Route 61: Bromley to Chislehurst Location: London southeast, outer Length of bus journey: 12 miles, 55 minutes
It's traditional around every birthday that I take a numerically significant bus journey. Nineteen 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, the 59 to Streatham Hill and most recently the 60 to Old Coulsdon. This year for my twentieth write-up it's off to Bromley for a U-shaped safari aboard the 61 to Chislehurst.
The 61 is quite a bus route. It's the longest TfL route that stays entirely within one borough, that borough being Bromley. It's the lowest-numbered route that stays entirely within one borough. It's also the only double-digit route to serve Bromley town centre so I've not been here before on a birthday bus and won't be back. It's impressively circuitous, heading first four miles south, then three miles east, then five miles north. And it's been following this route since 1939, admittedly slightly lopped in 1986, but that is a very long time to operate a bus that runs the long way between two termini just 2½ miles apart.
A dozen bus routes start at Bromley North, which is a damned good service for a station that only sees two trains an hour. For layover purposes they take advantage of the large car park round the back where buses park up ready to fire off to Thamesmead, Penge, Kent or wherever. Catch one of the Superloop departures and you could be in Chislehurst in four stops flat whereas we'll be taking thirty-six and only a weirdo would go all the way. There'll be three of us.
So many bus routes serve Bromley North that they have to be spread across two stops. An elderly couple have grabbed some of the limited seating, I'd say early 80s, he in flat cap and she in woollen gloves. As the 61 emerges from the car park they stand and I assume they'll both be heading to the priority seats downstairs. Not so. After they've flashed their passes they head upstairs without any fuss and grab two of the front seats, leaving me to slide in opposite. I like to take counsel from events that take place on my birthday bus and in this case the message is clearly "you're never too old", which for someone 20 years their junior is reassuringly upbeat advice.
Off we head past a Royal Mail sorting office and what used to be Bromley Town Hall, this because the centre of the High Street is pedestrianised so every bus through Bromley has to go the long way. This is also why the bus stop at Bromley Civic Centre displays 18 routes on its tiles, making it one of the five best-served stops in London. The stepped flowerbeds in the centre of Kentish Way are filled with a colourful array of civic bedding plants, all for some reason sponsored by an electrical contractor in Biggin Hill. We duck back into the High Street between Bromley's two shopping malls, stopping first outside a Travelodge and then beside a market stall selling reassuringly non-exotic fruit and vegetables, picking up a goodly complement of passengers each time. TfL's accountants would deem this a worthwhile journey already.
Escape from the town centre comes after we've passed Waitrose's green-glowing clock, and only once the lights on Mason Hill deign to let us through. The retired couple are chatting quietly and engaged in that staple of elderly conversation - noticing things and pointing them out to each other. "Look how many cars are parked in there." "Ten." "You'd have trouble getting them out wouldn't you?" "Look ten." Thus far they haven't pointed out I'm sitting here taking notes and I am reassured by this. We pause outside a small office block which houses Bromcom, an educational software company that appeared on Tomorrow's World in 1994 and still screams Nineties. A roadsign ahead lists all four of our upcoming destinations, including the one we could reach seven miles quicker by turning left. We plough on.
The lofty Gothic spire of St Luke's welcomes us to Bromley Common, once a highwayman's haunt and now a suburban artery with residential infill on one side of the road only. The other side boasts parks, woodland, grazing land and a substantial higher education college, which means a lot of teenage passengers are about to alight. But considerable residential infill is planned here, a 2200-home development called Ravensbourne Place, whose plans I'm alerted to by an angry banner outside a large house with a flagpole. Barratt Homes are assuming these paddocky scraps can be deemed 'grey belt' and paved over, and a group called Keep Bromley Green are organising a mass campaign to say like hell it can. Less controversial is the red poster on the side of Costcutter announcing that Ralf Little will be appearing in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold at the Churchill Theatre, but not until the end of the month.
The bus stop at the end of Turpington Lane is one of only two in London whose numbered tiles sum to 1000, as I once blogged at length to general disinterest. On we rush towards a lonely church, some fishing lakes and one of London's ten Valero filling stations, whoever they are. Bromley Bus Garage apears to be a very long way outside Bromley, and what a strange place for a McDonald's unless it's the drivers who substantially support it. The retired couple have moved on to discussing the latest Iran-related flight issues which it seems are inconveniencing an acquaintance of someone they know. Signs alert drivers that a new 30mph speed limit has recently been introduced on Hastings Road, lowered from 40mph, Bromley very much not being a council that believes in blanket 20. And then look we've just entered Locksbottom, don't titter no, the green sign says so.
You'd like Locksbottom if you ever thought to come out this far, it has a fine Mock Tudor parade bookended by two large characterful pubs. Sure it has a huge hospital just behind, this why the place has such a good bus service, but only the chimneys really stick out. Also given the rest of the shops are interior designers, off licences and swish clinics, the Lidl at the far end does bring down the tone a bit. Crofton Road continues with executive homes and cottages, then solidly desirable interwar stock. "Nice houses," says the old man to my left, and I agree more silently than his wife. I know it's traditional in these birthday reports to point out cherry trees in bloom but this year it feels like they all are, as are the magnolias. The daffs are extra-impressive as we dip down to the Kyd Brook, also a man is standing in his front garden performing topiary on a bush whose shape I can best describe as 'roast chicken leg'.
