Let's conclude my X-rated bus journey aboard London's three eXpress routes.
I've already written about the X68 and the X26 and that just leaves the X140.
In good news it's the short one.
Route X140: Heathrow Central - Harrow Length of journey: 10 miles, timetabled 50 minutes
London's newest limited stop service, the X140, first ran in December 2019 to support a Crossrail launch that eventually happened three years later. Since then it's filtered out the long distance traffic from once-thronged route 140 and become a popular route in its own right. Its success is probably the driving force behind the creation of the Superloop - that and the political need for the Mayor to look like he's doing something - and four further orbital expresses should appear over the next couple of years. One reason I'm riding the three existing Xs now is to stop myself ever wanting to ride the entire purgatorial circuit later.
Normally you only end up waiting at Heathrow Central bus station if you've arrived on a plane or if you work at the airport. At 8pm a fair few staff have just come off shift and are looking forward to heading home, while longer-distance travellers sit patiently beside their luggage before filtering off to destinations across the country. Whoever designed the bus station made accessing the coach bays easy whereas to reach local buses requires negotiating a pedestrian crossing where tabarded staff have to be employed to keep dazed holidaymakers out of the path of 55-seaters. Bus stops here serve multiple destinations within London and the Home Counties, and if there hasn't been a departure for some time (which was the case on my visit) a milling free-for-all can ensue. A Countdown display would be useful here, given the variety of routes and sheer volume of passengers, but this is Heathrow's domain and no such live information is provided.
I get to wait 15 minutes amid the increasing gaggle until a rested driver finally heads over to reboot the service. I join the general pile-on, stuck for a while behind two ladies lugging aboard three bulky silver suitcases wrapped in clingfilm which promptly fill up most of the wheelchair space. But I'm swift enough to get one of the seats at the front of the upper deck, even if that means resting my feet in a pit of orange peel and Red Bull cans, because on the X140 it seems downstairs is a much more popular place to be. Escaping from the bus station takes a while, and at one point the only traffic that seems to be moving anywhere are the cars spiralling relentlessly up the ramps into the multi-storey. Come on, I think, sunset's exactly an hour away and I'd really like to complete this journey in daylight.
And then we're off, past the sign reminding pedestrians and cyclists that they cannot escape the airport, and into the tunnel, under the runways and out onto the roundabout on the far side. Bath Road is a downbeat agglomeration of near-airport development, a succession of boxy hotels and inoffensive dining opportunities aimed at those with the misfortune of starting their holidays twelve hours early. It must be galling to pay quite so much for a room you'll barely sleep in because airport check-in needs to be completed by 6am. We sail past all of that and stop at Harlington Corner, dodging several large puddles deposited by an earlier cloudburst, and as we trundle on northwards the pull of the airport gradually starts to fade.
Harlington is a historic village - note the flinty church - with the misfortune of having been subsequently divided in two by the M4. We rise up to cross the motorway via a sweeping flyover and then descend gently, like a plane coming into land, onto a sprawling landscape of red-roofed houses. We're fast coming up on Hayes and Harlington station, a halt once located in neither location but which has since dragged the local centre of gravity relentlessly towards it. It thus boasts large retail estates instead of halftimbered pubs and an upthrust of towers because the West End is suddenly just 25 minutes away. We stop once at the station and once in the town centre where trade is winding down but fast food service is ramping up. Here teenage sweethearts swig from bottles on benches, Sikhs in matching blue turbans queue for pizza and backslapping bros greet each other mid-street without a thought for passing traffic.
The Grapes is the only other interchange on London's current express route network - change here for the 607 to Uxbridge - but far from being a historic pub is more a roadside stopover from the golden age of motoring and survives today as a Beefeater steak house. From here onwards the journey starts to become a bit of a blur, not because I've been on the move for five hours but because the Hillingdon/Ealing borders are impressively undistinguished. Nondescript interwar housing, front gardens stuffed with cars, occasional parades, and repeat. We're following what 100 years ago was a country lane before suddenly being yanked into life as a suburban artery feeding umpteen thousand acres of semis. One does not ride through Yeading for the sightseeing opportunities it offers, more to get to the other side.
