Route 60: Streatham to Old Coulsdon Location: London south, outer Length of bus journey: 12 miles, 75 minutes
It's traditional around every birthday that I take a numerically significant bus journey. Eighteen years ago I took the 42 to Dulwich, then subsequently the 43 to Barnet, the 44 to Tooting, the 45 to Clapham, the 46 to Farringdon, the 47 to Bellingham, the 48 to Walthamstow, the 49 to Battersea, the 50 to Croydon, the 51 to Orpington, the 52 to Willesden, the 53 to Whitehall, the 54 to Elmers End, the 55 to Oxford Circus, the 56 to Smithfield, the 57 to Kingston, the 58 to Walthamstow and most recently the 59 to Streatham Hill. This year it's back to Streatham for a southbound safari aboard the 60 to Old Coulsdon.
I confess I have already ridden and blogged about route 60, way back in June 2012 when it seemed an appropriate way of celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. But I was in my forties then and insufficiently bothered I'd need to come back and ride it again in 2025, so my apologies if any of this feels like a repeat. That said my focus then was mainly bunting and royal references whereas this will be more general and indeed three times the length, so buckle in.
Route 60 has linked Lambeth to the North Downs since 1998 and kicks off from a bus stand squished between Streatham station and a giant Tesco Extra. Four routes kick off here, all best observed on the Countdown display because the timetable panel seems to have suffered an existential crisis. We'll be taking the scenic route to Croydon so nobody who boards here is going that far, other than me that is, which does at least make it easy to grab the key observation-friendly seat above the driver. On the way up I note a sign that says "For your own safety do not stand on the upper deck or stairs", and I know what they're trying to say but it does sound like upstairs is out of bounds unless you hop or crawl. This means I have already tutted at two poor examples of signage and we haven't left yet, so my birthday reportage is very much on trend.
Escaping onto the High Road relies on traffic kindly slowing to ease us out, so thanks for that madam. The road is broad, as befits the arterial A23, and watched over by a digital billboard seemingly exclusively for the purpose of promoting Global radio stations like Heart and Smooth. We miss our turn through the lights because a sirening fire engine has to take precedence, allowing a slightly longer view of budding branches across Streatham Common. Our off-piste deviation starts almost immediately with a right turn down Greyhound Lane, the Greyhound being the pub that used to stand on the corner. It's since been renamed The Rabbit Hole, the proprietors somehow convinced that what the place really needed was "an amazing interior based on Alice in Wonderland", which is not something you'd ever have named a street after.
We're heading into Streatham Vale, southernmost of all the Streatham neighbourhood variants, thus named because it runs down to the River Graveney. The only other bus heading this way is the 45, which has been serving Greyhound Lane for a mere seven weeks since TfL renumbered route 118 as part of a cost-saving conjuring trick. We pause awhile outside Streatham Common station, which isn't actually by the common and whose station totem is unusually green in its lower parts. Filled rolls and fried eggs are on offer at Mum's Cafe, whereas David's Deli is a bijou cheesemongery and suffering under the middle class delusion that this is Streatham Village. Two teenagers are very pleased that our driver halts awhile to let them on, although it would have been nice if they'd hurried up a bit.
The houses facing Streatham Vale are villa-ish with nice front gardens. I'm pleased to see cherry trees in blossom because it's obligatory to try to mention that somewhere in every birthday bus write-up, although I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to mention vibrant yellow mimosa before. An unusual presence hereabouts is the office of Dave Ridge and Sons, a specialist pebble dashing company who've been tending to unflat walls for almost 60 years. Their own HQ is of course suitably splattered. Meanwhile The Vale pub is shuttered with a For Sale sign outside, and given it's being advertised as "a versatile prospect for buyers" with "scope for alternative uses" has likely pulled its last pint.