We're now halfway round this circuitous route, slowly homing in on Orpington station. There's what ought to be a great view from the brow of Crofton Hill, all retreating rooftops and arboreal infill, but a low mist means it fades to grey. Our driver spots a member of station staff directing two lost souls towards the bus stop and waits as they shuffle over - two tickets to the town centre please. The other side of the station is considerably better served, mostly by routes that start with R (the special prefix for Orpington). All spin round the Roundabout formed by the town's war memorial and into the High Street, where we pause at a stop displaying 17 routes on its tiles, making it one of the ten best-served stops in London.
At this point the most foreboding event of the journey occurs. A funeral cortege is moving at walking pace past McDonald's led by a short man in mourning dress wearing a top hat with feathers poking up. The hearse is topped by further ornate plumage and inside is a wicker coffin, devoid of any floral tributes identifying the body as Dad, Gran or Whatever. We slow down as they creep by, speeding up again only when we reach Wimpy, and I reflect on the portentous fact that a birthday bus has never previously provided such a grandstand view of mortality. It's exactly 10 years since the 51 brought me to this very street and on that occasion all we did was queue, not muse upon human transience.
Shops I'm pretty sure weren't here last time include Serenity Ink, Gadget Exchange and Panda Bento, also the Walnuts Centre hadn't had its recent glow-up. More pertinently Orpington GPO wasn't a Bar & Kitchen but a Crown Post Office, and hadn't scuttled across the road to a counter at the back of TG Jones. I am becoming increasingly suspicious about the elderly couple to my left because we're now onto the back straight of this U-shaped route and they're still sitting there. Wherever they're ultimately heading a train from Bromley could have got them here much quicker, and I wonder if they're actually pass-holding freeloaders riding the route for no practical reason whatsoever... cough, as indeed am I.
At the top of the High Street the 61 finally bears off on its own to serve streets no other route will touch, beginning the ascent of Perry Hall Road. The suburb we're here to serve is Poverest, whose delights I wrote about at great length in 2024 so won't regurgitate again. Since then however I see Perry Hall School has erected a gobsmacking number of signs warning drivers to stick to 20mph, in both directions, most of which flash at the appropriate times. I would question whether this is a wise safety precaution or an insane display of bumptious institutional nannying. One of the bus stops here is called Willet Way, a road named after the local instigator of Daylight Saving Time, this because we're just skirting Petts Wood. And still the elderly couple haven't alighted, still they chatter contentedly to each other, and my latest theory is that they too are sequential riders of London bus routes end-to-end.
The houses along Chislehurst Road are gorgeous, a perfect Twenties combo of arched porches, tiled gables, porthole windows and herringbone brick. I know I often say suburban houses look good but these are peakly desirable thanks to Basil Scruby's vaulting ambition and also have very generous gardens, thus create an almost perfect middle class setting. After a pansy-filled roundabout the houses get larger and have names like Little Grange and Tall Trees, before we plunge headlong into proper woodland which is the actual Petts Wood. It looks ideal for a muddy ramble, little leaf-strewn paths occasionally weaving off into thick evergreen cover, and even an isolated bus stop in the middle of it all in case you want to get out and enjoy.
A dawdling e-bike means we enjoy the woodland jaunt for longer than anticipated, before finally encountering the fine homes on the very edge of Chislehurst. And then it finally happens, the elderly couple ding the bell and stand to leave, evacuating the service just six stops from the end. The man addresses me before they leave, and I worry he's going to query what I've been scribbling down in my notebook having taking offence at the invasion of privacy. Instead he waves a red biro he's found on the floor and asks "did you drop this?", and when I say no he takes it away with him. Both of them thank the driver as they alight - full marks for politeness. But I still have no idea why they rode the 61 here given an SL3 from Bromley North could have got them here in a quarter of the time, indeed will never know.
I'm now the last person left upstairs as we cross from the really nice shops on one side of Chislehurst Common to the nice shops on the other. A couple of 161s are parked by the war memorial ready to fire off to North Greenwich, but I'll not be here in a century's time to ride those. Someone's knitted a daffodil topper for the pillarbox opposite the pond, a charming quirk which may be under threat if too many boxes get solar panels. I shrug at the superfluousness of some of the retail offerings along here - Annabel's boutique, Board and Barrel cheese and wine bar, Fico Bianco the artisan cafe, and pilates haven House of Balance. Next year I'm riding the 62 through Barking and Dagenham and there'll be absolutely no evidence of such wilfully disposable income up there.
The last of the regular passengers alights at Sainsbury's but I stay on for the final backstreet twiddle. The driver squeezes into a one-way Victorian street just past the big church, then pulls to a halt outside the lowlier Belmont Parade. Here a window cleaner is making the funeral parlour's glass pristine, the cobbler specialises in engraving pet discs, and Walsh Glaziers have laid out three large mirrors on the pavement below an original 081 telephone number. I thank the driver as I alight and he says 'Cheers mate' back, and it feels like all is right with the world. If you are going to ride a bus route end to end, for whatever reason, the 61 is definitely one of the pleasanter options.
Route 61: Bromley to Chislehurst
