Route 389: Barnet The Spires to Western Way London's shortest bus route Length of journey: 1.65 miles (<10 minutes)
Top of the heap, i.e. shortest of all, is this minor runabout in Barnet. Not only is the 389 London's shortest bus route but also the second least used (only 17000 passengers annually) and the third least frequent (only 30 buses per week). It's part of a unique bus sharing scheme which has operated hereabouts since 1996, whereby one vehicle from route 299 is used to service the entirety of routes 389 and 399 between the morning and evening rush. It operates alternately on one route and then the other, flipping its blind round the back of the Spires shopping centre every 30 minutes, with both routes all wrapped up by 3pm. Potential passengers must time their shopping trips with care.
The fortunate beneficiaries of route 389's brief service are residents of a tongue of housing squeezed in between Barnet Playing Fields, the Dollis Brook and the Northern line. No through-route is possible, so the 389 runs down to the bottom of the hill and back before returning past High Barnet tube station to the shops. I decide to start my journey at the start of the loop on Underhill, which'll maximise my time aboard and also allows me to spot this rare bus as it approaches down Barnet Hill. A faded sign by the roadside warns that "Match Day waiting restrictions" may apply, despite the fact that Barnet FC moved out six years ago.
When boarding the bus I fail to address the driver by name, which immediately marks me out as a stranger. Let's call her Rita, because we'll be hearing her name a lot later. Already on board are a lady with a recently touched-up perm, a Daily Mail reader with a tweed shopping trolley, a mother and daughter with a PDSA bag for life and two stowaways who it'll eventually turn out really want the 399 and have boarded early because it's cold outside. What used to be the Underhill football stadium, demolished last year, is now arising as a long-promised academy and is currently at the partitioning and early paintwork stage. The first year group are due to arrive in September, but won't be using the 389 as a school bus because it only operates during lesson time.
Here we go. "Thank you Rita," says our first alightee as she steps down from the front of the bus. She'll not be the last. It's bin day down Fairfield Way and the full range of coloured receptacles is arrayed along the pavement. Each of the semis on Sherrards Way is fractionally lower than its neighbour to ensure the street's housing is stepped gradually down the hill. A couple of trees have been surrounded by utility works barriers. "Hello Rita, you're back. Happy New Year to you, have you had a good holiday?" The elderly gentleman with the flat cap who's just boarded greets our driver like an old friend, indeed the bonhomie along this section of the route is exceptional.
So tailored is Rita's door-to-door service that she drives only ten metres down the road before letting off the next regular, minimising the distance she'll have to shuffle home. "Thank you Rita, see you tomorrow, bye," she says. I'm not entirely surprised, having seen this kind of behaviour when I rode the 389 last year, fortuitously on the very last day before a new operator took over the contract and the previous driver had brought a box of biscuits for all his regulars to share. It's still a heartwarming ride under the new operator, I can assure you, and provides the perfect antidote to my miserable jobsworth journey on the R9.
We've now reached Western Way, the lowest road in the estate where the return journey officially begins. So short is route 389 that we'll be parked up and finished in six minutes flat. One particular parked car on the corner of Grasvenor Avenue proves hard to negotiate, but Rita nips through and we're back on the climb again. A mother and her two kids are waiting on the pavement outside the infant school, no waving required, and our next passenger slips into immediate conversation with the driver and the gentleman in the flat cap. Perhaps most impressively, when a lady with a shopping basket waves from the pavement Rita knows she doesn't want to get on board, and earns a cheery smile in return.
Rejoining the main road at the traffic lights by the railway bridge, we're suddenly one of a dozen bus routes climbing Barnet Hill and so a total irrelevance. We overtake three buses which have stopped by the tube station, safe in the knowledge that they can carry everyone and nobody needs us. Indeed we don't stop once all the way up to Barnet Church because all anybody aboard wanted was the shops, either in the High Street or round the back of the market. The flat-capped gentleman stays aboard to have a long chat with Rita, and she has both the time and the inclination to engage before she has to drive the mutated 399 to Hadley Wood. True customer service is alive and well on the streets of Barnet, on the shortest bus route of them all.
