45 Squared 13) THE SQUARE, UB7
Borough of Hillingdon, 40m
Here's a square in the heart of a medieval village which, if intended plans play out, won't exist in ten years time. Not just the square but the entire village is pencilled in for demolition, every last building, because we're just outside Heathrow Airport and a Third Runway is coming.
We're in the village of Longford, a key staging point on the old route to the West Country. It's here that the Bath Road crossed the River Colne and the Wraysbury River, initially by fording both hence the name 'Long Ford'. Stagecoaches, royal retinues and early vehicles would once have passed along the village's curving high street, at least until 1928 when the Colnbrook bypass opened and traffic was diverted a tad to the north. These days the only vehicles that can pass all the way through the village are buses, the remainder blocked by a filter at the eastern end lest the hinterland of Heathrow overwhelm the place. Beyond this barrier are a Premier Inn, a Thistle hotel and a slew of Uber drivers waiting for a hire, and close is by the austere fortress of the Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre. Longford, however, remains very much a village.
But very much a fading one. All sorts of lovely old buildings have plainly seen better days and some are boarded up behind concrete blocks. Social erosion is plainer in the newer properties, some of which have rotten windows, unloved gardens and occupants of temporary aspiration. This is what happens when your village is threatened with demolition for decades, and when there's a detention centre and jetset hub on your doorstep. But many other properties remain pristine as existing residents remain proud of living here, with their beautifully tended gardens, occasional gnomes, even the odd thatched roof. Few other London settlements are quite as paradoxical as Longford, with its decrepit homes and listed cottages almost nextdoor, but that's the curse of Heathrow expansion for you.
Inasmuch as a linear village has a heart, it's probably around The Square because that's where the coaching inn and the smithy used to be. Here was the tiny village green, incontrovertibly triangular in shape so The Triangle would have been a much more appropriate name. Two cottages were later built in the centre disguising things somewhat, and these days The Square is merely one side of the old green so not even polygonal. It won't take long to walk along, not least because nobody officially lives here.
The Square begins beside a bungalow called Dolphins, although officially that's 520 Bath Road so we can disregard it. Instead I'm afraid we're going to have to focus on items of street furniture, kicking off with a BT callbox that's currently displaying an advert for a Katsu Chicken Wrap. A McDonalds exists at the Shell garage less than half a mile up the road, which it has to be said is one of the benefits of an international airport erupting beside your village. The payphone alas is doomed according to a poster inside dated 22/1/25, the reason being "it just isn't used enough", which in terms of Ofcom criteria means it must have been used for fewer than 52 calls a year. Villagers have 90 days to save it, i.e. until next Tuesday, although I doubt many of them have even noticed.
Beside the phone box is a black bench which could be a leftover from an era when callboxes had queues or could be because it offers half an obscured view of the local pub. A litter bin, a telephone pole and a green BT cabinet complete the street furniture cluster here, while a bit further along is a bright red bin for dog mess carefully bolted to a crescent of verge. There isn't much grass here but it is the most convenient spot for canine relief for those who can't be bothered to walk up the road to the Peggy Bedford Heathrow Biodiversity Site. A single hook-necked lamppost lights The Square, and also provides somewhere to hang the sign confirming that parking is outlawed overnight. I suspect the discarded fridge is temporary.
The Square ends abruptly at a bridge over a weedy braid of the River Colne, beyond which lies The Island. This genuinely is an island and has has been a residential hideaway for centuries, now slightly denser since certain cottage plots got sold off for flats. Officially it's private property overseen by The Island Road Residents Ass Ltd, although it's not attractive or elusive like Eel Pie Island so nowhere particularly worth trespassing. More delightful at this time of year is the lawn by the river's edge where a patch of bluebells and dandelions has burst forth on the edge of some straggly woodland. Stepping into the trees soon bursts the illusion, however, the undergrowth scattered with takeaway tubs, vodka bottles, two old boots and a discarded For Sale sign.
The quaint row of buildings along the third side of the triangle includes Willow Tree Cottage and Queen River Cottage, both built in 1739. Both are white-rendered with dormer windows, both are grade II listed and only one has an ambulance parked out front. Much more impressive and welcoming is the White Horse pub, a wonky timber-framed building that's fundamentally Tudor and has very low ceilings. Its long-term landlords have gone to particular effort to bedeck the place with windowboxes and flowering tubs, and also to waft out the smell of gravy as Sunday lunchtime approaches. If you're ever stuck overnight at Heathrow you could do worse than drop in for a pint and maybe a plate of Nanny Marge's Fish Pie, assuming Longford's still here next time you fly.
Longford has two bus stops, one of which is called The Square and the other of which is called Heathrow Close. And Heathrow really is close, the T5 car park that's accessed by self-driving pods being less than 200m from this scene of pastoral pleasantry. You can't walk there because the airport's security perimeter is fierce and additionally backed up by the intermediate Duke of Northumberland's River. Indeed it's so close that Heathrow recently put in a planning application to erect a 7m-high sound barrier between the end of the runway and the beleaguered village of Longford. This is because the government recently agreed to allow alternating runway operation when the wind is from the east, a move outlawed for decades by the Cranford Agreement which protects airspace over Hounslow. This change requires the construction of an additional main taxiway at the western end of the northern runway and this'll bring ground noise much closer to the airport perimeter. Only live in Longford if your need for convenience and cheap property outweighs your need for silence and security of tenure.
Intriguingly the borough of Hillingdon has one more thoroughfare called The Square which has a bus stop named after it and which isn't square. It's in the artificial business zone of Stockley Park, where all VAR decisions are made, just off the Grand Union Canal near Hayes. The Square is the easternmost segment and is actually a long oblong, surrounded by six huge buildings suitable as corporate HQs half of which are currently empty. This The Square would have been more interesting to write about but I blogged it back when I explored the teensy postcode district of UB11 so you got the doomed village backwater instead. Its destiny is to become part of the apron surrounding T5's new northern satellite terminal, just south of the extra runway, so you may one day end up taxiing across The Square oblivious to its past charms.
If you'd seen this a few years ago you'd have assumed they put the prices up during Happy Hour.
Now a five pound pint sounds like a bargain.
How did alcohol in a London pub get so expensive?
I can do a very rough check of beer prices in London by scrolling back through this blog.
• At the 2012 Olympics a pint of lager cost £4.80.
• In 2016 I cringed when a bottle of Becks cost £5.25.
• In 2019 a pint of lager cost £5.95 and I chose not to buy a second.
• In 2021 I bought a round which topped £6 a pint.
• Last week I bought a round which nudged £7 a pint.
Obviously not all pints are this expensive.
The pints in that Hackney bar normally cost £5.90, £6 or £6.20.
If you're comfortable in a Wetherspoons you can still buy lager at 2010 prices.
Here's a graph for UK-wide prices going back to 1987.
And here are the years various pint/pound thresholds were crossed.
» £1 a pint in September 1988
» £2 a pint in August 2000
» £3 a pint in January 2011
» £4 a pint in March 2022
» £5 a pint in April 2025, probably
Roughly speaking an extra pound every 11 years.
