Route 507: Victoria to Waterloo London's 3rd shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.24 miles (15 minutes)
For the first time in my countdown I've hit a route I've blogged before, and fairly recently too. But that was eastbound in the rush hour, so this time to avoid undue duplication I'm riding it westbound at the weekend. The 507 isn't really a weekend kind of bus, having been introduced in 1968 as a Red Arrow service to whisk commuters from Waterloo or Victoria to their desks and back, its service designed to cope with two peak-time spikes. Over the years it's seen flat fare buses, bendies, longer-than usual-single deckers and today a fleet of cutting edge electric vehicles. It is no ordinary service.
Dougal and his mummy are waiting at the first stop on Upper Taxi Road. "It's a day for doing nice things with Mummy," she says. They've already watched Jade Thornton busking something from The Greatest Showman on the mainline concourse, and now they're catching a 507 to continue their bonding experience. Once the bus arrives they walk through the cattle class standing area and settle into one of the seats at the rear. Mummy opens up her rucksack, from which she takes out some Tupperware, from which she takes out some neatly scrunched tinfoil, from which she unwraps a healthy snack for Dougal to enjoy. "Thank you Mummy," says Dougal. "You're very welcome," says Mummy. If the zebra crossing outside the station ever clears, we should be underway.
Two tourists with luggage have settled into the view-free seats immediately behind the driver, squandering the opportunity for world-class sightseeing later on. Another woman yells "Yeah, I'm on the bus" into her phone, because it's not a ten-part series on London bus journeys unless that happens. The 507's super-duper electronic display won't tell us how long it is before we reach Victoria, but the last stop before the cut-off always seems to be seven minutes distant. "Let's stop off at a lovely bakery," says Mummy. "I love bakeries," says Dougal. "You can't get nice bread in a supermarket," says Mummy, and I wonder if this statement might be the best definition of being middle class I have ever heard.
A new family board the bus at St Thomas's, their dad savvy enough to know that they can use the middle doors. He stands near the pushchair with grandpa, and the two of them engage in blokey banter about Chelsea and Stamford Bridge and Fabregas and FA Cup prospects that's probably not stopped for the last 30 years. Mum sits further back with their daughter, whose name is never uttered, not least because this parent is too engrossed in what's happening on her phone. The Thames is a slightly darker shade of grey than the sky. A pair of pleasure boats moored upstream have nowhere to go today. A dozen red buses can be seen strung across Westminster Bridge, almost nose to tail. Daughter clutches her CBeebies magazine and stares forwards.
The cafes on Horseferry Road are silent because the civil service haven't come to work today. Former offices at 9 Millbank have become a vast hole which will become luxury flats. Channel 4's HQ looks partially boarded up, but no, they haven't redistributed to Leeds just yet. Our next fresh boarders are a bunch of middle-aged geezers, one clutching the Racing Post under his arm. "Warmer in 'ere innit?" he says. They launch into a well-rehearsed spiel about football, ending with the line "everyone hates Tottenham" at which everyone guffaws. A noisy ambulance speeds by. "Do you know what the first letter of ambulance is?" asks Mummy. Dougal knows.
With their rucksack repacked, Mummy and Dougal alight outside Westminster Cathedral to continue their adventure. A nice bakery somewhere awaits their custom. Clued-up passengers also disembark here because the final leg of the journey involves a slow crawl into the far end of the bus station, whereas there's a new tube station entrance just across the road. On the home stretch silent daughter chirps up for the first time, announcing that she needs a wee but can hold it in. In her hurry to clamber off she accidentally drops her furry lion which falls unnoticed to the pavement. I prepare to undertake my heroic deed of the day, but just in time she notices and turns round and runs back and is joyfully reunited. The weekend 507 is a breed apart.
Route 379: Yardley Lane Estate to Chingford London's 4th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.26 miles (15 minutes)
The Yardley Lane estate clings to a hillside to the northwest of Chingford overlooking the Lea Valley reservoirs, not far from the Gilwell Park campsite. It earned a minibus service in themid1980s when the regular connection between Waltham Abbey and Chingford was lost, and this minor shuttling loop to the brink of Essex was added instead. On the face of it the 379 is extraordinarily generous - a quarter-hourly service operated by two vehicles for fewer than 1000 passengers a day, when a double decker alternative exists at the foot of the slope. But this direct link to shops and station survives because the London bus network serves a social need, not just an economic paymaster, at least for now.
The turning circle for the 379 straddles the very edge of the capital. Albion Terrace opposite is in Essex, and the fortified bungalow where all the manic barking is coming from is in Waltham Forest. The layby's on the large side because it used to be the winter terminus for route 215, but that now terminates up the road at the Lea Valley Campsite all year round. I've arrived shortly before dusk, so the homebound flow has begun and the cars streaming past have their headlamps on. Three college students have gathered and are watching the road, so I wonder if they'll be joining me, but instead a minibus drops by to take them away. I am therefore expecting my ride on the 379 to be quiet. I am very wrong.
When the 379 arrives it is packed out with schoolchildren of secondary school age, and most definitely standing room only. Their behaviour is animated but well-mannered, lest any of you be thinking worse. Thankfully several children pour off, so I'm going to get a seat, but the driver doesn't expect anyone to be boarding and nearly shuts the door in my face. Such are the potential pitfalls of a single-door vehicle. Although we're now technically on the return journey, this end of the route is a loop so the remainder won't be getting off just yet. We climb Antlers Hill to run round the back of the estate where our driver simply stops in the middle of the road to let the next two batches alight. It seems astonishing that so few homes could be the source of so many children, but this willingness to use public transport must be how the route has survived.
There's a nice twinkly view of Enfield from the crest of the hill. The road surface up here is appalling, with badly-filled-in utility trenches at closely-spaced intervals. Yardley Lane is so narrow, descending between parked cars and a wooded incline, that it's clear why buses only tour this loop one-way. One of the last schoolchildren to alight is so engrossed in her phone conversation that she forgets her scarf and has to dash back on board to retrieve it. By the time we return to the main road, then swing back into the second part of the estate, there are only three of us left on board. I am therefore expecting the remainder of my ride on the 379 to be quiet. I am again very wrong.
The local primary school has turned out, so a large cluster of kids, parents and guardians is waiting patiently at the kerbside. They too are perfectly well behaved, fear not, but any hopes of silent running have been dashed. Drysdale Avenue is the spine road for further residential backwaters with a better bus service than guidelines specify they deserve, but who's complaining? Before long we reach the almost-foot of Kings Head Hill, which climbs the flanks of Pole Hill towards Chingford Green. The 379 is no longer the only bus, so waiting passengers leap aboard whichever comes first, saving themselves a brief but steep upward hike. We gain a lady with a shopping bag and a teenage boy with shiny black cartoon-like trainers which look like they're moulded to his feet.
The traffic lights beside the cemetery are the only hindrance on an otherwise speedy ride. The chosen destination for most passengers at this time of day isn't the station but the shops, or the library, or any of the other facilities at the Co-Op end of the high street. Station Road is served by as many as eight bus routes so we are by now an irrelevance. We snake past retailers considering winding down for the evening, retailers who gave up the ghost over Christmas and one bakery window full of startling icing-covered architecture. At the station/bus station our driver doesn't even pause for a rest, he's behind schedule so needs to head straight back to the Yardley again. Short routes aren't always quiet routes.