Greyhound Terrace marks our passage into the borough of Merton, hence officially outer London, entering via an amusingly named locale called Lonesome. It boasts the first Lidl of our journey and it won't be the last. I wonder why there's a well-stocked florist on the next bend, and ah yes it's due to the presence of a particularly large cemetery, Streatham Park being the final resting place of such personalities as Wilfrid Brambell, Dorothy Squires and Desmond Dekker. The local housing stock consists of long unbroken interwar terraces, all alleyless which must mean anything you want in your back garden has to be lugged through the house. We're still miles from Coulsdon but now two bus routes will get you there, the twiddlier 463 certain never to appear in this birthday bus series.
Entry into Pollards Hill is signalled by a mini-roundabout and the abrupt change in housing from 1930s to 1960s. A contorted wall of three-storey maisonette blocks wiggles uninspiringly across the grass, whereas the local library is a vibrant spiky presence upspruced in blue and grey in 2009. Our bus is suddenly starting to fill up with estate residents because we're the only route that goes to Croydon and that's the obvious target destination round here. The two 20-somethings who join me at the front of the top deck I nickname Sniff and Scroll, she with a pronounced cold and he entranced by his phone. No conversation ensues, but at one point he shows her a hilarious video and she duly smirks.
At Galpins Road we leave Pollards Hill, which is ironic because all the street trees are now fully pollarded, and enter the borough of Croydon. After four paragraphs we're finally turning back onto the A23, here called London Road, just before the A23 itself turns off at the Thornton Heath roundabout. It looked nicer when there was a pond in the middle rather than a traffic-choked greenspace surrounded by drab newbuilds. That was Lidl 2 by the way, if you're counting which obviously I am. National brands are otherwise mostly absent from the local shops, bar Greggs, KFC and multiple bookies, plus the first outpost of Coughlans bakery (which yes I will be counting too).
After passing the bus garage there are now six routes all filtering into Croydon, and still we're filling up with passengers. Building heights are also starting to get higher because Croydon's that kind of town. Officially this is Broad Green, a historic suburb heralded by a big metal bell at the roadside. I think 'Scooperb' may be the best name I've ever seen for a dessert parlour, although I worry it may be too clever for its own good. Likewise Grand Parade may well have been apposite for a parade of shops in 1902 but it looks anything but now. The retail offering along this lengthy stretch is mostly beauty and food focused, as exemplified by two businesses called Prestige and Sizzlers. The two ladies behind me are having a conversation at an entirely unnecessary volume and I take heart they'll likely be getting off soon. Yes that's Lidl 3.
After half an hour we've finally reached West Croydon station which is the trigger for the start of the passenger exodus. Our onward route threads us past the trams and into the top of the high street, before bearing off at Santander to not quite hit the bus station. But we get stuck trying to enter Wellesley Road because traffic has backed up and because the driver of a 468 has selfishly nudged forward to fill the gap we needed to exit. Something on Scroll's phone induces an unexpected snort of laughter, then he lifts his baseball cap to reveal a mini man-bun and I have to keep my own snort in. Croydon's futuristic boulevard of dreams looks somewhat tired now, with even the old Home Office tower at Apollo House decanted and awaiting conversion to flats. If you're still reading, rest assured we're almost halfway there.
The 60 is essentially a route of two halves, one north of Croydon and the other south, conveniently bolted together to avoid taking up parking space in the town centre. There is thus a full turnover of passengers here, myself excluded, as those heading for the shops alight and those who've finished shopping get on. The exodus is complete by the time we reach the deconstruction zone, the civic centre's empty heart that's still mostly holes and scaffolding, and no indication it'll look any better any year soon. I was last here on a birthday bus in 2015 when I astutely noticed "it seems I'm doomed to spend every milestone birthday touring the Croydon one-way system" and that "the town and I may be looking somewhat worse for wear by 2025". Alas at least one of those is true.
My new companion at the front of the bus is a black-clad young woman whose face is a dot-to-dot of piercings. Together we aim for the Croydon Flyover, which we fly under, and yes there's our second Coughlans. This road is Croydon's official High Street and at this end I'd say it's mostly chicken shops and solicitors. As we merge into South Croydon the number of sit-down restaurants increases, proper places with menus and very much the sort of locale you can imagine Terry and June heading for an evening of wining and dining. Not to the Wetherspoons obviously because that's closed, and not The Swan and Sugarloaf either because that's now a Tesco Express. Amid all this is a 16th century half-timbered property occupied by a shop called Just Flutes which genuinely is the UK's largest specialist flute centre, although they also sell piccolos so their name is somewhat misleading.