But that last pound took just three years, so beer inflation's certainly ramping up.
Obviously other factors play an important part like energy prices, taxation and staff costs.
But it is increasingly hard to justify a long evening in a London pub.
Just don't stop, else there'll be fewer and fewer of them left.
You suggested all kinds of things, but our collective opinion was that it was very difficult to be concise AND accurate.
• All types of e-bike, e-scooter and e-unicycle are banned except foldable e-bikes.
• Non-folded e-bikes, e-scooters and e-unicycles are not allowed on TfL services.
• E-bikes, e-scooters and e-unicycles are not allowed on TfL services, except for folding e-bikes, which are allowed.
• E-bikes, e-scooters, and e-unicycles are banned on TfL buses, trams, and trains. Foldable e-bikes are allowed.
• Folded cycles/e-Bikes allowed anytime on most services. Non-folding e-bikes banned.
• Electronic bicycles, scooters and unicycles are not permitted on TfL services. Please see posted signs for exceptions.
• E-scooters, e-unicycles and non-folding e-bikes are not permitted on most TfL services. Search 'TfL e-bikes' for more information.
We now have TfL's wording which you can see on this poster.
Their solution involves four sizes of typeface, like an optician's eye chart.
Big letters: No e-scooters, e-unicycles or non-foldable e-bikes Smaller letters: allowed on TfL services.* Small letters: Failure to comply may result in prosecution. Tiny letters: * E-bikes are permitted on the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle service and on the Woolwich Ferry
There's also a really terrible graphic featuring a bike, a scooter, a unicyclist and an electricity symbol, which may well sum up the situation but is so complex as to be substantially indecipherable.
"No e-scooters, e-unicycles or non-foldable e-bikes" is probably the optimum wording. In terms of importance e-bikes should be at the beginning, but the use of "non-foldable" would then be ambiguous so it's best at the end. Non-foldable is a much better word than unfolded which I'm glad has been summarily dumped.
Also the use of an asterisk means tube passengers are not being asked to think about the Silvertown Tunnel or the Woolwich Ferry, where they are almost certainly not going.
That was the poster.
Here's the announcement.
"Non-foldable e-bikes are prohibited on TfL services except for the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle and the Woolwich Ferry."
This starts well and then gets bogged down in exceptions. Over half of the announcement is about where e-bikes aren't banned - two services used by maybe a few hundred cyclists weekly so of minimal relevance. Alas over a loudspeaker you have to say the asterisk out loud and this gives it undue prominence, lest some e-bike warrior be fooled into thinking they can't cross the Thames downstream of Tower Bridge. The announcement's also a triple negative with "non-foldable", "prohibited" and "except for" to try to get your head around.
Alas that's not the full announcement, merely the core chunk in the middle. Here's the full announcement which you can hear every five minutes at Whitechapel station.
"Customer information. All folded and unfolded e-scooters and e-unicycles are prohibited on TfL services. Non-foldable e-bikes are also prohibited on TfL services except for the Silvertown Tunnel cycle shuttle and the Woolwich Ferry. For more information speak to a member of staff. Thank you."
The "no e-bikes" message is utterly buried here because someone's felt the need to incorporate e-scooters and e-unicycles too. I don't know about you but I hardly ever see e-unicyclists around London, let alone sneaking onto the tube with their single wheel steeds. Sure they're banned but no way do we need to be reminded about this every five minutes, it's total overkill.
As for "speak to a member of staff" that's quite a good cop-out, and could maybe have been used to shorten the rest of the message to manageable levels.
What we've got here is a brand new no e-bikes policy the public needs to be told about, but dressed up in faff so that the campaign makes far less impact than it might. This is what happens when you plump for precision over simplicity.
And all because words are difficult, however they unfold.
The major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout are complete, indeed were completed five weeks ago apart from the opening of the contraflow beneath the flyover. Now it seems this filter lane won't be opening until later in 2025 while TfL "complete more works to protect the structure," so let's not delay my in-depth report into all the changes at my local roundabout.
The Bow Roundabout is a significant split-level interchange which opened in 1967 where the A11 and A12 meet. The former took the flyover and the latter the underpass, so it's only those switching between the two (and local traffic) who need to use the roundabout. With the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel TfL decided physical mitigation works were needed - smoothing a few curves, improving kerbs, widening a couple of carriageways and diverting the aforementioned contraflow lane. It's amazing that this somehow took five months given how little fundamentally changed, but the location of the roundabout above the River Lea brought with it additional challenges.
Traffic on the roundabout
The biggest change on the roundabout is on the Bow side where the number of lanes has been increased from two to three. I'm not sure why no other side got widened, this being barely ten-metres-worth, but a hefty tarmac stripe now eases traffic northwards. Perhaps a more important change is that there are now arrows to show traffic which lane to use whereas previously drivers were left to work it out for themselves and this often led to conflict. Everything worked smoothly if vehicles turning left stayed left and vehicles turning right stayed right, but if two drivers picked the 'wrong' lane simultaneously they'd end up manoeuvring into each other's path causing at least a honk and at worst a shunt. As a local resident I've watched this happen far too often over the last two decades. Right-turners now have two dedicated lanes so need never come into conflict, and who'd have thought the simple act of painting three arrows could have such a positive outcome?
It's still a bit early to decide if the extra lane has eased the traffic. I haven't seen any bad jams recently but I may just not have been looking at the right time. Also the Silvertown Tunnel's only been open for a week, plus that tunnel doesn't lead here anyway so goodness knows why TfL thought this roundabout needed modifying. If anything you'd expect the new toll on the Blackwall Tunnel to have reduced the traffic here all by itself.
As for traffic feeding onto the roundabout, the only significant change is for traffic arriving via Stratford High Street. Previously vehicles reached the roundabout via two lanes but now they enter via three, along a much broader front, with various longstanding hatched lines having been erased. The extra lane is to accommodate traffic arriving via the contraflow lane from Marshgate Lane which no longer has its own separate access point. Instead it diverts under the flyover, or will do when it opens, which should be a safer prospect all round. Many's the time I've forgotten the contraflow lane exists and stepped out to cross without looking both ways, so it should be harder for local pedestrians to walk in front of traffic now it's been diverted.
However this has forced the creation of an additional set of traffic lights so that two lanes from Stratford can merge with one from Marshgate Lane. It's not yet been switched on, or at least it's showing constant green, but I expect it'll add an additional delay for westbound traffic that wasn't there before. That's as well as the extra traffic lights added beforehand at the entrance to Sugar House Island and as well as the segregated cycleway which swiped a lane all the way back to Stratford twelve years ago. All these are essential but they also delay road traffic, including buses, so catching the 25 from Stratford to Bow now takes noticeably longer than it did when I first moved here.