Route 15H: Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill London's 5th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.36 miles (25 minutes)
Route 15 need not detain us here, being six miles long, but its heritage subset is considerably shorter. This was introduced in 2005 when Routemasters were phased out for accessibility reasons, mainly as a sop to ensure no politician could be accused of withdrawing them completely. Its fellow service on route 9H bit the dust in 2014 so the 15H soldiers on alone, now only every twenty minutes, on the tourist-friendly stretch from Trafalgar Square to the Tower. But a recent plan proposes cutting back the service to summer weekends and bank holidays only, which is basically nothing, after the new Ultra Low Emission Zone takes effect. Come ride soon, before it gets a lot lot harder.
'Heritage Routemasters operate additional journeys between 0941 and 1841', according to the timetable on the Strand, but wheelchairs cannot be carried. Other than this small red writing there are no clues that an icon of London is about to emerge round the corner from Northumberland Avenue and offer an anachronistic ride for a very reasonable fare. TfL's promotion of this very special service has always been poor. One family definitely know it's coming, and their son beams with delight as it pulls up and they grab the prized front seats. Other tourists suddenly notice, and wander over because the conductor knows to wait for a bit, and before long there are 15 of us on the top deck and a fair few more down below. Ding ding.
Some are here to remember. A retired man in a sensible jacket whips out his iPad for a photo before resting his arm lovingly on the moquette. Others are here because it's what you do in London. A Japanese girl in a bright red coat ensures the lens is trained on her, because it wouldn't be a photograph otherwise, and ends up taking a 90° selfie-panorama. Some are here because they would have caught the ordinary 15 but this turned up instead, and they'll be smiling for the next few stops. But most are here to travel religiously to the end of the route, because nowhere else would they ever get the opportunity. Another 15 passengers have boarded before we reach Aldwych, and numbers only ever rise.
The engine's definitely judderier than on a modern bus, and/or the suspension less effective, but that's part of the appeal. A family of five can't believe their luck when we pull up, the parents looking at each other as if to say shall we, and they do. We pass a row of protesters in tents outside the Royal Courts of Justice, and the net-curtained windows of the Art Deco Daily Express building, and the magnificent facade of Wren's cathedral. You get a much better view from a 1964 vehicle than the hermetically sealed red bubbles rushing the other way. Top deck seats generally fill up from the front backwards, and there are now very few of them left.
And still they come - two more on Ludgate Hill, seven at St Paul's and three on Cannon Street. Admittedly I made my journey at the weekend, but tourists come to London all year round, and I am very impressed by the loadings. I see the London Stone is back in place, and labelled. I see the House of Fraser facing London Bridge closed its doors for good on 29th December. I see security guards sitting alone in echoing receptions beneath shiny towers. And even at the penultimate stop a trio of French tourists board, their brief journey fortuitously extended by a traffic jam at Mincing Lane. On reaching the Tower they look somewhat bemused, there being no automated messages to explain what's going on, but a yell from the conductor confirms yes, this is where everyone has to get off.
By my calculations at least 60 passengers have boarded during our journey, the majority of whom stayed on to the bitter end. But, and here's the rub, AT NO POINT DID THE CONDUCTOR EVER COME UPSTAIRS AND COLLECT ANY FARES. I don't know what he did downstairs, but he never once attempted to climb the stairs and none of us paid a penny for our journeys. The 15H has longstanding issues in that no touchpads are fitted and staff have to use archaic card readers that can only cope with Oyster, not contactless. But by not even attempting to collect fares from those who could have paid, nor registering how many of us were on board, no wonder official figures show this is the 15th least-used bus route in London. Come ride before indifference turns to near-dismissal. It could be the best free ride in town.
Route W7: Muswell Hill to Finsbury Park London's 6th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.48 miles (15 minutes)
Muswell Hill and Crouch End are infamously railwayless, so the W7 exists to whisk residents downhill to the nearest decent station. Previously this was the 212, renumbered in 1969 when it became a pioneering one-man-operated flat fare service. The W7 embraced experimentation again in 2001 when it was chosen to trial a cashless "Pay Before You Go" system aimed at speeding up boarding, with tickets available from roadside machines. It remains a speedy and very frequent route with a specific purpose, and recent figures confirm its crown as London's most crowded bus (in terms of number of passengers carried per mile travelled).
TfL are fortunate that the very heart of Muswell Hill, the roundabout on the Broadway where five roads meet, has been given over entirely to parking buses. W7s roll out at six minute intervals, perhaps three minutes if it's the rush hour, and spin round to pull up beside the Keith Blakelock memorial. While I wait for the next service my attention is drawn to the adjacent Broadway Hair Stylist, a very old fashioned barber shop whose front window photographs resemble a lineup from the late 1980s, as does the cluttered pomade'n'mirrors interior. The barber appears to be asleep but perks up when a regular customer arrives, and soon snippings of lank grey hair are falling onto his brown tunic, same as it ever was.
Although the interval between buses is short, at least 20 people are waiting to board by the time a W7 turns up. I grab the front seat to best enjoy the steep descent of Muswell Hill, beyond the foot of which a panorama of north and east London is arrayed. That must be Stratford directly ahead - I recognise the Orbit and that skyscraper with a notch in it. A sweep of Edwardian avenues stretch off to left and right, confirming this undulating suburb's enduring appeal. We have a clear run down to the tiny traffic island with a palm tree, where the road levels out, broadens and splits. Bus drivers attempting the journey in reverse can't have it anywhere near as easy.
The W7 is the only bus along Park Road, mopping up further passengers as it goes, although the park itself is not readily spotted behind a screen of housing. Homes along one section are enhanced by white-painted wooden balustrades in various stages of maintenance or disrepair. Hornsey's war memorial chapel sits incongruously outside the Neighbourhood Health Centre. The Princess Alexandra is proud to have been serving beer since 1896, when the first houses spread across the fields hereabouts. The shops veer increasingly upmarket as we continue - organic greengrocer, wine merchant, art gallery, chandelier boutique - and hey presto, Crouch End.
The clocktower is still draped with icicle lights, or at least it was at the weekend. A pre-Worboys sign embedded in its brickwork confirms the distance to FINSBURY PK as 1¼ miles... so, halfway there. We enter another Broadway, very much the go-to-name for high streets hereabouts, where a former bank is now a Dirtyburger and the town hall is currently destined to become an arts centre stroke hotel stroke flats (although it wouldn't surprise anybody local if that fell through). The W7 has sole ownership of the bus stop outside, because it's also the only route heading for Finsbury Park and blimey hasn't it got full on board?
A mother and daughter climb upstairs, their conversation progressing from how they always say thanks to the driver to how nobody else does to numerous examples of how bloody rude today's youth can be when on board. The bus now faces another long climb to get over the final ridge, from the top of which the Shard can be clearly seen behind the central City cluster. Finally descending to railway level we pass over the top of the Parkland Walk, mostly unseen, and then the Overground at Crouch Hill station. This is not the point of departure those aboard are seeking, it appears.
