Let's continue my X-rated bus journey aboard London's three eXpress routes.
Today it's the middle leg from the end of the X68 to the start of the X140.
And it's a really long one...
Route X26: West Croydon - Heathrow Central Length of journey: 24 miles, timetabled 110 minutes
The X26 is TfL's longest bus route by far, being half as long again as its closest daytime competitor. It has its roots in the old Green Line network, specifically the 726 from Gravesend to Windsor from an era when really long cross-London express coaches were the norm. Its endpoints were eventually lopped back but it was still running from Bromley to Heathrow, extraordinarily unreliably, when Ken Livingstone put it out of its misery in 2005. From its ashes came the X26, initially hourly, then half-hourly and soon to be boosted to every 15 minutes as an easy win for Sadiq Khan's Superloop.
It runs with special vehicles, the only double deckers on the network with no middle doors so passengers exit as well as enter at the front. You soon learn the etiquette. A substantial portion of downstairs is taken up with austere metal luggage racks, because this is meant as the easy route to the airport, but this also means that seating is restricted and the view's quite poor unless you're on the upper deck. I don't manage to grab a front seat this time, the 6pm X26 being a popular peak journey, but I nearly do which is important because you wouldn't want to read reportage from a 2 hour bus journey where I couldn't see out of the windows.
There are only 13 stops on route X26, an average of one every two miles, and the first comes really quickly alongside East Croydon station. The gentleman who slips into the seat behind me is almost the perfect unwanted passenger in that he's on the phone and has a heavy cough, though thankfully he's takeaway-free. After pulling away we stop at the lights and a latecomer knocks on the door and the driver kindly lets her in. Another tries shortly afterwards, with the lights still red, but this time despite her 'please please' protestations the driver leaves her behind. That's as noteworthy as today's driver gets, by the way, the narrative having returned to normal levels after yesterday's fiery burst.
We depart the uplifted centre of town via the Croydon Flyover, a rare scenic treat from which the skyline is part historic, part ugly and increasingly screened by newbuild flats. On the descent we pass the first of thousands of upcoming suburban semis and also a large field grazed by two horses (which after further research I see is due to be developed into 140 additional homes because of course it is). Technically we've reached Waddon, the first suburb we pass through but don't serve, where at Fourways junction I'm pleased to see that the poster for 'Mr Cure' (failed Croydon Mayoral candidate 2022) has finally been papered over.
We're just about to spend 45 minutes crossing the borough of Sutton, the stopwatch starting when we cross the boundary near Waddon Ponds. Our progress soon stalls courtesy of a massive line of traffic stretching right round the double bend into Beddington, which presumably is Croydon's working population heading home. Only a flashing ambulance gets to jump the queue - we are but a supposedly-express bus and we sit tight. Stop Two is for Wallington, not in it, where a schoolboy hails us with a bold arm movement reminiscent of a Roman emperor. Stop Three is Carshalton, just four minutes later, whose quaint winding high street is easily the nicest anywhere along my 45 mile journey.
Further suburban undulations bring us to Sutton, Stop Four, where several passengers alight to switch to parallel local route 213 and several of the 213's passengers switch to us instead. What ensues is the perfect example of why express buses aren't always what they're cut out to be. The 213 departs just ahead of us and, although it'll be stopping four times before we reach Cheam, the road is too narrow and the oncoming traffic too busy for us to overtake. At St Dunstan's Hill it gets lucky with the lights and skips ahead leaving us behind, and we eventually spot it way down the High Street before it vanishes round the corner into an unassailable lead. Sutton's swappers should have caught the 213 instead but how were they to know?
Cheam is the hinge where the X26 switches from westward to northwestward travel. Change here for the 470 to Epsom and Ewell, says the scrolling display, without mentioning it too is a half-hourly bus so you might be waiting a while. We chug on to North Cheam, Stop Six, where our nemesis 213 has celebrated its victory by terminating early and turfing off all its passengers. Many of them reboard our bus, including three gossipy girls disappointed to be forced into separate seats. They continue gossiping anyway. Now much fuller we continue to Worcester Park, Stop Seven, at which point we finally depart Sutton for Kingston. The railway bridge is also the closest the Superloop comes to the Greater London boundary (there, just the other side of that car park) and also the halfway point of the journey according to the timetable. We're currently only six minutes behind schedule.