Traffic lights on the roundabout
I got my stopwatch out before the roadworks started and have done the same afterwards, so can confirm that the traffic lights round the Bow Roundabout have been subtly rephased. What's not changed is that the entire roundabout still functions on a cycle lasting exactly 64 seconds. During those 64 seconds every approach road gets one chance to enter the roundabout, and this cycles round in an anti-clockwise direction one arm at a time.
Previously every arm got 16 seconds, regular as clockwork.
From Bow Road: 4 seconds for bikes then 12 seconds for vehicles From A12 northbound: 16 seconds From Stratford High St: 4 seconds for bikes then 12 seconds for vehicles From A12 southbound: 16 seconds
But that's now changed, with traffic emerging from Bow Road the major beneficiary.
From Bow Road: 4 seconds for bikes then 18 seconds for vehicles From A12 northbound: 18 seconds From Stratford High St: 4 seconds for bikes then 10 seconds for vehicles From A12 southbound: 18 seconds
One complete cycle still takes 64 seconds because these intervals overlap a little. But traffic coming off Bow Road now has 50% longer to enter on green which is excellent, helping to reduce queues and often meaning every vehicle waiting slips through. If the traffic backs up less often that also means fewer vehicles idling and belching fumes outside my front door so I'm all in favour. Meanwhile traffic coming off Stratford High Street now has 17% less time, which I thought was bad until I realised there are now three lanes instead of two, and that's why they've been able to reduce the time while increasing throughput.
Pedestrians
The roadworks were focused on vehicular traffic but have also had repercussions for pedestrians. Six sets of crossings remain around the roundabout, all of which have been updated to the newer style with a pedestrian countdown. But two of these crossings are now across three lanes instead of two so they both take longer to cross. One of these wider crossings is from the centre of the roundabout towards Bow and the other is across the end of Stratford High Street. I still can't get used to how much wider these are, stepping out across a tarmac chasm that didn't used to feel so vast.
And this matters because pedestrians don't always wait patiently on the pavement for the man to go green. Often they'll launch out across a gap in the traffic thinking it looks safe, whereas the Bow Roundabout is in fact a dangerous maelstrom where traffic is capable of appearing suddenly and without signalling. Make that gap 50% wider and the chance of a very nasty accident increases. Also I believe one of the countdown timings is incorrect, being a few seconds too short, so even those who've crossed properly could find themselves midway when the lights change.
Start of Bow Road: 1 lane (5m), countdown starts at 3 End of Bow Road: 2 lanes (8m), countdown starts at 5 Start of Stratford High St: 2 lanes (9m), countdown starts at 5 Stratford to centre of roundabout: 2 lanes (9m), countdown starts at 5 Bow to centre of roundabout: 3 lanes (12m), countdown starts at 5 End of Stratford High St: 3 lanes (12m), countdown starts at 8
I wonder if you can see the dodgy countdown in that list. Mostly as the number of lanes increases the length of the countdown gets longer, which is what you'd expect. One lane 3 seconds, two lanes 5 seconds, three lanes 8 seconds. But one of the 3-lane crossings only has a 5 second countdown - the crossing between Bow and the centre of the roundabout - and that's not long enough at all.
Set off on 5, as I have done several times, and you'll still be walking in front of the traffic at zero when the red man appears. I'm perfectly capable of speeding up but the elderly, disabled or child-encumbered may not be so fortunate, and the Bow Roundabout is not somewhere you want to be caught in middle of the road. If TfL's engineers are reading, that 5 really needs upping to an 8.
Cyclists
Perhaps what most surprised me about the five-month roundabout upgrade is that there've been no significant changes for the benefit of cyclists. The old blue paint in the segregated lanes is still cracking. The cycle lane at the start of Stratford High Street remains entirely unprotected. The crappy stripe occupying half the pavement on the Bromley-by-Bow segment is unchanged. It's very obvious in several places that when the rest of the roundabout got resurfaced with fresh black tarmac the cycle lanes were specifically excluded. At the end of Stratford High Street a few metres of segregation have actually been removed, this because traffic now queues further back allowing cyclists to spread out. Admittedly four cycle racks have been provided under the flyover, but no sane cyclist would leave a bike there. Things thus aren't particularly worse for cyclists but neither are they any better.
The advance cycle lights are still there, this being the first junction in London where they were introduced as a response to two fatal accidents after the blue paint first went down. A ghost bike memorial to one of those deaths is still chained to the railings above the river. So what's intriguing is how many cyclists continue to jump the lights and ride onto the roundabout anyway. The synchronisation of those lights is annoying because they're deliberately set up to stop you - if the first set isn't red the second always will be. But I did some counting for ten minutes and I reckon only half the cyclists waited and the other half made the choice to launch off past red, which is a lot more than I expected.
Many of those jumping the lights noticed no traffic was coming and launched out safely. Such times are common when the roundabout's less busy, and they were never in any danger. Others took a riskier punt, judging that they could get through a bit before or a bit after a passing vehicle and so did. But a few headstrong souls simply sailed ahead onto the roundabout without slowing down and weaved between vehicles turning left that could easily have hit them, in one case close enough that I audibly swore. There's always a spectrum of behaviour on two wheels, and reassuringly more angels than idiots, but something about the Bow Roundabout seems to encourage dangerous riding even with all the lanes and lights and everything.
All that effort to improve the junction for cars but little for pedestrians and nothing extra for cyclists - let's just say it doesn't help.
Easter, as you may know, is the first Sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox.
This year the spring equinox was at 9.01am on 20th March.
The first full moon after that was this morning at 1.22am.
If the full moon occurs on a Sunday we have to jump to the next one.
So Easter is next Sunday.
But only just.
And it was even closer than that.
1.22am BST is 12.22am GMT, i.e. just 22 minutes into Sunday.
If the full moon had been half an hour earlier it would have been on Saturday.
And Easter would have been today.
But the full moon really was at 1.22am.
The date of Easter is based on Rome, not Greenwich.
There was no Greenwich meridian in 325AD when the First Council of Nicaea set the rules for determining the date of Easter.
And 12.22am GMT is 1.22am CET.
So Easter is next Sunday.
But in fact the date of Easter has nothing to do with the actual spring equinox.
That's because the First Council of Nicaea decreed that the spring equinox was always on 21st March, even when it wasn't.
This year's it's 20th March but the church's Easter rules assume it's 21st March instead.
This year it makes no difference whatsoever to the date of Easter.
But in 2019 it made four weeks difference.
The actual equinox was Wednesday 20th March and the next full moon was Thursday 21st March, which would have made Easter Sunday 24th March.
But the church's rules said the equinox was Thursday 21st March so the next full moon was Thursday 18th April so Easter was Sunday 21st April.
The same thing will happen in 2038 when Easter will be kicked ahead from 28th March to 25th April, the latest possible date.
But in fact the date of Easter has nothing to do with the actual full moon.
That's because the First Council of Nicaea also simplified the dates of full moons to avoid astronomical complications.
They noted that the dates of full moons repeat, near enough, every 19 years.
So they knocked up a 19 year cycle of full moon dates and used that instead.