This won't take long now. The London Buses' Incident Response Team, aka a man in a van, are busy replacing a broken timetable panel on Stroud Green Road. The Old Dairy is a terracotta masterpiece with seven decorative panels across its front, which alas can't be seen if you're inside with a burger and a pint watching the football. And then, because a low railway bridge prevents buses proceeding to the useful side of Finsbury Park station, the W7 twists off to unload its passengers in an inconvenient sidestreet outside a gelateria, then limps into the bus station round the corner. Muswell Hill in fifteen, anyone?
Route R9: Ramsden Estate to Orpington London's 7th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.65 miles (15 minutes)
Orpington's bus network is a breed apart, with eleven R-prefixed routes spreading out into the town's suburbs and rural hinterland. The R9 was a late addition in1996, looping round the Ramsden Estate on the eastern side of town to connect it to the shops and the station. Buses tour the loop in a clockwise direction, breaking off at the fire station to pick up assorted residents on the mile and a half circuit. I decided to start at the first stop on the loop, where a bus was just about to pull off so I decided to wait for the next. And this is my big mistake.
When the next R9 comes round the corner I enact the generally accepted gesture of emerging from the bus shelter and standing beside the bus stop, looking semi-expectantly at the approaching vehicle. No other bus routes stop here during the day, so my actions ought to be unambiguous. The approaching vehicle slows down, but overshoots and stops on the other side of the bus shelter. "It's a request stop, mate," says the driver. "You have to put your arm out." This is not an instruction I've heard for many a year, but perhaps they do things differently in Orpington.
For my next blunder, I fail to touch in. When I boarded the bus the dot on the card reader was red, which means it isn't working, and that usually means a free ride. Unfortunately while I've been distracted by the request stop debacle the dot has turned back to orange. The driver looks at me like I'm an idiot and asks me to wave my card, and then I have to go and sit down amidst the passengers who've been watching my performance. It's been my least successful attempt to board a bus in years.
We set off up Tintagel Road (with Eldred and Avalon coming later in the journey), first past private semis, then council stock. The lady sitting in the wheelchair space dings the bell and we stop again. "Can I have the ramp, please?" she asks. "Yes I know," says the driver, as if peeved to be asked because she should have known he was going to lower it anyway. At the next stop a woman with two sticks walks slowly towards the bus, and our driver waits. After she's boarded another potential passenger dashes over, but the doors close just before he arrives and we depart without him. There's something about this driver's attitude I can't quite put my finger on.
The top of the Ramsden Estate is where the borough of Bromley hides a couple of its tower blocks, half-surrounded by densely-packed maisonettes. The other side of the road is Green Belt, extending all the way to Rochester. At the request stop are a local mother and her son, who don't put their arms out but the bus stops anyway, and they are not admonished. In a flash we're back into more estate-agent-friendly territory along Chelsfield Lane, then climbing back up the hill past bungalows with concrete fishponds and signs saying "Please do NOT leave parcels with our neighbours." Our driver spots that the lights ahead onto the A224 are green and speeds up a little to make sure we get through.
On Spur Road, which is splendidly Thirties, I spy our final request stop. A young schoolboy is waiting and promptly sticks out his arm and the bus stops. We'd have been 15 seconds faster if he hadn't done that. A further delay comes at the foot of Orpington High Street where a zebra crossing, rather than a pelican, repeatedly stalls the surrounding traffic. Most of the passengers alight here, at the start of the mini-loop round the shops that so many R buses endure. "I'm going back to the station," says our driver to a fellow employee waiting at the stop, before adding "Just thought I'd tell you." She hops on. Our driver now has an audience, and a lot to say.
"I'm due back on the stand in ten minutes," he says. "Look at those two crossing the road rather than waiting," he complains. "What is that geezer doing?" he asks, which momentarily worries me but refers to another miscreant outside the bus. We drive along Gravel Pit Way noticeably faster than the average bus driver would. Rounding the war memorial, a can rolls backwards down the bus. We arrive at Orpington station post haste, where it's time for the last few passengers to alight. As the empty bus pulls off its passage is briefly blocked by an emerging car, which the driver loudly honks. And he's into the bus stand, and climbing into the bus company's private car, and driving back to the bus depot to clock off, all five minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive. Job done.
It only struck me later why the dot on the bus's Oyster card reader was red. The stop where I boarded is officially the first stop on the return half of the route, the so-called 'Hesitation point' where the driver is supposed to pause to switch the blind from Ramsden Estate to Orpington Station. This also involves resetting the system, which is how the orange dot turned briefly red and then reappeared, which is why I looked like a total plonker. Crucially it also meant that the driver was due to stop anyway, so all that spiel about putting your arm out at a request stop must have been entirely unnecessary. I'm no longer entirely sure who the plonker was. I shan't be rushing back to ride the R9 again.
Route 209: Mortlake to Hammersmith London's 8th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.70 miles (15 minutes)
I hadn't realised Mortlake had a bus station, if you can use that term to describe a turnround loop surrounding a brick hut beside the railway line serving just one route. All the facilities are for drivers only, with one door marked Mess Room and two others marked Private (F) and Private (M). Gents intending to avail themselves of the latter are urged to Pull The Door Closed because the Door Closer Is Broken. That such operational luxuries exist is because this used to be the terminus of route 9, a much more significant service, until a weight restriction on Hammersmith Bridge curtailed that and single deckers were used to covered the severed bit. Fast forward to 2019 and the minor 209 now runs more frequently than the route it replaced.
Residents of Avondale Road must be used to waiting for buses to pass them while they're trying to park. At the end of the road is Dovecote Gardens, a dove-free patch of grass which leads down to the Thames, ideal for watching the closing stages of the Boat Race. Here we turn right to enter the un-high-streety end of Mortlake High Street, and in two shakes we're in Barnes, which kicks off with a Rick Stein restaurant. For a few hundred glorious yards we follow the riverside, either side of Barnes Bridge, where a blue plaque amid a row of bijou cottages marks the residence of Gustav Holst in his pre-Planets days. Eights and fours scull on the water. None of the bus's regulars bat an eyelid.
Barnes High Street manages to be quaint and upmarket without being crass. I spot a fishmonger and two jewellers and a children's clothes boutique and a Real Cheese shop, and note that the Barnes Farmers Market is in full swing. Nowhere anywhere near where I live is anything like this. Barnes Green is a wing-shaped expanse with a large pond at its centre and an island in the centre of that, plus more than one place to eat pastries round the perimeter. There are further shops beyond St Mary's Church, including one that sells actual records, and by this point I'm praying for some interesting passengers to board so that I can write about something other than retail.
Here they are, by the turn for the Wetland Centre - a pair of young children in woolly hats off on a jolly day trip with their mother. Richie refuses to sit on her lap and settles on a separate seat, rifling through his multicoloured rucksack for an I-SPY book. Florrie demands chocolate, and gets some once she's remembered the magic word is please. This prompts Richie to demand some too, which prompts Florrie to ask for more, and both are successfully fed. This pantomime sustains me as we pass between the grand villas of Castelnau, the bus now comfortably full. Clattering over the iron span of Hammersmith Bridge, between green-painted struts, I note that the view upstream is definitely better than the view down.