Now, finally, the traffic eases and the journey speeds up. You might assume this to be the thinning effects of the outer suburbs but in reality what's happened is the time's just ticked past seven o'clock and the rush hour is over. Today's X-bus safari was perfectly speedy until four thirty and will be fine again from seven onwards, but expect the Superloop to be just as un-Super in the peaks as all the other buses. Old Malden is another suburb that apparently doesn't merit an express, whereas New Malden (Stop Eight) proves a particularly busy interchange. Look, there's the famous hairdressers called Curl Up And Dye, look there's another well-loaded X26 coming the other way and look there's the end of Dickerage Lane, as previously blogged.
The Norbiton Controlled Zone heralds our arrival into Kingston proper. Here we skip one bus station and don't quite stop outside the other, pausing instead in Clarence Street where a considerable exchange of passengers occurs. From above I watch all those outside patiently waiting for the hordes to disgorge before entering by the same door. The three gossipy girls take advantage of the hiatus to spread out across the front seats, only to be thwarted two minutes later at the next stop when an older lady asks them to move a bag and promptly sits down between them. I last saw the Thames three and a half hours ago and here it is again at Kingston Bridge, but narrower, untidal and more serene. That's three boroughs down and three to go, and if you're starting to lose the will to live while reading this then imagine what it's like sitting through it.
The 726 used to go round the south side of Bushy Park past Hampton Court but today's route follows the northern perimeter wall instead. Here we pass an X26 coming the other way which I note has plenty of passengers aboard. One minute later we pass another X26 coming the other way which is obviously less busy. Then one minute later we pass another X26 coming the other way, which given the half-hourly timetable really shouldn't be possible, and which looks like it has just one passenger. This absurd bunching up means that 40% of the ten vehicles in the X26's fleet are on the same stretch of road in Hampton Wick right now, and also suggests that normal service is completely buggered up. Just because it's an express service doesn't mean it's a reliable way to cross town.
Teddington is Stop Eleven and also a very long way from Stop Twelve. If you want any other stop between here and Hatton Cross you want the 285 instead, although that goes round the houses a bit and we're doing the five mile jump direct. The gossiping girls clearly haven't ridden the X26 before because when 'Hatton Cross station' comes up on the electronic display they ding the bell and start gathering their designer bags together. They will still be waiting to alight in 15 minutes time, because such is the fate of people who rely entirely on apps rather than maps.
The X26 takes shortcuts no other bus takes, which is nice, including Park Road in Hampton Hill and not twiddling annoyingly round Sainsburys. The roads are much wider now, proper arterial connectors that allow us to get some speed up and it feels like a proper express route for once. Many of the adjacent verges are suddenly covered with long puddles, including a couple of stretches of road we get to splosh cautiously through, suggesting that the thunderstorm I experienced in Lambeth had got a lot heavier by the time it reached Hounslow. We take one last shortcut to avoid Feltham, which is great unless you live in Feltham, and then as postwar homes make way for hotels we hit Hatton Cross, the first tube station I've seen since Elephant & Castle.
At the bus station there's a mass pile-off and an American-liveried jet roars almost directly overhead. It's the first time the bus hasn't felt busy since Croydon, so I finally grab the opportunity for promotion to the front seat. From here I'll be touring the perimeter of the airport at its less-loved end, initially past monumental concrete hangars reminiscent of the Cold War and later a sprawl of Nissen huts reminiscent of the war before that. Vast areas outside the perimeter road are given over to car parks, be that for long stay or for hire, whereas inside it's all grass, apron and distant glinting terminals. From this transient vantage point above the roll of barbed wire you really get a sense of the scale of Heathrow Airport, pretty much unobstructed, a treat unique to the X26 because all the other routes turned off earlier to serve useful bus stops.
The tunnel under the runways is a welcome sight, but only because it means we're nearly at our destination because visually it's pig ugly. Big blue signs alert drivers to the mandatory £5 drop-off charge whereas we've got here for £1.75 and travelled 24 miles in the process. We have to wait an extra minute before pulling up outside the bus station because a National Express coach is doing an awkward reversing manoeuvre, and only then does my double decker purgatory end. It's bang on eight o'clock and the bus is only five minutes behind schedule, though it feels much longer. The driver wheels off for a well-earned rest but I still have one more X to go because I need to be in Harrow before sunset.
Route X26: West Croydon - Heathrow Central