It's quite a complicated cycle involving epacts, golden numbers and leap years so let's not get into that here.
But there's always one ecclesiastical full moon in the period 21st March to 18th April inclusive.
And Easter is always the Sunday after that, somewhere between 22nd March and 25th April.
Table to find the date of
the Easter Full Moon
Golden
Number
Years
Full Moon
I
1976 1995 2014 2033
April 14
II
1977 1996 2015 2034
April 3
III
1978 1997 2016 2035
March 23
IV
1979 1998 2017 2036
April 11
V
1980 1999 2018 2037
March 31
VI
1981 2000 2019 2038
April 18
VII
1982 2001 2020 2039
April 8
VIII
1983 2002 2021 2040
March 28
IX
1984 2003 2022 2041
April 16
X
1985 2004 2023 2042
April 5
XI
1986 2005 2024 2043
March 25
XII
1987 2006 2025 2044
April 13
XIII
1988 2007 2026 2045
April 2
XIV
1989 2008 2027 2046
March 22
XV
1990 2009 2028 2047
April 10
XVI
1991 2010 2029 2048
March 30
XVII
1992 2011 2030 2049
April 17
XVIII
1993 2012 2031 2050
April 7
XIX
1994 2013 2032 2051
March 27
We're in the 12th year of the 19 year cycle this year.
The table gives the date of the ecclesiastical full moon as April 13th.
So Easter is the Sunday after that, i.e. next Sunday, April 20th.
But fundamentally the date of Easter is based on new moons rather than full moons.
The ecclesiastical calendar is divided into lunar months each of which starts with a new moon.
The important thing Easterwise is the date of the first ecclesiastical new moon on or after 8th March.
An ecclesiastical full moon is then deemed to occur thirteen days after this new moon.
And Easter is the first Sunday after that.
Again there's a 19 year cycle, and again 2025 is year 12 in that cycle.
The ecclesiastical tables give the dates of the new moons in year 12 as follows.
1st Jan, 31st Jan, 1st Mar, 31st Mar, 29th Apr, 29th May, 27th Jun, 27th Jul, 25th Aug, 24th Sep, 23th Oct, 22nd Nov
31st March is the first new moon after 8th March.
The full moon is then deemed to be 13 days later.
And Easter is the first Sunday after that.
31st March wasn't really the date of the new moon, that was 29th March, the day of the partial solar eclipse.
But 13 days after 31st March is 13th April, i.e. today, and that really is the date of the actual full moon.
It's all a bit rough and ready but generally speaking it works.
Another way of looking at it is to consider the "paschal month", i.e. the lunar month with Easter in it.
The paschal month always starts with a new moon on or after 8th March.
And Easter is always the third Sunday of that paschal month, always without fail.
In summary...
Unofficially speaking, Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox.
This year that's 20th April, the Sunday after the actual full moon on 13th April. Officially speaking, Easter is the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon after the ecclesiastical equinox.
This year that's 20th April, the Sunday after the imaginary full moon on 13th April.
It doesn't always match up like that.
But most years it does, including this year.
So it wasn't nearly Easter Sunday today, sorry.
But a few tiny tweaks to the rules and it could have been.
In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Stoneleigh, one stop beyond Worcester Park on the line between Wimbledon and Epsom. For positioning purposes it's wedged between the boroughs of Kingston and Sutton in a protuberance of Surrey, so close to town that it's the only zone 5 rail station beyond the Greater London boundary. In a familiar story it really was all fields 100 years ago, then trains stopped and suddenly wham, suburbia erupted in seven years flat.
Stoneleigh station filled a gap on the existing Mole Valley Line in 1932 and was named after a big house half a mile away on the London Road. Leafy avenues then spread either side of the railway with no attempt to build a road to connect them, thus a footbridge and a couple of subways continue to do heavy lifting for connectivity hereabouts. The footbridge used to be anaustere concrete link but was replaced last year by an accessible lift-enabled span much to the delight of elderly locals attempting to go shopping. What's missing is a screen displaying when the next train goes, so you only find out it's cancelled after you've schlepped down to the platform and discovered you face a half hour wait, and I may be speaking from experience here.
Shops line both sides of Stoneleigh Broadway, a broad boulevard with ample parking and two long redbrick parades of the kind they always built in the 30s. We may be only quarter of a mile from cosmopolitan London but the selection of shops is quintessentially Surrey, from a large dry cleaners to an independent travel agent with a traditional butcher in the middle. The newsagents still doubles up as a stationers so has a wall of writing implements at the far end. There's no gym but one unit does art classes, one sells cub and scout uniforms and another's a dance school. Eating options are a tad timewarped with an Oriental Takeaway, a chippie called the Pisces Fish Kitchen, a bistro that stretches to tapas On Selected Nights Only and just the one pub in a rustic gabled mansion called The Station. If you enjoyed shopping in the 1990s you'd feel right at home here.
Stoneleigh is not buzzing with points of interest but it does have one extraordinary attraction tucked down an alleyway round the back of the carpet showroom. I'd forgotten it existed until Anita Dobson popped up on Radio 2 while I was doing my research and mentioned retrieving her EastEnders costumes from a small museum in Stoneleigh, which I then totally had to visit. Hopefully a board on the high street would have nudged me had I not been listening - "You ain't seen London till you've been to the Cockney Museum".
Let's be fair, it's large yellow lockup with plexiglass windows, plasterboard walls and a doorbell to press. But inside is an Aladdin's Cave of throwback treasures collected by the Pearly King of Peckham, George Major, who made it his lockdown project to display his extensive collection of memorabilia here in Stoneleigh. Sometimes he's here to guide you round but I was told he was out so got to explore by myself, for a good 45 minutes.
The museum's in three parts of which the first, Poverty Street, is the least successful. George has plastered the walls with photos of old London and the poorer folk who inhabited it, but then decided to display them in near darkness lit only by flickering lanterns. "Probably best to illuminate them with your phone," I was told, but accepted the offer of a poundshop torch instead and squinted my way round. The photos are fascinating and George's captions perhaps more so... No Health And Safety In Them Days, Do You Remember Liptons Tea And Grocery Shops, Note That Everyone Wore A Hat, We Led The World In Them Days.
Things improve at the far end, Market Square, not least because it's properly illuminated. George used to be a costermonger so the display includes a big barrow piled with fake fruit, and also the original frontage of a former Manze's pie shop (Meat Pies 1d, Fruit Pies 1d, Eel Pies 2d). The museum's teensy cafe can serve up proper pie & mash and apple pie & custard, but I understand you have to book ahead.
The final section is King and Queen Square where pearly heritage comes to the fore and this was the best bit of the lot. 27 button-splattered costumes are on display, each with George's notes on who wore them where and the adversities they overcame. Pearly royalty grew up all over the capital from Shepherds Bush to Dagenham and Wood Green to Walworth, many of whom appear in the multitude of photographs or on the screen in the little cinema. The Pearly Queen of Hampstead was the smartest, apparently, and Bill from West Ham the poorest.