From here you can take your pick from half a dozen bus routes to Purley, and thankfully this time the 60 is one of the direct options. This involves passing in front of the prestigious Whitgift School and its playing fields rather than round the back, where it seems VAT is about to shunt the boys' termly fees precipitously close to £10,000. The headmaster certainly pays his groundsmen well. The terraces we're passing all date from the 1880s, and a little later from the 1890s because that's generally how town expansion works. South Croydon bus garage is where vehicles on route 60 are stabled so I steel myself for an annoying driver change, which thankfully doesn't materialise. Hey presto Coughlans number 3. You don't need to ding the bell seven times to alight mate, once will do.
It feels about a mile too early to be naming a pub The Purley Arms, but this area's notionally Purley Oaks so that's OK. There's also a Toby Carvery should endless roasts be more your thing. The street ahead has two very distinct flanks, one heavily redeveloped and the other still mostly the foothills of 1930s suburbia, topped off by my auntie's house. As we head south we jockey for position with a 466, sometimes us ahead, sometimes them, and they will almost certainly get to Old Coulsdon first. The recreation ground on the right is called Rotary Field, I presume because it was donated by charitable businessmen and not because it turns round. The Rotary Club are also responsible for the town clock at Purley Cross, although I see that's now missing one of its faces.
Purley's true arrival is heralded by a lengthy sequence of banners flapping from lampposts promoting inPurley.london, the online brand of the local self-obsessed BID. The retail offer here includes the impressively tiny Downlands Shopping Precinct, one last surviving building society and Coughlans number 4. There's also that giant turrety Tesco, still the town's greatest draw, although it's not so big that anyone flags us down to carry their groceries home. I do however have another top seat companion and annoyingly she's already on the phone, handsfree, blabbering on about Ubers and her friend in the probation service. I learn that her job is changing, then thankfully the call ends, she unwraps a lemon sherbet and shuts up. One hour down, fifteen minutes to go.
The road ahead is once again the A23, now broader and lined by larger Tudorbethan homes and other white-fronted detacheds. The throwback vibe is only jettisoned when the road veers slightly to launch off round the Coulsdon bypass, and we of course turn off into the town centre because a bus route is a public service. Here too food and beauty is the focus but with a smarter vibe, so the supermarket is a whopping Waitrose and internal design is courtesy of 'The Magic of Amadeus Flowers'. The inevitable Coughlans Bakery is our fifth and final, well ahead of any tally of Greggs or Gail's. Our last boarders are either loaded with shopping or are off to the sixth form college on the hill, understandably preferring a bus ride to a a protracted uphill climb.
We flee the town centre by passing underneath the bypass and the Brighton mainline. We're now so far south we've escaped the ULEZ, its boundary drawn to exclude these outermost avenues whose residents can drive vehicles as choking as they like. On passing the recreation ground I'm surprised to see ten lampposts still adorned with red poppies, but it's not patriotic amnesia it's because the park contains the ever-proud Poppy Cafe. There follows a gentle ascent along Chaldon Way, then a steeper climb up Mead Way where our driver could really have done without the hill start after meeting another 60 coming the other way. These borderline avenues are flanked on both sides by gabled homes with characterful porches and diamond lattice windows, and we thank the City of London for ensuring that not all of Farthing Downs ended up like this.
The gradient gently eases beside a small green bursting with daffodils. Here begins a short loop to allow the terminating 60 a chance to turn round, there being no convenient roundabouts in Old Coulsdon. Tollers Lane was once a remote narrow rural track, and now it's peripheral suburbia with a direct nightbus service from Tottenham Court Road. The postbox on The Crossways is as far south as any of my birthday buses will ever take me, and two stops later we're pulling up at the terminus outside the Tudor Rose in the heart of the village. I wonder what Old Coulsdon will be like?
Route 60: Streatham to Old Coulsdon