Touching down in North London I spot an electric vehicle charging point that's actually being used, and a moped driver doing the knowledge with a highlighted list of destinations on her clipboard. Most of those aboard pour off at the penultimate stop beyond the flyover, which is most convenient for the shops, while a few of us ignore the exodus and stay aboard for the final spiral into the heart of the gyratory. This is what a proper bus station ought to look like, with parallel stands, stripy walkways and clocks on poles that don't work. "Can you find Bus Stop F?" mother asks of Richie, and the trio stride off into the shopping centre, perhaps wishing route 9 still went all the way.
Route 346: Upminster to Upminster Park Estate London's 9th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.70 miles (10 minutes)
Several of London's shortest bus routes lurk on the very edge of the capital to keep one particular housing estate connected to the wider network. In this case it's one side of one particular housing estate, the 248 doing a perfectly good job of linking the rest, across fields sequentially swallowed up to the north of Cranham. The 346 has been running (not very far) since 1988, with a couple of vehicles shuttling back and forth every day except Sunday. For a handful of peripheral streets it's a damned good service.
The outbound route kicks off from the high street beyond the Upminster branch of Wimpy, which is mildly frustrating because the inbound'll drop you off on the sliproad immediately outside the station. A slew of homebound shoppers board, one with a bouquet of New Season tulips in her Sainsbury's bag, another with a copy of the Daily Mail poking out of her M&S reusable. Several bobble-hatted families potter by, as well as a stream of merry scarf-wearing West Ham supporters. Outside the card shop a woman is stuffing bags of silver and blue helium balloons into the back of her Range Rover, and loses a couple, which drift helplessly into the sky.
At the official Upminster Christmas tree we turn left past a further parade of small shops and a mighty Waitrose. These make way for a run of sturdy semis, a few infill cottages and a secondary school which once escaped from Mile End. Nobody's taken down the poppy decorations at the Royal British Legion, perhaps they never do. The other bus route which plies this road is the 347, London's least frequent service, whose consecutive numbering can't be a coincidence. It ploughs ahead for North Ockendon after the railway bridge, whereas we turn left again past Cranham's millennial village sign.
The two drivers on route 346 never meet, except for halfway through the run, where our driver makes a point of winding down his window and reaching out to bump hands with his colleague. Up next is the District line's eastern depot, its sidings rammed with laid-up stock thanks to engineering works, and by far Cranham's largest centre of employment. A shopping parade has grown up at the junction where two country lanes once met, including a pie and mash shop and a hair salon called Nigel's. We take Moor Lane.
One final pair of passengers have boarded, the wife with a walking stick, the husband swiping both their cards while she makes for a seat. The 346 has saved them getting their car out, and will save her a half-mile struggle up the hill, as a fine example of the social good that the London bus network performs daily. We pass a string of semis and several large bungalows, whose front gardens are generally big enough to hold a double parking space, some shrubbery and the occasional ornamental lamppost. The trio of streets to our right run down to the edge of the Green Belt and stop dead. By the time we reach the last of them, everyone bar me has alighted.
To finish we weave through a more recent part of the estate, now with flats amidst the family homes, and taxis and white vans amongst the vehicles parked outside. The driver is about to embark on a big loop to turn the bus round and return, so parks up by the playground to change the blind. I'm deposited beside a hump of muddy lawn, a chain of pylons framing the view, and the screen of a huge telly clearly visible in one of the flats opposite. Four pre-teenage cyclists parade by, repeatedly lifting their front wheels off the ground because they think it makes them look ten years older. Some seagulls circle. The other 346 driver will be back here soon to whisk me away.
Route 129: Greenwich to North Greenwich London's 10th shortest bus route Length of journey: 2.85 miles (15 minutes)
The 129 is an oddly stunted bus route, always intended to go further but which as yet never has. It was introduced in 2006 to give residents of the Millennium Village a bus link to the centre of Greenwich, with an eye to extending it onwards through new developments to Peckham. But those newdevelopmentsstill haven't been built, and a further proposal to extend it to Lewisham has been held up by Crossrail shenanigans, so the 129 continues on its minimal trajectory unabated.
The eastbound journey starts near the Cutty Sark, at a bus stop clearly labelled "Buses must not stand here". But my 129 is definitely standing, and flashing its hazard warning lights as mitigation, because the driver got here early and there's a set departure time and basically the system doesn't work. Eventually the flashing stops and on we pour, at least three of us, and damn the other two have nicked the top deck front seats. This used to be a single decker, but recently got doubled for reasons which aren't entirely clear. That said, the 129 manages to transport more than a million passengers a year, which is pretty impressive for a sub-3-miler.
We zip off round the Old Royal Naval College, picking up tourists who think we're the quickest way to the tube, but should have caught a 188 instead. At the BP garage an old red Routemaster is queueing up to use the pumps, but is stuck behind a Routemaster in midnight-black Ghost Bus Tours livery. Trafalgar Road is a motley mix of laundrettes and takeaways, nail bars and tattooists, once-a-week wine bars and old-school boozers, thus far resisting the trickledown effect of waterside development. The largest modern intruder is Greenwich Square, a silver-clad fortress on the site of a former hospital, after which a more down-at-heel vibe returns. Quite what foreign visitors make of their tour of East Greenwich, and the concrete pillars of the Blackwall Tunnel Approach, I'm not sure.
Your Sainsbury's has moved, says the big orange sign by the petrol station. And indeed it has, the award-winning eco-building flattened so that IKEA can build a big blue shed instead. It's almost finished, and will be opening in precisely one month's time bringing who-knows-what kind of gridlock to local roads. In the meantime diggers and construction workers have taken over half of the roadway out front and we can only proceed when the man with the swivelly Go sign says so. Some passengers alight for a film at the Odeon, or a cheeky Nando's, but B&Q is proving less of a draw.
Twenty years after it was rehabilitated, the Greenwich peninsula is a curious mix of construction and abandonment. Some city blocks are fully apartmented, some have allegedly temporary use as car parks and others remain fenced-off grassy waste. The traffic light system continues to assume complete development, and so we wait on red for absolutely no cars whatsoever, negating the provision of a segregated busway. At the paradoxically named Oval Square the two front-seat-hoggers alight, heading back to their matchbox stack (and giving the local wellness facility a wide berth).
In a fit of unconnectedness, no bus stop has been provided adjacent to the Dangleway. The fountains beside the final set of traffic lights have been uprooted and a temporary wooden viewing platform plonked on top. The last patch of land before Peninsula Square is being swallowed up by a densely-packed Design District, currently a mess of soil and half a dozen diggers. Even before we reach the edge of the bus station our driver has already played the "This bus terminates here" message, and then plays it again on the final approach, and then plays it two more times after we've stopped to make sure everyone gets the message. The journey really has been that short, we really do have to alight here, and so the yo-yoing Greenwich shuttle continues.
LONDON'S SHORTEST BUS ROUTES: The vast majority of London bus routes are somewhere between 5 and 10 miles long. Longer than that and they risk getting unreliable, shorter than that and why bother? But some bus routes are really quite short, for all sorts of reasons, and this week I'm going to tell you all about the ten shortest.
TfL don't widely advertise the lengths of their bus routes, but when they write specifications for operators they generally provide stop by stop details down to the nearest hundredth of a mile. So I've used those.