Keep reading the walls and eventually the celebrities appear, be that George with Chas and Dave, with Suggs or getting a peck from Audrey Callaghan the Prime Minister's wife. Most delightfully the lady collecting the money at the end turned out to be one of the Pearly Princesses from a black and white family snapshot I'd seen earlier, pleased to point out her younger self. George's book is available by the till and sorry, admission prices have gone up £1 compared to what's on the website due to the rising price of electricity. Best bring a torch.
Four other places to see in Stoneleigh
Nonsuch Park: This open space was the location of Henry VIII's finest palace, previously blogged, of which nothing remains because a subsequent owner had it demolished to pay off gambling debts. One of the last leftovers was Queen Elizabeth's Elm, a hollow tree of great girth which grew in front of the kitchen court and under which it's said the Tudor Queen stood to shoot at deer. Alas it was burnt down in 1902 because vandalism is nothing new, and I looked in vain by the footpath in the dog-free field for a trace of the slight mound archaeologists claim to have found in 1995.
The source of the Beverley Brook: This nine mile river flows into the Thames at Putney but rises here at the top end of Cuddington Recreation Ground, marginally inside London. A thin treelined strip snakes downslope fed from a brick culvert, although at present it's a stagnant milky trickle which takes several metres before it de-opaques. Step within the leafy curtain and you can follow the ditch unseen by neighbouring dog-walkers, meeting instead fallen branches, crisp packets and the odd disturbed squirrel.
68 Stoneleigh Park Road: This was the childhood home of the playwright John Osborne, the Angry Young Man who wrote Look Back In Anger and other kitchen sink dramas. His family moved here in 1936 when he was five, just round the corner from Station Approach, growing up in what he'd later describe as a 'cultural desert' he couldn't wait to escape from.
Ewell Court: This large Victorian house with a Jacobean core was bought by the council in the 1930s and has since been used as a clinic, decontamination unit, care home, library and wedding venue. A nasty arson attack in 2013 has required considerable renovation but the lakeside setting attracts many locally, as do the tearoom and ice cream parlour. Note to the cafe, you cannot erect a sign saying 'Secret Garden This Way' and expect to be taken seriously. I particularly liked the Fernery/Grotto under the arch out back, originally part of an Edwardian conservatory and whose many rocky crannies are actually made of Pulhamite. And yes technically this is in Ewell, just off the river Hogsmill, but it's closer to Stoneleigh station than to Ewell West so I'm counting it as one stop beyond.
45 Squared 12) TRINITY CHURCH SQUARE, SE1
Borough of Southwark, 75m×60m
Here's an elegant garden square fronted by Georgian terraces, although you can't go in the garden unless you're a resident because it's one of those. Trinity Church Square lies just off Borough High Street, and is accessed via broad leafy Trinity Street so you might have ridden past along Cycleway 10. Everything's called Trinity round here, partly because land locally was gifted to Trinity House in 1661 by merchant seaman Christopher Merrick for the benefit of destitute mariners, and partly because the church in the middle of the square was Holy Trinity. Originally it was called Trinity Square - the same as the City corner where Trinity House is based - but later a distinction was made and the word Church got inserted. This is thus one of London's rare streets whose sign additionally announces what it used to be called, despite the name change being over 70 years ago.
The houses are lovely, in a 'Mary Poppins could step out at any time' kind of way. They form a solid three-storey brick perimeter with sash windows upstairs and stucco downstairs, plus 67 sturdy black doors so similar that you know the whole square must be listed. The spear-topped cast iron railings are listed too, even the replacements for those whipped off in the war, shielding a basement level with no direct street access. You could easily imagine nanny stepping out and carefully wheeling a large pram down the steps while cook prepares luncheon for the mistress in the scullery. But appearances can be deceptive, as with so many heritage facades, because it turns out many of these family homes have subsequently been converted laterally into flats across two or three house widths, or so the Residents Association tells us.
The glaringly obvious presence here is the church, built in 1824 in Greek Revival style by Francis Octavius Bedford who's also responsible for St John's in Waterloo. The belltower has a stopped clock and a twiddly octagonal lantern on top; the portico has six columns and three pesky steps up to the main doors. However Holy Trinity stopped being a church in 1968 because there were far too many round here to support the postwar population, after which the interior was repurposed as an open hall for orchestral use. It's now Henry Wood Hall, a rehearsal and recording space for orchestras and smaller groups of classical musicians, so don't expect to get inside for a concert but if you fiddle or blow you might get lucky.
As for the garden that's currently gorgeous with pink and white blossom bursting forth and the last of the daffodils making way for later blooms. At its heart is an eight-foot-high statue of King Alfred with a frankly astonishing pedigree, the top half being about 200 years old and the bottom half being Roman. It'sbelieved the lower chunk formed part of a colossal sculpture dedicated to Minerva in a temple on nearby Watling Street, and was carved from Cotswold limestone during the reign of Trajan or Hadrian. It is thus, at least in part, arguably London's oldest statue. You can only see it from beyond the railings, however, unless you're a resident or their guest and willing to abide by the list of rules posted by the gate. No exercising with kettle bells, no bicycles, no entry before 7am and no children's parties without permission.
Other sights around the square include a rare K2 telephone box, the arms of Trinity House atop a wall and several patent self-locking manhole covers by Hayward's of Borough. More temporary manifestations include workmen repointing the stonework round the church, a brown trailer that's sometimes used to sell salt beef and the second-hand book stall that manifests outside number 57 on a Sunday. I note we're also approaching the AGM of the Trinity Newington Residents' Association at the end of the month, which last year was held at Henry Wood Hall but this year's venue is a wine bar round the back of Borough station so a bit of a climbdown. Watch out for Trinity Church Square next time you're cycling through, and when you reach the ornamental barrier where you have to get off feel free to shake a fist at the TNRA because that's one of theirs.
Abbreviated version: Hurrah, my broadband finally started working again yesterday afternoon. I had eleven days without.
What happened: A couple of Saturdays ago a fibre optic cable somewhere in Mile End failed. Before dawn on Monday Openreach sent an engineer round who confirmed someone needed to come back in daylight. On Tuesday someone came back in daylight, opened up a manhole and found flooding down there. Faffing around in the water proved ineffective so Openreach realised they'd need to source hydraulic pumps. Several attempts were pencilled in but the issue was not solved, hence the protracted delay.
How I found this out: On Tuesday I finally managed to speak to a human on a BT helpline. I think they could hear the surprise in my voice. They did some digging into my broadbandlessness and confirmed it was infrastructural damage so an Openreach issue, not a BT problem. They didn't know when pumps might tame the flooding allowing the cable to be repaired, but it was reassuring to know this was a real problem and they were trying to solve it. I will eventually receive some daily compensation.
How it ended: Yesterday I spotted an Openreach engineer fiddling with a cabinet beside an open manhole at the end of Fairfield Road. This looks hopeful, I thought, but when I got home I still had no broadband. I checked online and they were hoping for a fix by 10am this morning. But a few minutes later the red ring on my BT Hub turned blue and I had broadband again. Oh the relief of being able to do everything online again.