If I had to focus on minor points of interest I'd draw your attention to the occasional startling postwar church, the most undistinguished of libraries and the odd serious roundabout where traffic sometimes grinds to a halt. But the sun is now low in the sky and traffic really isn't a problem, especially on these efficiently broad roads, and so we thunder on into Northolt. Aboard the bus I'm earwigging phone conversations in three languages I don't understand. In front of us a cyclist is riding no-handed, it being more important to hold onto a can and a phone than the handlebars. Across the street a halal meat store is closing down for the day long after its neighbours have shuttered and gone home. The coronation clocktower puts the time at ten to nine and I think yes I am going to do this, I am going to reach Harrow by dusk.
There follow three stations you can't catch a direct train between - that's Northolt, Northolt Park and South Harrow - which is one reason why an express bus service can be so useful. That said I haven't seen an X140 going the other way for ages, and checking Citymapper confirms the service is irregularly intermittent tonight with just one vehicle currently heading south. On we dash between the cricket pitches of Harrow, admiring the ancient church on-the-Hill and taking advantage of a shortcut the ordinary 140 doesn't get to follow. Only the final one-way twiddle into the town centre slows us down, because this has been a stonkingly fast ride, and at long last we're pulling into Harrow bus station and my chain of three X-rated buses is at an end. Stop the clock, I want to get off, and ideally never to try that again.
According to my watch it's 21:02. According to the red LED clock in the bus station it's 21:04. According to the red LED clock at the other end of the bus station it's 21:05, because why bother getting the time right, it's not like anyone checks timetables any more. Whatever, I have indeed completed my journey before sunset and with quarter of an hour to spare, thereby validating my decision to delay this ridiculous challenge until the height of summer.
Congratulations to kewman for correctly guessing 21:02 would be my finish time. Also to ap and to 'R' for guessing 21:04 and 21:05, the times shown on the bus station clock. Most impressively if you calculate the average guess the median was 21:03 and the mean was 21:02, which was exactly right, which just goes to show the power of crowdsourcing.
Here's how my journey should have progressed according to the schedules and here's what actually happened due to the impact of traffic, weather and general congestion.
timetabled
actual
X68
Russell Square West Croydon 12 miles
1540 1708 1h 28m
1540 1731 1h 51m
X26
West Croydon Heathrow 24 miles
1730 1926 1h 56m
1806 2000 1h 54m
X140
Heathrow Harrow 10 miles
1936 2029 53m
2017 2102 45m
That's two monster journeys of almost two hours each and one more of just 45 minutes. That's one bus that ran late, one that kept pretty much to time and one that arrived appreciably early. That's one journey averaging a miserable 6½mph and two further rides at a more reasonable 13mph. That's a total journey time of 5 hours 22 minutes, of which 4½ hours was travelling time and 52 minutes was waiting around inbetween. That's a list which essentially confirms that buses run slower at peak times and faster when traffic is light. That's a three-stage trip which ended half an hour later than it should have done because my first bus ran late and I just missed my connection. And that's a very long time to be sitting on a bus on a safari that's essentially for masochists only.
Expect a lot of fuss in coming months about the Superloop and how it's going to be an absolute gamechanger for outer London. It's not, as I hope I've demonstrated over the last three days, it's going to be a handful of express routes that probably don't go where you want to go and get stuck in traffic just like all the existing bus routes on that corridor. It'll be great to have and for orbital journeys it may well be quicker than taking a train, indeed my X140 journey was faster even than a Crossrail/Metropolitan combo would have been. But don't think you're going to encourage people to sell their cars and cram aboard a bus just because it has an X on the front, it'll take a lot more investment in infrastructure and bus priority schemes to manage that.
Let's continue my X-rated bus journey aboard London's three eXpress routes.
