, but not everybody can walk, or has two cars, and being uphill doesn't help either.
So the 404 now heads up that hill, starting from the roundabout on the relief road which we drove around five minutes ago. Buses stop four times on the ascent of Cane Hill Drive, and I'm surprised when one last teenager flags us down rather than walk to the top herself. The terminus is high on Crawford Crescent between the chapel and the water tower, where a replacement driver in a hire-car is waiting to do a switcheroo. It's a slightly surreal place to be dropped, surrounded by tall thin houses and overlooking a wetland sink, and only looks substantially complete because I've waited two years to take a ride. In small and tiny ways the bus network in outer London is still improving.