How Joni Mitchell summed it up: Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
Flickr update
I told you yesterday about my Flickr albums that have had the most views over the last 20 years. Here are the ten albums that have had the fewest views. I have updated this list several times over the last 24 hours.
1)Cheltenham & Gloucester (25 photos, 150 views): The lovely spa and cathedral towns, not the building society. 2)Slough (30 photos, 162 views): I should have guessed my Slough collection (Mars, Herschel, Thunderbirds) would underperform. 3)Wensum bridges (12 photos, 163 views): Bridges in Norwich proved a bit niche last year. 4)Welwyn Hatfield (26 photos, 166 views): Perhaps it's new towns that don't generally attract attention. 5)Redditch (20 photos, 172 views): Nobody gave a damn about this West Midlands new town last year. 6)Prime Meridian (40 photos, 194 views): From the Thames to the Humber (skipping from Stratford to Cleethorpes). 6)Ironbridge (30 photos, 194 views): What's wrong with you? Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale are fabulous. 6)Folkestone Triennial 2017 (32 photos, 194 views): The fourth annual crosstown art show (returning in 2025). 6)Poole (40 photos, 194 views): Perhaps if I'd mentioned Brownsea Island it'd've performed better. 10)Paris 2018 (30 photos, 195 views): Including La Petite Ceinture and Maison La Roche. 10)Foro/Palatino (30 photos, 195 views): Classical architectural remnants in the heart of Rome. 10)Open House 2014 (64 photos, 195 views): That was the year I went up Tower 42 and the Balfron Tower.
These are the other albums that appeared in the Bottom 10 yesterday but were subsequently clicked out.
13)King's Lynn (40 photos, 196 views): Once a year the Mayor takes to the dodgems in the market square. 15)Midland Metro (30 photos, 197 views): Multiple cultural locations along Birmingham's tram route. 17)Fernsehturm (20 photos, 198 views): The 360° panorama from Berlin's highest restaurant. 18)Dartford (25 photos, 202 views): Yeah I get that. 19)Dover to Deal (25 photos, 204 views): Uploaded yesterday, four days after I wrote about my clifftop walk. Please have a look :)
I've also gone back and added photos and links to my Dover to Deal post, so feel free to go back and read that as it was intended.
Bow Roundabout update
I thought the new contraflow lane under the flyover might finally open when the Silvertown Tunnel did, but it didn't. An update to TfL's Silvertown Tunnel webpage explains why.
All physical mitigation works are now complete. The link under the flyover at Bow will remain closed until we complete more works to protect the structure later in 2025.
I suspect they've realised it'll take more than a small low headroom sign to protect the underside of the flyover from potential damage so will be adding more signs or some other kind of protection. A lorry hitting the concrete structure could be incredibly disruptive.
I will thus be proceeding shortly with my in-depth analysis of the reconfigured Bow Roundabout because it turns out I could have done this four weeks ago. I'll then return to consider the impact of the contraflow whenever they finally get round to opening it. If this bores you, don't feel the need to tell us again.
Superloop update
These are the ten Superloop routes ordered by frequency, most frequent first.
Every 8 minutes: SL4 (Canary Wharf → Grove Park) Every 10 minutes: SL8 (Shepherds Bush → Uxbridge) Every 12 minutes: SL1, SL2, SL3, SL5, SL9, SL10 Every 15 minutes: SL6, SL7
The new SL4 is the most frequent of all, which is an excellent way to burn money.
London Loop update
Last week I walked section 22 with BestMate. This week we walked section 18, i.e. Chingford to Enfield Lock. This is another section that can be ridiculously muddy even in normal weather, indeed at the end of February the Inner London Ramblers warned of "slippery mud" and "extensive flooding" and strongly recommended the wearing of "good boots". I can confirm that after six weeks with no rain it was merely a very pleasant ramble and unusually solid underfoot. Here, in addition to the absence of mud, are the ten things which most surprised us along the way.
1) A seafood takeaway on a boat at Enfield Lock selling tiger prawns, calamari and octopus. 2) Wondering why all the ducks along the Lea were in groups of three, in each case two males pursuing one female. 3) A songbird in a tree on Sewardstone Marsh belting out a ridiculously wide range of chirpy songs, as if working through the preset tunes on an old Casio keyboard. 4) An Islamic cemetery that definitely wasn't on the hillside last time I walked this. 5) A girl dangling her feet in a freshly dug grave and laughing while on the phone to a friend. 6) Noticing that all the graves were pointing in a southwesterly direction that definitely wasn't southeast towards Mecca (then using Google to confirm that Muslim graves are always aligned at right angles). 7) Wildlife including a woodpecker, four deer and a particularly graceful heron. 8) The Leopard Gates outside the Scouts National HQ at Gilwell Park, where one of the leopards got damaged so the 97 year-old sculptor came out of retirement to carve a new one. 9) The absolutely excellent view across London from the top of Yates Meadow, which the official Loop route inexplicably bypasses. 10) Walking round a corner and suddenly passing two young men coming the other way, one wearing a straightjacket and looking immensely embarrassed at being spotted in what they'd hoped was the middle of nowhere.
60+ card update
I can confirm that a 60+ card gets you half price on Thames Clippers. You don't tap in on the pier, you pay for a half price ticket at the bar. This reduces the fare to something rather less extortionate.
Twenty years ago today I posted my first photo to Flickr.
I'd been to Lewisham for the day as part of my Random Borough project and thought you deserved to see 13 of the better pictures in greater-than-microscopic size. For my inaugural upload I picked the ever-photogenic Laban Centre on Deptford Creek in cobalt sunshine, and invited you to take a peek.
(more tomorrow - in the meantime you might enjoy my new Flickr photostream with more shots of gorgeous Lewisham)
This was long enough ago that fewer than ten million photos had been uploaded to Flickr - my Laban shot has a seven-digit ID number. By contrast my latest photos are eleven-digiters, confirming an explosion of digital imagery over the last two decades. Sticking photos online was relatively new back in 2005, hindered by retro-mobile technology and substandard transfer speeds. Today we think nothing of uploading photos and videos for immediate consumption, so much so that the visual has overtaken the written in our digital communication.
April 9th 2005 wasn't the day I joined Flickr - for some reason I'd signed up over a year previously. They were a cute fortnight-old start-up at the time, complete with an occasional inability to spell.
Welcome to Flickr, diamond geezer!
You can use Flickr to:
• Chat and exchange photos live with your friends
• Meet people who have the same interests as you
• Stay in touch with your friends and family
• Have fun
When you invite people to join Flickr you are instantly connected to them. Join a group by browsing through the public groups people have already started. Or if you want to have a special group for just you and your friends, create a private group. To benefit the most from Flickr, add more details to your profile about your interests, add a buddy icon and add photos to your gallery.
We look forward to seeing you in Flickr!
