Route 456: Crews Hill to North Middlesex Hospital Location: London north, outer Length of journey: 10 miles, 55 minutes
London's newest bus route was introduced in March in the midst of lockdown. The 456 runs solely through the London borough of Enfield, from top left to bottom right. It brings a bus service to several suburban roads for the first time. It's really only half new because the northern end was originally route W10, previously London's 2nd least frequent bus service (which ran shopping hours only). It's more a kindness than an essential link, but it supports TfL's agenda of better connecting London's hospitals which is why it got the nod. And I have now finally been for a ride, which means the traditional end-to-end reportage blogpost follows.
Crews Hill is a properly unusual London outpost, a vast complex of garden centres, plant nurseries and related outlets, much favoured by those fancying a home improvement day out. Getting here by train is easy and car park spaces are deliberately abundant, but the main drag lacks a turnaround for buses so has long been unserved. Instead the 456 reverses via a loop of bungalows to the south of the horticultural action, as did the W10 before it, which is linked to the station via a long isolated alleyway.
Officially the start point is Golf Ride, the farthest stretch of road, but the route's all Hail and Ride round here so I have no idea where to stand to flag the bus down. An elderly resident alights on the adjacent street corner, confirming that the bus does indeed perform a useful public service, and then the driver stops again a few metres later to pick me up. As we set off it's fair to say he dawdles, driving exceptionally slowly down Beech Avenue which I put down to strict timetable-keeping rather than trying not to scrape cars. The postman overtakes us at one point.
Eventually we nudge past the Tudorbethan stock in Rosewood Drive and slip out into the traffic on the main road, picking up the pace somewhat. A woman carrying a large flowering plant is waiting on the pavement outside the Wildwood Water Garden Centre and waves exasperatedly as the bus overshoots. "You didn't see me did you? she asks on boarding, without waiting for an answer, settling swiftly in the front seat with her outsized purchase. I'm impressed because I wasn't expecting to see any passengers up here either, and soon we'll have two more.
The hamlet of Clay Hill clusters around St John the Baptist church, which could easily seat the local population several times over, and where the annual flower festival weekend is imminent. A pair of workers from the local livery stables are waiting to flag us down, boarding with an excitable hello for a driver they plainly recognise. They settle into the seats behind me and discuss their Friday plans, which will apparently involve buying a jacket and feeding shrimps to a puffer fish. Briefly a distant pastoral view opens up across the valley of the Cuffley Brook, then disappears behind high hedgerows as we descend. The 300 year-old Rose and Crown at the foot of the hill now has an evening bus service for the first time, as does the first flank of suburban homes on the very edge of the Green Belt.
When this end of the route was operated by the W10 buses had to overshoot Willow Road to turn back at the next roundabout. Enfield council have since remodelled the obstructive traffic island into a bus-only filter with nice flowers, and so we turn seamlessly right. We're now doing what the 456 does best, which is serving Enfield's big backwater semis on a half-hourly basis. And then alas we stop. The journey's barely ten minutes old but it's already time to hear "The driver has been instructed to wait at this bus stop to even out the gaps in the service", suggesting the timetable's been seriously padded out. I get to spend the next three minutes staring at a peeling junction box on a mown verge while listening to my fellow passengers enthusing about their favourite animals ("aww look at my baby puffer fish") ("I like cats but only kittens").
We reach Enfield town centre bang on schedule, which is as far as the W10 previously ventured. It's busy here, more generally off the bus than on it, but a few passengers churn over with a cheery "thank you driver". Enfield's one-way system means we're skipping the High Street and threading instead past car parks, churches, homes and surgeries. Our next stop will be the one outside Lidl, not Iceland, assuming we can negotiate past the other parked buses. Passengerwise we're now a completely different service, the bus now tasked with taking burdened residents home from the shops. We also gain a sporty retiree in perfect Dunlop-branded tennis whites, which set off his reddened sunburnt face a treat. Our first four miles have been so sinuous that it would have been a lot quicker to catch a direct train from Crews Hill down to Enfield Chase, if a quid dearer.
A rollercoastersworth of up and down sections follows, which I shall attempt to convey to readers by means of inserted arrows ↑. The suburb at the foot of the next hill goes by the delightful name of World's End, and the crossing of the Salmon's Brook is known locally as Frog's Bottom ↓. One of our two new passengers is mid phone call, and cackling, while the other has used his Freedom Pass to nip to the paper shop ↑. Three Highlands schoolgirls are posing by the road in a forced attempt to make their black and green uniform look like high fashion, but other students are thankfully engaged with afternoon lessons which prevents our mini bus from being overwhelmed ↑. I see nobody's yet updated the Enfield West spider map to include the 456, even though other maps along the route are suitably endowed.