Route 327: Waltham Cross to Elsinge Estate London's 2nd shortest bus route Length of journey: 1.87 miles (15 minutes)
Having toyed with the edge of London on previous journeys, this time we finally start beyond it, at the busy bus station in Waltham Cross. The 327 was introduced in 1997 as an experimental circular route to mop up shoppers from one particular estate sandwiched between the A10 and the railway. It also serves Turkey Street (which I wrote about just before Christmas so my apologies for the almost-immediate repetition). The 327 originally ran shopping hours only, but was extended into the evenings in 2008, then knocked back to 7am-7pm in 2018. Also last summer the frequency was reduced from every 30 minutes to every 40, ostensibly to improve reliability, but which has also made it much harder to remember the timetable. It's a 300-passengers-a-day kind of bus.
At Waltham Cross bus station you can tell which buses go to Hertfordshire because they still have a poppy stuck to the front, and you can tell which buses are going to Essex because they sometimes flash up Happy New Year on the dot-matrix display. Buses going to London are obviously red. Our 327 driver has been enjoying the lengthy layover the latest timetable affords, and slots in at the bus stop behind the 217 we'll be shadowing for the first mile. My fellow passengers are an old lady in a pink headscarf with a walking stick poking out of her trolley, a mother and daughter who've bought a carrierful of groceries and a middle-aged couple dangling a Vodafone bag.
Escaping from the bus station requires a spin round the bypass, so by the time we reach the first stop we've already travelled half a mile. We've also entered London, the precise boundary being the M25 which is disappearing into a tunnel directly beneath us. The advantage of being a minor bus is that our driver already knows nobody at this stop is waiting for him, so sails by and leaves the 217 to collect them instead. The crossroads by the Esso garage is a busy one, with each of the four streams of traffic afforded its own traffic light phase, so it takes a while to turn right into Bullsmoor Lane. And from this point onwards we're on our loop, so as likely to be picking someone up as dropping them off.
Lea Valley High School recently changed its motto from Achieve, Develop, Excel to Aspiration, Innovation, Respect, the three new buzzwords now proudly plastered across the front of the academy. Aylands Open Space is occupied by half a dozen goalposts, a minor game of kickabout, numerous seagulls and a pylon. Just beyond the railway we turn off into Lackmore Road, where a delivery van has shrunk the width of the road to just narrower than the bus can cope with. Thankfully its driver is at the wheel, so is soon able to nudge closer to the kerb and we squeeze through, but it would only take one badly-placed vehicle to bring the 327 entirely to a halt.
We have now entered the Elsinge Estate, a twisted ladder of streets lined by the epitome of Fifties council housing. We'll not be passing the lowly shopping parade, nor the local library, but instead threading down the eastern flank past a succession of flat-fronted brick houses. The easiest way to maintain the grass in your front garden appears to be to park two cars on it. Occasional hails bring passengers on board, and occasional dings allow them off. Our driver has to pause at Cockers Road because this is the officially designated 'Hesitation point' where blinds are changed and systems reset. Across the park I spot the 217 at a bus stop residents could easily walk to if the 327 were ever scrapped, but again social need decrees it hasn't been.
And then we turn into Turkey Street, which I've told you all about before, along which we accumulate a further drip of passengers. Two board directly outside the Overground station, one spooning pineapple chunks into her mouth from a plastic carton. UK Power Networks are digging up the pavement ahead, but two idiots have parked their cars much too close on the opposite side of the road creating a slalom course for our driver to negotiate. What follows is an absolute masterclass of manoeuvring, as the bus nudges left and then right without ever quite hitting anything. A woman in a pink spotty dressing gown pops out of her cottage to see what's going on.
The last side of the loop heads north up Hertford Road, where we are no longer the only bus route back to Waltham Cross so punters jump aboard the first that comes along. The bus stop outside Lidl still has a tile saying "327 Monday to Saturday shopping hours only", which must be more than 10 years old (and doesn't bode well for Bus Stop M ever being fixed). Four fat staffies waddle up the garden path of a narrow terraced house after their daily exercise. Freezywater's 'shopping centre' offers solutions to all your tool hire, kebab and barbering needs. And at the Bullsmoor Lane junction the 327's mile-long loop is complete, so you know the rest.
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)
