Bus Route Of The Day 318: Stamford Hill to North Middlesex Hospital Location: London north Length of journey: 6 miles, 45 minutes
Because it's 31st August I've been out exploring the 318, because that's the Bus Route Of The Day.
n.b. Rest assured I didn't ride the route, I only walked it, because nobody wants to read tedious travelogue about a bus journey. Also you get much better photos on foot. So come with me on a twisty walking journey across the Tottenham Event Day Controlled Parking Zone, and not even the vaguely well-trodden bit near the stadium.
If you want to walk the route of the 31st August you need to head to the north end of Clapton Common and aim for what used to be Stamford Hill bus garage. Routes 6th July, 7th March and 25th March were once based here until it closed in 2020. The ostentatious gothic spire alongside belongs to the Georgian Orthodox Cathedral Church of the Nativity of Our Lord, but the New Synagogue across the road is much more characteristic of the local area. Stamford Hill is home to Europe's largest population of Hasidic Jews, indeed we're about to meander round many of the backstreets where this Orthodox community live. But the 31st August first has to head to the local shops to pick up passengers, otherwise there'd be nobody aboard to lug their kosher groceries home.
The route veers off the A10 pretty quickly, past a marvellous collection of remnant signs painted for a long-defunct drapers (Mackintoshes, Furs, Tailor Made Skirts, Mourning Orders Promptly Executed). It's hail and ride round here so you could hop on outside the Victorian school with the gendered entrances, outside the Orthodox takeaway or outside another synagogue labelled only in Hebrew. The streets aren't entirely monocultural, but most adults you pass are wearing either bonnets and pleated black dresses or tall hats and long black frock coats, while girls have their hair centre-parted and boys theirs in curls in preparation for adulthood.
The further you get from the main road and the closer you get to the River Lea, the poorer the state of local housing. The Imperial Wharf estate, for example, is light years away from its Chelsea namesake. We're on the Hackney/Haringey borders here, and if you check out the bins in certain front gardens you can observe the full evolution of Haringey's logo over the years. Only one corner of Markfield Park intrudes, deflecting us back towards the main road via a densely-fronted one-way street. The motto at Gladesmore Primary is 'Dream It, Reach For It, Achieve it' and all I can say is that after many of the dreams I have that really wouldn't be wise.
Its slow deviation complete, the 31st August then goes all mainstream and climbs the High Road for just over a mile. In doing so it becomes just another bus punters might choose to ride, perhaps instead of the 7th June or 14th September, and the next swathe of sidestreets can jolly well fend for themselves. Sights to enjoy include The Station House (an Irish pub near South Tottenham Overground), the massive residential upthrust of Apex Gardens (a jarring presence) and (hang on, really?) a Nigerian Tapas restaurant. The Latin Market at Seven Sisters is finally up and operational again, though only in reticent temporary format. If The High Cross pub looks like a block of public conveniences that's because that's what it used to be.
Holcombe Market is a 100 year-old anomaly, allegedly "a thriving hub of authentic food and culture" but more a modernised alleyway with almost half-a-dozen traders. One of these has the slogan "If it swims, we sell it", which I have to tell you is a lie, and another is supposedly Tottenham's first cheese shop (because gentrification is exceptionally slow to hit N17). Bruce Grove is the third Overground station we've passed and the 31st August's last attempt to interchange with a train. That's because it turns off at Poundland for another convoluted wander round a grid of narrow streets you'd never ever see unless a) you lived here, or b) you were following a bus route.
Past squished terraces. Past streetnames with a Boer War connection. Past corner shops with the holy trinity of convenience goods piled outside - bottled water, watermelons and barbecue charcoal. Past whitewashed gables emblazoned with satellite dishes. Past bus stops squeezed in wherever front gardens briefly fade. Past the industrial estate that's home to Mr Yoghurt ("specialising in yoghurt for over 20 years"). Past the path to the marshes someone decided to call Carbuncle Passage. Past a property with 15 bins. Past the very 1930s 'Patricia Villas'. Even past the occasional 31st August bus, assuming the timetable hasn't gone to pot and spaced out the service all over the place.
That's quite enough twiddling. Just before Northumberland Park we hit a road of decent width again, although neither of the two other bus routes which go this way can be written in calendar notation so no wonder the 31st August is popular. It gets quite social housing up ahead, which you can tell because the bin stores are all painted the same colour but haven't been recently. At the huge Sports Direct we finally return to the High Road but instead head straight across into Lordship Lane, where we're the sole bus route because only a single decker can duck under the railway bridge. On the corner with Pembury Road you can see excellent examples of four different eras of house building - elegant Georgian villas, two Victorian cottages, a row of 1930s semis and a stark chunk of postwar flats. Fish and Chips at the Sea Captain costs a very ballpark £10.40. Guiniess's Jamaican Cuisine is not a spelling mistake.
The only tourist attraction along the route is Bruce Castle Museum, Haringey's fine borough museum, but the big house only opens four hours a day five days a week so you probably won't get inside. Perhaps drown your post-match sorrows at The Elmhurst, or drop in at Neza Cafe with its probably illegal claim "All drinks available here". We're finally back to following the A10 again along a broad leafy crescent called The Roundway. It was built as an integral connection through Tower Gardens, Tottenham's garden suburb, back in the 1920s when motor vehicles were new and to be encouraged rather than choking harbingers of death. The yellow sign warning "Delays expected on 16th September", supposedly Spurs-related, is clearly talking rubbish because everyone knows the 169 goes to Ilford.
The 31st August only serves the briefest section of the Great Cambridge Road dual carriageway (change here for 14th April, 21st July, 23rd January and the impossible 44th April). Takeaway options hereabouts include haddock, kebabs and Ghanaian ga kenkey dumplings. But whoever devised this route clearly despised straight lines because it turns off almost immediately into White Hart Lane, which is itself implausibly kinked by dint of once having been a country lane. Opposite Tottenham Cemetery I spied a council operative measuring the length of a double yellow line with a trundle wheel, confirming that not all his maths lessons were wasted. One more northbound turn should finish it.
Queen Street at least has houses but on crossing the border into Enfield it becomes Bull Lane and that's low-level old-school light-industrial. One unit hosts a bridalwear manufacturer, another makes patties and another used to make bathroom tiles before they folded. Poor spelling is a common thread - at Guney Design they want to employ a MACHINEST, while the owners of Queen's Cafe are convinced they serve OMELLETE. The road is supposedly blocked by a newly-installed bus gate, which is so poorly signed that I watched three cars drive merrily through, while an HGV driver had actually parked their lorry straight through it. Come on councils, a 'bus gate' should be more than just a small sign and a camera.
If it wasn't for the 31st August they could block the road properly but no, the bus has to continue a short distance to terminate at the cramped stand outside North Middlesex Hospital. It shares this with the equally meandering 491, a twiddly route I can reassure you will never ever be the Bus Of The Day.