» Distances in one direction aren't usually precisely the same as distances in the other, so I've taken the inbound and outbound distances and averaged the two.
» For example route E1 is 3.20 miles from Greenford to Ealing but 3.05 miles from Ealing to Greenford, averaging out at 3.125 miles, so that's in 12th place, so I won't be riding that.
» For example route 399 is only 1.9 miles in one direction, which ought to make it one of the three shortest routes on the entire network. But it's 4.1 miles in the other direction because it's a circular route and that's how TfL have decided to split it. Average out 1.9 and 4.1 and you get 3 miles precisely, so that's in 11th place, so I won't be riding that either.
You might choose to rank the routes differently, that's fine. But this is how I'm doing it.
London's 10 shortest bus routes are a diverse bunch, geographically speaking, and none of them overlaps with another. That's good news, given that I'm going to be writing about a ride on each and attempting to keep it interesting. Let's do two a day, counting down to the shortest route of all.
Rank
Route
Out
In
Average
1
389
Barnet (The Spires) - Western Way
1.8
1.5
1.65 miles
2
327
Waltham Cross - Elsinge Estate
1.70
2.04
1.87 miles
3
507
Waterloo - Victoria
2.20
2.27
2.24 miles
4
379
Yardley Lane Estate - Chingford
2.04
2.47
2.26 miles
5
15H
Trafalgar Square - Tower Hill
2.34
2.38
2.36 miles
6
W7
Muswell Hill - Finsbury Park
2.50
2.45
2.48 miles
7
R9
Orpington - Ramsden Estate
1.9
3.4
2.65 miles
8
209
Mortlake - Hammersmith
2.7
2.7
2.70 miles
9
346
Upminster - Upminster Park Estate
2.29
3.11
2.70 miles
10
129
Greenwich - North Greenwich
2.8
2.9
2.85 miles
The next dozen: 399, E1, 323, 521, 330, 268, 291, 100, C2, W10, 312, RV1 (all under 4 miles)
ENGLISH HERITAGE:Jewel Tower Location: Westminster, SW1P 3JX [map] Open: from 10am (weekends only Nov-Mar) Admission: £6.00 Website:english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/jewel-tower Four word summary: fragment of historic palace Time to allow: 20 minutes
When Edward III needed somewhere to stash his personal treasure he had a three-storey tower built in the corner of the grounds of the Palace of Westminster. The House of Lords eventually took it over, using the upper rooms to store parchments, journals and Acts of Parliament, and so it was that when the rest of the palace burned to the ground in 1834, the Jewel Tower and its historic contents fortuitously survived. It still stands, tucked back from the roadway between Westminster Abbey and the gazebo lawns of College Green. And thousands of foreign tourists still pay up to pop inside, keen to view an actual genuine English medieval building, but likely departing with a major sense of underwhelm.
The clues are there. The medieval palace moat has been filled in with gravel. The tower's not attached to any other building so can't be huge. Nobody's cleared away the bird droppings round the back path for weeks. The entire downstairs has been taken up with a gift shop and what passes as a cafe, which is a quartet of tiny tables serviced by a small pushbutton drinks dispenser behind the counter. Most tellingly, the Jewel Tower's website declares that the second most exciting thing to see is "The history of Weights and Measures". Best not get your hopes up.
Top floor first, is the ticket seller's recommendation. This requires climbing a stone spiral staircase, which for some visitors will bring a genuine heritage frisson, although the bottom half is actually a 1950s reconstruction. The upper room contains some of the original wooden foundations replaced when the Ministry of Works concreted underneath, and a few cases of chucked-away artefacts excavated from the moat. Perched on the wall are chunks of fine 14th century stonework from Westminster Hall. In the centre of the room is a blocky model of the former palace. An information panel explains that the Crown Jewels were never kept here. The view is not good because the windows are tiny.
Downstairs are the weights and measures they warned you about, including a brass cubic inch, a malfunctioning balance and a box of apothecary's pipettes. Between 1869 and 1938 the tiny Jewel Tower was a nationally important Weights and Measures office, until vibrations from passing traffic started to affect experimental results. Through a Jacobean iron doorway is the turret room where some facsimile Acts of Parliament are displayed, and nothing much else. I observed one German couple tick off the entire first floor in ninety seconds flat, so goodness knows how little time they stayed in the building altogether.
Don't get me wrong, this is a properly historic building with a succession of intriguing uses, and they've done what they can to make it interesting. But of all the places I've been with my English Heritage membership over the last year, it's perhaps the one where I was most pleased to be getting in for free.
Now that my year of English Heritage membership is up, I thought I'd see how much value I'd got out of the £56 it cost.
Here's where I've been in London over the last twelve months, along with the usual admission price for non-members.
And that's an absolute bargain - the equivalent of four years of value from one year of membership.
Just the top three most expensive properties took me over the annual threshold all by themselves, and then I managed to visit another sixteen on top of that. There are some utterly fantastic places in that list too, making my 2018 schedule a properly excellent heritage experience. I've even managed a free visit in 2019, a year and a day after my card was first validated, because it remains usable until the end of the month.
An annual English Heritage membership, if properly curated, is an absolute bargain. So will I be remaining a member this year? Hell no.
Having blitzed English Heritage properties in London and the southeast this year, there are now hardly any left I haven't been to. Some I'd been to before 2018, so didn't do again, and a lot of EH properties are ruins in fields I can visit for free any time. A jaunt to, say, West Yorkshire, Gloucestershire or Devon would allow me to tick off several more, but I'm not planning on going all that way just for that. So I'm ignoring all the plaintive membership renewal emails, sadly, because my one-year splurge was just too good.
But you might want to give annual membership a try, for the historical thrill of it, so long as you plan ahead and use it well. Meanwhile I've signed up for an entirely different scheme which I intend to squeeze all the value out of during 2019, so bring it on.
Friday 5th January 1979: It was still the school holidays so the whole family went up to London by tube. Went to the Planetarium and sat back in our big seats in the dark watching a presentation about 'Explorers'. They sped up time to make the universe go whoosh. Didn't go to Madame Tussauds. Went to McDonalds for lunch (wow this was amazing in 1979 because there were only 20 in the country and none in Watford). Went to a bookshop where the books were only 40p. Went to Selfridges but didn't buy anything because not much cost 40p. Went to Hamleys where I was intrigued by a goofy golf ball. Stayed until after dark to see the laser Christmas decorations down Oxford Street. Waited for a tour bus to see the lights elsewhere, but no tour bus turned up so we went home. Fish and chips for tea (which may have been the first time I'd ever had two takeaways in one day). Watched Sale of the Century and the Liver Birds. Saturday 5th January 1980: Told my Mum about all the fun I'd had yesterday in Ormskirk. Took some heavy bags of firewood round to a neighbour. Bought a copy of the new Radio Times with Peter Barkworth and Hannah Gordon on the cover. Planned the route for the sponsored tube ride three of my schoolfriends and I were planning to do on Monday, visiting as many tube stations as possible before Mum insisted I came home for the evening. Watford beat QPR 2-1 away in the third round of the FA Cup. Watched the third episode of The Horns of Nimon (without realising how awful a Doctor Who episode it was because social media hadn't been invented). A brand new DJ called Steve Wright started an evening show on Radio 1.