The Flickr Team
Please note: ln the initial weeks of the beta period reliability may be sporadic while we optimize the system and new servers. Outage start times and anticipated lengths wiltbe posted to the news page with as much notice as possible. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience thls may cause.
What's most amazing about Flickr is that it's still going. Twenty years is forever online, plenty long enough for your premise to collapse or for the big company who bought you to let you wither and then pull the plug. In this case Yahoo proved poor masters and eventually got rid, which would have meant oblivion had not a smaller company called SmugMug stepped in. Thus the site is still here, thank God, and so are hundreds of millions of images representing a phenomenal social record.
Since posting my first photo it's been viewed by almost 2000 people (1944 to be precise, a number I suspect will have increased somewhat by the end of today). Almost six thousand have looked at the next one, a Tellytubbyesque landscape from the front of the same building, a total high enough to place it in my Top 200 Most Viewed Flickr photos of all time. Alas this is an increasingly meaningless ranking after a fortnight of statistical blips in October 2022 gifted entirelyrandomphotos massive viewing totals. But if I strip out those annoying interlopers these are my Flickr Top Five, my photo-sharing greatest hits.
1)Entrance to nudist beach, Telscombe Cliffs (44,296 views): It's the phrase 'nudist beach' that keeps punters coming back, alas missing the key word 'entrance' (because there's nothing to see here). 2)Met No 1 (26,343 views): In 2013 a 'Learning English' website used my photo of a steam train at Farringdon to illustrate a podcast, and attributed it properly, which has brought a steady stream of visitors ever since. 3)Fatboys Diner (20,527 views): This Fifties trailer alas no longer serves burgers at Trinity Buoy Wharf but my wonky 2008 photo still has traction. I saw its empty silver shell recently from a train, awaiting rebirth. 4)American Embassy, Nine Elms (19,731 views): Very occasionally one of my photos is embraced by Explore, Flickr's global daily Top 500 feature, which loved this photo of Nine Elms' defensive cube. It's rather easier to get into Explore now than it used to be. 5)Shivering Sands sea forts (18,145 views): I got lucky with a level horizon on a rocking boat off Herne Bay, garnering multiple Flickr favourites and a long shelf life as a "go-to" photo for this rusting offshore marvel.
At the other end of the scale, my least viewed photos are a sequence of inconsequential shots from Outer London of minimal interest. Even so, only eleven photos in my online portfolio have had fewer than 200 views over the years, which if you're on Flickr yourself you'll know is a phenomenal strike rate. They're all from a particularly dull set I uploaded in 2006 so it serves me right. Of the dozen other photos that never mustered 300 views, what barely interested anyone are a trip to Rome, a Paralympic tennis match and a week in San Francisco, which I've never quite understood.
I suspect photos of my recent trip to Dover would be in these doldrums had I actually managed to upload them, but I haven't yet which is annoying - an anniversary opportunity lost.
I also combine my photos into Flickr albums where appropriate, especially if I go to a far-flung place and want to make it easy to showcase my visit. Here are my five most-viewed albums ever, and perhaps you can see why they are.
1)Olympic Stadium site (10,406 views): I stood on the same bridge over Marshgate Lane and took a monthly photo of the Olympic Stadium arising, so this is a unique record of inexorable change and rightly my most-viewed album. 2)Metroland Revisited (9,324 views): For John Betjeman's centenary I followed in his documentary footsteps up the Metropolitan line, and it was 2006 so photo quality wasn't great but nostalgia won out. 3)Fleet River (NE branch) (9,255 views): My month-long bloggery down the River Fleet was much shared at the time and brought diamond geezer to a wider audience. I compiled five albums of Fleet photographs, geographically focused, and if I extended this list to a Top 10 the other albums would be 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. 4)Inside the Gherkin (9,164 views): For Open House 2006 I queued for hours to see London from the top of the Gherkin, and thousands of people have subsequently wanted to know what that view looked like. 5)My Most Interesting Photos (8,481 views): Flickr's algorithm nebulously combines views, comments and favourites to create a ranking by 'Interestingness', which for years had the Maunsell Forts at the top of the list. This album alas no longer automatically updates, otherwise it'd show that my Most Interesting photo is now of icy boats at Richmond Bridge.
Being on Flickr has brought unexpected opportunities and connections. A few authors have messaged saying "could I put this photo in my book?", which I often say yes to. They've also ended up in doctoral theses, walking leaflets, BBC revision materials, first day cover envelopes and on an information board beside the River Chess at Sarratt Bottom. Most notably the actual Bob Dylan exhibited a painting based on my photograph of Blackpool Pier, which blew my mind and was deemed worthy of a half-page spread in the Daily Telegraph. More recently an old photo from the Millennium Dome helped a visiting Algerian find his father's poem on the Greenwich Meridian, which he'd never have known about had Flickr not existed.
Flickr's longevity has also helped preserve hundreds of photos I'd otherwisehavelost when my hard drive died in 2006. But the potential danger works both ways. I've invested hours of my time curating an online portfolio, currently 18852 photos in total, complete with captions, tags and geographical locations. But there's no guarantee whatsoever that Flickr will maintain functionality in the future, or indeed continue to function at all, so all that effort may one day be wiped out.
I've also invested a heck of a lot time in embedding Flickr into this blog. When I've visited somewhere interesting a lot of the links in the next day's post are often to Flickr photos to illustrate what I've seen, indeed there must be tens of thousands of such links by now. But twenty years of backlinks could so easily be rendered obsolete by some as-yet unforeseen upgrade or recode, peppering thousands of my posts with instantly dead links. If Flickr over-improves itself, or fails completely, my blog will be rendered annoyingly incomplete.
It seems unlikely that Flickr can survive another decade without something going wrong, be that degeneration of functionality or withdrawal of service. But I said exactly that in 2015, and yet here it is still going strong. I hope you enjoy looking at the photos I stick on there, be that for artistic, geographical or purely inquisitive reasons. And I hope they'll still be there to look at in 2035, even if the things I've taken photographs of are by then long gone.
Route 129: Lewisham to Gallions Reach Location: London southeast, crossriver Length of bus journey: 9 miles, 70 minutes
The 129 has been searching for a purpose ever since it was introduced as a stumpy three mile route in 2006. The original idea was to connect the new Millennium Village on the peninsula to the centre of Greenwich, a double decker shuttle which was one of the ten shortest bus routes in London. Planners intended it would one day be extended to new developments on Surrey Canal Road and thence to Peckham, but New Bermondsey Overground station remains a mirage two decades later so that never happened. Jump ahead to 2022 and the 129 was extended instead to Lewisham, this to make up for route 180 being diverted for Crossrail reasons, although that didn't bring a huge rush of punters either. Now it's become one of three cross-river buses in east London, striking out through the Silvertown Tunnel to connect Lewisham to City Airport and Beckton, and we wait to see if this is a link anyone genuinely needs.