World's End Lane includes the first stretch of road newly served by the 456, finally linking perverse sections of the W9 and 377, but as it's not long enough to have a single bus stop it doesn't really count. On the far side a bemused soul stops the driver to check whether we're going to Enfield, not realising we've already been ↓. The stream in the dip at the bottom of Eversley Park Road is called the Hounsden Gutter, not that you'd spot it from the bus, nor are you missing anything special. And then we're climbing again towards The Winchmore ↑, a pub with all the external pizazz of a small chain hotel, and one of several establishments to boast serving "the best selection of spirits in North London".
Here begins the 456's properly new stretch comprising almost two miles of roads not previously bussed. You might have hoped TfL would have advertised this to the community with proper new infrastructure but hell no because that would involve commitment and funding. Instead every single new stop is either a temporary metal square affixed to a lamppost or a dolly stop on the pavement, and not one displays a 456 tile or a 456 timetable. Given that three months have already passed since the service started running, prospects for future improvement don't look great. Our switchback ride continues down Church Hill ↓ past the back entrance to Grovelands Park, which is due to be taken over by a £15 interactive installation of 50 life-sized animatronic dinosaurs during the summer holidays. What follows is a semi-sylvan climb past weatherboarded cottages ↑ as we close in on the smartest section of the entire route.
Winchmore Hill is the kind of suburb that sends estate agents into paroxysms of delight; commutable, quiet, desirable old housing stock and a village green fronted by businesses for those with disposable income. All the seating areas outside the cafes and restaurants, of which there are several, seem to be full of grazing sippers enjoying the sun. The shop nearest the station is a very upmarket florist and the local supermarket specialises in organic products and vegan groceries. Our bus somehow manages to attract a passenger who's done their shopping somewhere less prestigious and exits via a residential road with two local history plaques and a mail sorting office ↓. The northern end of Green Lanes is a lot more ordinary, and familiar, but we're merely nipping straight across.
Residents of Farm Road campaigned against the introduction of the 456, submitting a grumpy nihilist petition citing possible congestion, noise, anti-social behaviour and reduced property prices. As the bus squeezes over the single track bridge crossing the New River I can perhaps see their point. I also spy a double length Bus Stop space painted on the road reducing the amount of local parking, although brilliantly TfL have hoisted their temporary bus stop flag beside a separate stretch of double yellow lines instead. Progress down Firs Lane proves to be a lot more straight-forward, not least because a bus gate allows us to swish through the middle while cars edge between width restrictions to either side.
Firs Lane initially proves green and pleasant, surrounded by extensive playing fields and sports grounds, before an estate of houses eventually delivers potential passengers. It all looks splendidly ordinary, even down to a parade of shops supporting a chippy, a barbers and Dave's DIY, but one of Enfield's blue plaques confirms an intriguing Canadian connection. In the 18th century this was the site of Firs Hall where lived Sir James Winter Lake, Deputy Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and he turns out to be the man responsible for naming Edmonton, Alberta after Edmonton, Middlesex. And that's it for fresh bus territory because Hedge Lane is also served by the W6, not that anyone's come along to install 456 timetables here either.
It takes us five minutes to negotiate the Great Cambridge Roundabout, with most of that time spent queueing at lights to enter a slip road. Such is the tediousness of living close to the A10 and the North Circular. Then four stops before the end of our journey, on Silver Street, we pause awhile for the changeover of drivers. It takes frustratingly long, not helped by the inclusion of an additional seat-sanitising phase in the changeover rigmarole, and after all that palaver our previous driver stays aboard as a passenger. Confusingly this bus stop is called North Middlesex Hospital because it's the best place to alight for passengers on all other routes, but you'd be a fool to get out and walk if you're on a 456.
Driving to the hospital requires a spin past Pymmes Park, the crossing of the Fore Street underpass just before the Overground station and then a brief spell on the actual dual carriageway but in the opposite direction. Our final stop is round the back on Bridport Road, a short walk from the main entrance and in sight of a dozen bright yellow parked ambulances. It's taken 55 minutes to get here, having traced a giant reverse letter 'S' across the roads of Enfield. During that time I've counted a dozen passengers, plus me, which isn't bad going for a new under-advertised bus service snaking across the outer London suburbs. Whether TfL ever manage to introduce another fresh bus route in an era of government-supported funding remains to be seen.