Monday 5th January 1981: Mike Read took over the breakfast show on Radio 1. Because it was the day before term started I was press-ganged into attending an all-day orchestral rehearsal when I would rather have been at home listening to the radio all day. Sneaked home at lunchtime to watch Johnny Ball and C3PO on Pebble Mill At One. After the rehearsal ended dashed home to watch Blue Peter slam the evil hoaxers who bid £37000 in their chocolate auction, leaving the highest genuine bid at only £700. The Yorkshire Ripper had been caught. Tonight on BBC1, the first episode of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, which would be the talk of the playground in the morning. Tuesday 5th January 1982: The first day of term, in my awful sixth form suit. In the afternoon's lesson, learned about all the uses computers could be put to. Hurrah, Don't You Want me was still number 1. Peter Davison's second Doctor Who episode took the Tardis to Castrovalva. Chicken for tea. Wednesday 5th January 1983: The first day of term, still in my awful sixth form suit. Time to find out if anyone else got a good university offer over Christmas. Also time for a driving lesson, the first in our car rather than the instructor's, in which I kept changing into the wrong gear and stalled "loads and loads of times". Big family conference to try to decide where to go on holiday this year, narrowed down to Alnmouth, Arran or Thurlestone Sands (it would be none of these). Thursday 5th January 1984: Read the newspaper in bed. Put away the Christmas decorations. Caught up on some university notes. The 20th birthday edition of Top of the Pops kicked off with Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Relax (which was history in the making). In Rochester, the Treasure Hunt contestants got clue 5 with five seconds to spare. Saturday 5th January 1985: The social afternoon the family had been planning had to be cancelled because one of the retired ladies was ill. This meant my Dad and brother could go to football instead (to enjoy Sheffield United getting a five-nil thrashing) and I could watch Colin Baker defending London from some Cybermen (rather than trusting it to our recently-purchased video recorder). Shepherds pie for tea. Sunday 5th January 1986: There was leftover white chocolate cake from yesterday's social afternoon with the retired ladies.
Monday 5th January 1987: My student grant cheque was not available at the university office. One of my student housemates spent the morning whitening his trainers, while another returned from her Christmas break and then sobbed in her room for thirty minutes. Things went very much downhill from there. Unable to find the The The album in WHSmiths, Virgin or HMV. Tuesday 5th January 1988: I had a job now. Unexpected phone call from the former sobber, also now in work, saying her boss had suggested counselling. Thursday 5th January 1989: Ooh, they were repeating V (but I shouldn't have stayed up until 2am watching it, not even for the guinea-pig-swallowing). Friday 5th January 1990: Hurrah, I had workmates who liked to escape on a Friday lunchtime and go down the local Harvester for a cheesy cottage pie and a sneaky half pint. Saturday 5th January 1991: That was a violent storm out there. Managed to do quite a lot of the prize crossword. Sunday 5th January 1992: Sunday trading hadn't started at this particular Safeway yet, so I returned home unprovisioned. On ITV, David Suchet as Poirot solved the ABC Murders.
Tuesday 5th January 1993: Someone was walking in off the street and nicking mail from our communal letterboxes, so I had to ring Superior Software and ask them to send me another copy of Repton 4. Wednesday 5th January 1994: The deputy boss was back at work after 5 months off (following an unfortunate bouncy castle incident). Thursday 5th January 1995: Grilled some chicken. Some January 5ths just aren't interesting. Friday 5th January 1996: Helped draft a syndicate agreement so that my work colleagues could go for the Lottery's biggest ever double rollover tomorrow (but we didn't win the £42m). Sunday 5th January 1997: I should not have gone out clubbing last night, I think I may have had too many alcopops.
Monday 5th January 1998: First chat with the ex (not that they were the ex yet, but everything has to start somewhere). Tuesday 5th January 1999: The new boss's first all-staff meeting, packed with buzzwords, made me pleased I'd already resigned and was working out my notice. Wednesday 5th January 2000: Drove round to my parents' to collect a stack of redirected mail. It wasn't a great move to have had five addresses last year. They probably shouldn't have left a pan on the boil when they went to the hospital. Friday 5th January 2001: I spent the first Friday of the 21st century in Haverhill, not being listened to (but at least it wasn't Lowestoft). Saturday 5th January 2002: Spent rather a lot of money in Tottenham Court Road buying a hi-fi component I'd be dumping down the tip in December 2018. Sunday 5th January 2003: I have a blog now, so you've already read about the time I got upgraded on a transatlantic flight (and all the 5th Januaries that followed...)
Now for a typically unhelpful dg post - a day out you can't recreate for the next six months (and can't visit at all for the next six weeks).
The Watercress Line is a steam railway in Hampshire, and runs for ten miles between Alton and New Alresford in Hampshire. As heritage railways go, that's on the long side. If your UK geography needs a nudge, it's located roughly halfway between Reading and Portsmouth. It's dead easy to reach from London because trains run regularly to Alton from Waterloo. If approaching from any other direction, probably best to drive.
The line originally closed in 1973 when British Rail gave up on running trains from Alton to Winchester. A bunch of volunteers raised the cash to buy up the Alton to Alresford section and opened it sequentially over the next ten years. Trains now run most weekends (except in the winter) and throughout school holidays (though not every weekday) and pretty much all of August, along with a fair smattering of Real Ale Trains, Steam Galas and Themed Events. I went for New Year's Day, because why wouldn't you? [12 photos]
Alton's the less glitzy end of the line because the station's shared with South West Trains, with a drab footbridge leading from the ordinary platforms to the special one. Its wooden buildings are painted green and custard yellow, with a slew of period posters and a fingerboard to display the destination of the next train. The lady in the shop will sell you a ticket, and the gentleman in the shed will pour you a filter coffee, none of your frothy rubbish. Once the steam train has pulled in the assembled multitudes throng towards the locomotive for big-lens photos, then switch to the other end as it shunts round. Arm raised, whistle blown, and you're off.
The first seriously ugly building seen through the carriage window is the town's former brewery, which is awaiting residential redevelopment. It started out making Harp and ended up making Heineken, so we're not talking a loss of craft ale proportions. On the edge of town is a common called The Butts, and a pub called the French Horn which is part of Alton's Jane Austen Trail, despite the stated fact that she never visited. The Victorian railway bridge here is being demolished and rebuilt over the next six months, because a single track arch with no pavement isn't conducive to suburban connectivity. Thus no trains will be running to Alton until July, which may explain the cluster of video cameras on Tuesday recording the doomed bridge's final steam crossings.
Chuffing beyond the outskirts of Alton, the wavers are out in force. They stand in fields and country lanes, in wellies and in family groups, and wave at the train vigorously because that's what you do. Some of us wave back. The climb ahead is unusually steep, with a gradient of 1 in 60 on an ascent nicknamed 'going over the Alps'. No train in southern England goes higher, but don't expect much of a view, just an overarching road bridge across a deep cutting at the signed summit. Immediately ahead is Medstead and Four Marks, one of the two intermediate stations and the less interesting of the two. And then it's on across the fields, past sporadic woods, breathing in the occasional cloud.