Things start badly. The 129's first stop ought to be outside the Lewisham Centre but it's closed due to 'Urban Realm development works', which according to a poster were supposed to finish last week but evidently haven't. At least it tells you where to go instead. The second stop alas has no poster, just a Countdown screen insisting several 129s are due in the next few minutes when in fact bugger all are coming. Here I meet a flustered old lady trying to get to Canary Wharf with the aid of some scribbled instructions her nephew gave her. Alas her intended chain of buses fails at square one, causing instant confusion, and trying to persuade her to give up waiting and catch the DLR instead falls on deaf ears.
The 129 instead starts temporarily round the back of the shopping centre on Molesworth Street, pumping out every eight minutes whereas last week it was every twelve. Grabbing the top front seat is easy, which totally won't be the case when we reach North Greenwich (where the spodcount will increase from two to twenty). We set off past the newly-completed Lewisham Gateway development, part of which has been vacated due to recent flooding which has displaced 400 much-peeved residents. Then finally we're back on line of route, where I can confirm nobody has bothered to put up a new 129 timetable at the Lewisham Station stop because of TfL's usual uncoordinated backroom inefficiencies. Things have started badly.
It's a fairly short hop to Greenwich, initially climbing past copious council flats, hundreds of newbuilds and a robot fixing a gas main. By an accident of timing we're following a 199 so hoovering up fewer passengers than we could have been, even though our bus is free and theirs isn't. Just before the A2 is a cul-de-sac called Friendly Place where the business on the corner is a dental surgery, which feels wrong. Just after the A2 is the smart Georgian townhouse where Liz Truss lived before she moved to Downing Street, as yet unmarked with a blue plaque which feels right. Onwards past the town hall and cinema and into the maelstrom of eateries that central Greenwich has inexorably become. Beyond the Cutty Sark the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel is visible, and if you were trying to get across the river it'd be a lot quicker walking through that than staying on our bus.
We've reached the start of the original runty 129 outside the Old Royal Naval College, suddenly with so many more miles to go. Potential passengers are asking the driver if he's going to North Greenwich, because last week that was the key destination on the front of the bus but it's now vanished in favour of a less helpful housing estate in Newham. For a direct bus they really should have taken the 188 which takes a shortcut whereas we're doing the full length of constricted Trafalgar Road before heading north. "Are you going under the tunnel?" asks one keen old lady, and technically the answer's no but the driver helpfully says yes.
From IKEA onwards the 129 used to be one of half a dozen buses terminating at North Greenwich but now it's more special, and also as aforementioned it's free. A dog owner with a chocolate labrador takes advantage. We plough on past kids doing holiday kickabout and trees bedecked in blossom, buds and discarded plastic sheeting. The ridiculously inefficient T-junction by the Dangleway slows us down but eventually we curl into the bus station, precisely half the journey behind us and half ahead. Here the wholesale turnover of passengers takes place as all the usual North Greenwich passengers turf off and the Day One contingent of the curious and the obsessed troop aboard. They are great in number and audibly peeved not to be able to get a front seat. Wahey, here goes with the tunnel bit.
We exit the bus station novelly by turning right at the roundabout, then right again down a special canyon-like bus lane. Three hi-vis-ed stewards wave us on, just this once. In no time we're turning into the main flow of traffic almost immediately before the tunnel portal, and then we're in. A double decker in a Thames tunnel is a proper novelty for London. We stick to the left lane along with the HGVs while everything else sticks to the right, all proceeding at just under 30mph and all contributing to the Mayoral coffers. It's less straight than I was expecting but not as wonky as the Blackwall Tunnel. As sightseeing trips go it's not especially incredible, although if you stop and think precisely what we're ducking under maybe it is. One final bend and then daylight appears in the distance and then we're out - just under a mile, fractionally under two minutes.
Welcome to Newham where, unlike the less than super SL4, we do actually intend to stop. Just not yet because in all the years of roadworks nobody's managed to add a bus stop here. Apparently one will be ready at Dock Road later in the year but for now we sail on, round a landscaped gyratory which had its traffic light hoods removed overnight. We're not going to Canning Town either, we're climbing eastwards onto the Silvertown Viaduct and aiming into the less busy side of the Royal Docks. Above us threads the cablecar, just one of its pods visibly occupied, our new bus entirely undermining the reason for its existence as a transport connection. The 129 is effectively the Dangleway Replacement Bus, and also £7 cheaper and with unique views of its own.
The first stop is a good half mile beyond the tunnel outside West Silvertown station, or technically just past. Here the pile-off begins as we lose the passengers who merely wanted to ride through the tunnel, which is the vast majority. The 129 then begins its new life threading through the Newham hinterland, an estuarine strip initially bursting with fresh flats. It can't currently stop at the next bus stop because extensive cycleway works are in progress but 'Thames Barrier' is announced anyway. Nobody is inconvenienced. The announcements then glitch into overdrive and start mentioning future stops, repeated stops and especially Connaught Bridge, perhaps because we're stopping there twice but more likely teething troubles.
The only genuinely useful destination this side of the river is London City Airport, which is great news for frequent flyers in Greenwich who want longer in bed. To get there requires a double run, just long enough that we see the previous 129 heading out just as we're heading in. The 473 and 474 also do this which proves awkward because the airport only has one bus stop, now served by three routes in both directions, and our concurrent arrival clogs it up. Fourteen taxis are waiting patiently alongside the DLR viaduct and I suspect will end up transporting more airline passengers than will any 129. We retreat and cross the docks via the Connaught Bridge, unhelpfully slipping between Prince Regent and Royal Albert DLR stations and stopping at neither.
When Crossrail started in 2022 TfL entirely rejigged bus stopping patterns in this corner of Beckton, mysteriously rerouting the 300 and leaving Royal Albert Way unbussed. The 129 now follows its former path, making sense of the former subtraction as if this were the plan all along. We pass a few parks, a closed city farm and not many houses before lining up on Tollgate Road where potential passengers are far more plentiful. None oblige. One of the remaining enthusiasts in the front seat lifts his sleeve to reveal the bus-related tattoo he just got, and the other is perhaps less impressed than he'd hoped. We've now been going over an hour, and as a blessing the driver doesn't deviate into Beckton bus station but stops outside.
For our denouement we continue into peripheral suburbia and aim for Gallions Reach. The 129's final mission is to serve the new Great Eastern Quay development which has upthrust on the Thames foreshore over the last few years. While other buses veer off towards the big Shopping Park, we instead continue to almost the water's edge and Magellan Boulevard where this bus terminates. Except it turns out it doesn't because they're still building flats at the far end and nobody's added a bus stop down there yet. Instead we loop back to Shackleton Way, once a reversing JCB gets out of the way, and stop beside a scrap of park and a very basic container toilet. Residents of the adjacent flats now have a direct connection to civilisation, although they were only ever 250m away from an existing bus stop so the new bus is more a convenience than a necessity.
I have no interest in riding the 129 back the other way because it's pretty mundane apart from the two magic subterranean minutes in the middle. Let's hope other people find it useful and it doesn't prove a wasted connection.
It was nearly Easter Sunday today.
Route 129: Lewisham to Gallions Reach