Ropley station's nice, and worth a stop, especially if you like 130-year-old topiary. It has a lot of stuff from elsewhere, including a signal box from Netley, a water column from Christ's Hospital and a cast iron footbridge from King's Cross. The Handyside Bridge used to span platforms 1 to 8, before the terminus's most recent renovation, and has appeared in films such as The 39 Steps and the first Harry Potter. It now completes a pedestrian circuit around Ropley station, dropping off visitors in the engine yard where they might find a volunteer painting the wheel arches of a Class 50 in Network SouthEast livery. Or hold tight and you might catch sight of a steaming funnel unhooked from the water pipe, then blasting underneath.
The last stretch of line is the only section where you might see some watercress, the local staple which gave the restored railway its name, but only as a chain of distant beds and not really at this time of year. You're more likely to see the A31, and some sheep and some decent rollingfields and a bit of a hillock. And finally it's into the terminus at Alresford, after a good half hour's chug, where the spectacle of everybody pouring out of the carriages to photograph thelocomotive begins again. Here we find the shop with the obligatory Thomas playsets and less familiar jars of Black Forest Gateau Preserve, plus a sitdown buffet serving beer and non-vegan sausage rolls. Its fire buckets are always photogenic, its tinsel is temporary.
While you're here you ought to look round New Alresford, a proper Hampshire market town whose broad T-shaped heart is lined by postcard-friendly Georgian buildings. It'd be even prettier if only it wasn't rammed with parked cars and reversing Landrovers. Given an hour between trains you can easily walk the Millennium Trail, and you should, by picking up a leaflet or following the illustrated boards. The best bit is the footpath along the River Alre, a watercress-friendly chalk stream which meanders past a thatched 13th century mill and an actual Eel House for trapping actual eels. I've also never seen a spy-history plaque on a gents toilet before, but that wasn't so scenic.
Your £16 ticket allows you to shuttle up and down the line to your heart's content, taking advantage of the timetable as you see fit. A lot of small children were greatly enjoying their New Year's day out, perhaps more than their parents who'd done all this too many times before. All the usual Men Who Like Railways were here too, with their cameras and notebooks and railway banter and not-necessarily-recently-washed anoraks. And also along for the ride were an elderly blind couple, tapping their sticks down the platforms and sitting back to enjoy all the sounds and smells of a classic steam journey. Come back in August for the full Watercress experience.
a) How many years ago did this last happen? b) In what year? c) How many years until it next happens? d) In what year?
e) How many times will it happen this century? f) What's the maximum number of times it can happen in a century? g) In which century will this maximum next happen? h) In which century did this maximum last happen?
i) When will there next be a 99-year gap? j) When will there next be a longer gap? k) When is the next century with no years when this happens? l) How many times will it happen this millennium?
m) What else can you tell us about any underlying patterns?
All is quiet at Bus Stop M. None of the timetables are missing. The Countdown display works. The bus stop bypass is unobstructed. But there is a problem because something hasn't happened that should have done. One of the tiles is wrong.
At the start of December bus route 25 was cut back from Oxford Circus to Holborn Circus... except at night. That meant there were suddenly two route 25s, a daytime version still called 25 and a new nightbus version called N25. And this required changing all the tiles at all the bus stops.
Every tile saying 25 (24 hour) had to be replaced with a tile saying just 25, (or else removed because route 25 no longer stopped). And an extra blue tile had to be added saying N25, for the benefit of anyone travelling overnight. Two tiles where there had previously been one. Like this.
Elsewhere the changeover took place on or around the weekend of 1st/2nd December, with the new tiles standing out as brighter than the rest. But at Bus Stop M only the timetable-swappers turned up and did their thing. The tile-switchers never arrived.
I checked the other side of the road at Bow Church, and that was fine. The tile-swappers had even been cunningly economical, squeezing N25 and N205 onto the same blue tile to avoid having to start a whole new row. But although they tweaked Bus Stop J, so must have been in the vicinity, they never did Bus Stop M.
So I decided to check the rest ofthe route to see if Bus Stop M was unique or part of a wider malaise. I have nothing better to do with my time, and we should not expect TfL to squander salaried personnel on checking the entire route themselves.
It took an hour and twenty minutes to ride the length of route 25, scrutinising all the tiles on all the bus stops (in both directions) from the front of the top deck. I additionally checked out the three sections where the road splits to make sure I didn't miss anything. That's 98 bus stops altogether. You can see why nobody else has bothered checking for themselves.
This is the first eastbound bus stop at Holborn Circus. It's had its tiles changed, although as you can see the tile for the N25 is white rather than blue. The next three stops are similar (that's City Thameslink, King Edward Street and St Paul's). I also spotted white tiles instead of blue tiles on four bus stops at the other end of the route in Ilford. Maybe the tile manufacturers ran out of blue backgrounds, or maybe they used the wrong ones. It's hardly a gross transgression, but it's not correct.
Other things were amiss in Ilford. The last two stops on the eastbound route don't show a 25 tile at all, although the N25 tile is present. That's certainly an error. Meanwhile the second, third and fourth stops on the westbound route don't show an N25 tile at all, even though a new 25 tile is present. That's also certainly an error. Ilford's '25 tiles' are a bit of a shambles, to be honest. But none of the stops have the same issue as Bus Stop M.
But this one does. This is Bus Stop Z at St Mary Axe, immediately outside Lloyds of London. It also still has its 25 (24 hour) tile and no N25 tile because nobody changed anything. Bus Stop LR on the opposite side of the road is fine and correct, but Bus Stop Z was overlooked. The tile switchers missed Bow Church (eastbound) and they missed St Mary Axe (westbound), and how the hell did they manage to miss just those two?
In conclusion, two stops haven't been changed over at all, three stops have a new 25 tile but are missing an N25 tile, and two stops have a new N25 tile but are missing a 25 tile. A further six bus stops have white N25 tiles rather than blue. The other 85 bus stops are fine.
One month on, it doesn't look like anybody is coming back to make amends. And I wouldn't have noticed if Bus Stop M hadn't been one of the duffers. If TfL would like to hire someone to check their bus stops, some of us have a very reasonable daily rate.
There are two places in London where a '20' postcode rubs up against a '19'. Here's the other one.
SW20 is West Wimbledon. SW19 is Wimbledon.
The SW20/19 borderline is four miles long and runs from South Merton to Wimbledon Common.
And almost all of that four miles, it turned out, I had never visited before. Even in this blog's 18th year, there are still fresh corners of London to be explored.
Welcome to South Merton, London's 9th least used station (thanks to infrequent trains and a tube station just up the road). It'll never have ticket gates, it'll never be step-free, it'll simply carry on being an island platform approached down precipitous steps, where Thameslink trains infrequently stop. Officially it's in SM4, a pitifully lowly postcode, whereas all the houses you can see to the left are in SW20 and all the houses you can see to the right are in SW19. This then is where my 20/19 journey begins.
Mostyn Road is a proper interwar suburban avenue, a phrase which I shall attempt not to repeat despite it describing most of the journey which lies ahead. Its finest feature is John Innes Park, named after exactly the man you think it was named after except not for the reason you might think. John was first and foremost a property developer and created the adjacent Merton Park estate, now recognised as a sought-after conservation area. His house in Watery Lane became a Horticultural Institute, which explains the compost, and when that moved out in the 1950s a grammar school took its place. John Major was its most famous pupil. The park is rustic Edwardian, and features twisty hedged paths, tennis courts and an Arts and Crafts style public convenience block. What's not to love?
Wimbledon Chase has a proper nucleus of old buildings, and a parade of evening eateries, and a terribly modern health centre which used to be a hospital. The boundary continues along Merton Hall Road, which is part of yet another conservation area because West Wimbledon's a bit like that. Its terraced villas are beautifully decorated with variegated brick and floral tiles, no house quite the same as its neighbour but forming a most satisfying whole. The line is eventually broken by Wimbledon Collegeof Arts, formerly singular, whose alumni include Raymond 'Snowman' Briggs and last year's Turner Prize winner (sorry, two years ago, sorry).
Near the top end is a crossroads, one arm of which is Dundonald Road, where the tram stops. It was here that I finally found what I'd been looking for - a street sign labelled SW20 to the immediate left of a street sign labelled SW19. What I wanted was a 20/19 photo, but unfortunately Toynbee Road bends back at an acute angle so lining up the two signs didn't really work. That's a shame, because I think this is the only street corner in London where a 20/19 photo is possible, but at least I tried.
The postcode boundary hops across the South Western Main Line, the diverging railway crossed by an old footbridge that's probably the least impressive structure on the entire walk. An alleyway alongside the tracks then takes us to Albert Grove, which I mention only because I spotted a curiosity embedded in someone's front brickwork I've never seen anywhere else. It's a metal sign labelled S.W.20, positioned at the precise road junction where SW20 melts into SW19, presumably to help postal staff in their deliveries. As an added quirk, the raised lettering underneath reads 'RoyalLabelFactory', an august public body who once manufactured signposts and street furniture from their base in Stratford-upon-Avon (although this may be from their Chipping Norton period).
The Downs, which is a steep 'up', has another postcode curiosity. The entire road's in SW20 but the street sign was definitely manufactured with a 19 in raised lettering, now with a faded red 20 painted over the top. The sign on the opposite side of the road is of similar vintage but only says SW20, which may be a hint that the eastern side of The Downs used to be in one postcode but has been switched to another, or may have been a simple production error. Whatever, it accidentally provided the perfect '2019' image I didn't know I was looking for when I set out on my safari.
Climbing towards the Ridgway we've entered the realm of big detached houses and chunky courts filled with bespoke flats. West Wimbledon's high-value low-density is the very antithesis of the East End, yet somehow maintains a homely charm courtesy of good old-fashioned Twenties design. Wimbledon Common isn't far off, but has been permanently held at bay by a buffer of residential avenues and a golf course. The common's all in SW19 whereas the avenues are SW20, and I would never have thought to wander down them had I not been following the interface between the two zones. Cherry blossom's out, which seems very wrong at this time of year, and even the first buds of spring are starting to unfurl in Tudorbethan front gardens.
Further detached hideaways line Copse Hill, some more gable than wall, others only visible when the electric gates swing open. The roads closest to the common are private, fronted by warning notices for plebs, but a rustic architectural flavour makes the individual houses hard to hate. It takes confidence to have a Happy Christmas banner on your flagpole and an Edwardian racing car parked in front of your shrubbery. Find the right back lane, past the rugby club, and a track finally leads onto Wimbledon Common (which has proven extraordinarily difficult to reach from the south).
The SW20/19 boundary runs up the Beverley Brook as far as the point where the first tributary rolls in off the common. Here SW15 abuts and I can end my walk. It's been an estate agent's fantasy throughout.
There are two places in London where a '20' postcode rubs up against a '19'. Here's one of them.
SE20 is Anerley, with Penge, plus bits of Beckenham. SE19 is Upper Norwood and Crystal Palace.
The SE20/19 borderline runs along the railway and round Crystal Palace Park.
You can probably guess what I did armed with this information. I went for a walk.
One end of the SE20/19 interface is at the pedestrian entrance to Crystal Palace Park. That'll be SE26 on the other side of the road, but we have no interest there. The gates are far less spectacular than they ought to be, just a gap in a brick wall and some pansies in planters. Up the slope, past the car park, the new cafe is fast arising on the site of the old. It looks like a gingerbread house waiting to ensnare lost children, but the tiles are in fact meant to represent dinosaur scales so waifs and strays need not be sore afraid. It should be opening this year, once the encircling works are stripped away, and will be run by the same team who run the cafe at the station we're heading to next.
The postcode boundary follows the edge of the park, with the lake in SE19 and the villas on Thicket Road in SE20. Given the number of seagulls perched across the pedalos, they'll need a good wipedown before the summer season kicks off. Crystal Palace's not quite biologically correct dinosaurs patrol their own island, which may soon gain a bridge thanks to a recent fundingcampaign (although only to permit supervised tours and activities so don't go getting any over-optimistic safari dreams). The beasts have not lost their ability to draw the crowds, though if anything it's now the adults who are most excited as they line up their pseudo-prehistoric selfie backdrops.
At the arched bridge the SE20/19 boundary switches from road to railway, now following the Overground, but still running along the edge of the park. "Just leave me," says Elliot, who must be all of six years old and is standing resolute in a multi-coloured anorak. "Just leave me on my own." I am impressed by his calm, collected, tone of voice, as if he has thought this through rather than simply throwing a tantrum because recent family time has been too much. His mother stops and talks to him politely but firmly, explaining that she can't leave him behind because it's not allowed and anyway she doesn't want to, and I think I've worked out where Elliot gets it from.
Outside Crystal Palace station a woman in a knitted Christmas pudding bobble hat has her finger in a newish copy of the Capital Ring guidebook, while her partner looks up the routes of local buses on a poster. They've come prepared for a proper hike, with walking boots and rucksack, although the lack of clinging mud suggests that Beckenham Place and Cator Park did not deliver. Officially the station is in SE19, but the boundary comes in up platform 6 and back out down platform 1 which leaves Orchard Grove (the cul-de-sac up the middle) in SE20. If you're counting.
The station remains vastly out of proportion to current usage, reflecting instead passenger throughflow from its glassy exhibition hall days. A broad staircase sweeps down to the farthest platform, which ought to be perfect for making a dramatic entrance except it's closed off Do Not Alight Here. A small toddler walks slowly up from the Overground, making each step harder that it should be, leaving her father wishing they'd taken the lift instead. Brown and Green in the Victorian ticket hall isn't a cafe, it's a 'brunch kitchen', but BestMate nevertheless highly rates its coffee. And as for the remaining half mile of the SE20/19 boundary, you can only follow that by taking a train from platform 2 as far as South Norwood Lake, but that's in SE25 so we don't care about that either.
Not since the 1970s has a year kicked off with such an undertow of potential doom. The government are busy making plans to mitigate numerous disaster-laden Brexit scenarios, having contrived to concoct a deal Parliament won't vote for because nobody can agree on what they think the country voted for three years ago. 2019 may be a tipping point economists will still be shaking their heads at fifty years hence, or we might slip into something far less appallingly awful instead - it could go either way. What's unnerving is that the worst case scenario is even on the table, and might be our future, and would be entirely self-inflicted. We'll know soon enough... if only we hadn't been saying that for months already. Happy New Year.