Today it's the middle leg from the end of the X68 to the start of the X140.
And it's a really long one...
Route X26: West Croydon - Heathrow Central Length of journey: 24 miles, timetabled 110 minutes
The X26 is TfL's longest bus route by far, being half as long again as its closest daytime competitor. It has its roots in the old Green Line network, specifically the 726 from Gravesend to Windsor from an era when really long cross-London express coaches were the norm. Its endpoints were eventually lopped back but it was still running from Bromley to Heathrow, extraordinarily unreliably, when Ken Livingstone put it out of its misery in 2005. From its ashes came the X26, initially hourly, then half-hourly and soon to be boosted to every 15 minutes as an easy win for Sadiq Khan's Superloop.
It runs with special vehicles, the only double deckers on the network with no middle doors so passengers exit as well as enter at the front. You soon learn the etiquette. A substantial portion of downstairs is taken up with austere metal luggage racks, because this is meant as the easy route to the airport, but this also means that seating is restricted and the view's quite poor unless you're on the upper deck. I don't manage to grab a front seat this time, the 6pm X26 being a popular peak journey, but I nearly do which is important because you wouldn't want to read reportage from a 2 hour bus journey where I couldn't see out of the windows.
There are only 13 stops on route X26, an average of one every two miles, and the first comes really quickly alongside East Croydon station. The gentleman who slips into the seat behind me is almost the perfect unwanted passenger in that he's on the phone and has a heavy cough, though thankfully he's takeaway-free. After pulling away we stop at the lights and a latecomer knocks on the door and the driver kindly lets her in. Another tries shortly afterwards, with the lights still red, but this time despite her 'please please' protestations the driver leaves her behind. That's as noteworthy as today's driver gets, by the way, the narrative having returned to normal levels after yesterday's fiery burst.
We depart the uplifted centre of town via the Croydon Flyover, a rare scenic treat from which the skyline is part historic, part ugly and increasingly screened by newbuild flats. On the descent we pass the first of thousands of upcoming suburban semis and also a large field grazed by two horses (which after further research I see is due to be developed into 140 additional homes because of course it is). Technically we've reached Waddon, the first suburb we pass through but don't serve, where at Fourways junction I'm pleased to see that the poster for 'Mr Cure' (failed Croydon Mayoral candidate 2022) has finally been papered over.
We're just about to spend 45 minutes crossing the borough of Sutton, the stopwatch starting when we cross the boundary near Waddon Ponds. Our progress soon stalls courtesy of a massive line of traffic stretching right round the double bend into Beddington, which presumably is Croydon's working population heading home. Only a flashing ambulance gets to jump the queue - we are but a supposedly-express bus and we sit tight. Stop Two is for Wallington, not in it, where a schoolboy hails us with a bold arm movement reminiscent of a Roman emperor. Stop Three is Carshalton, just four minutes later, whose quaint winding high street is easily the nicest anywhere along my 45 mile journey.
Further suburban undulations bring us to Sutton, Stop Four, where several passengers alight to switch to parallel local route 213 and several of the 213's passengers switch to us instead. What ensues is the perfect example of why express buses aren't always what they're cut out to be. The 213 departs just ahead of us and, although it'll be stopping four times before we reach Cheam, the road is too narrow and the oncoming traffic too busy for us to overtake. At St Dunstan's Hill it gets lucky with the lights and skips ahead leaving us behind, and we eventually spot it way down the High Street before it vanishes round the corner into an unassailable lead. Sutton's swappers should have caught the 213 instead but how were they to know?
Cheam is the hinge where the X26 switches from westward to northwestward travel. Change here for the 470 to Epsom and Ewell, says the scrolling display, without mentioning it too is a half-hourly bus so you might be waiting a while. We chug on to North Cheam, Stop Six, where our nemesis 213 has celebrated its victory by terminating early and turfing off all its passengers. Many of them reboard our bus, including three gossipy girls disappointed to be forced into separate seats. They continue gossiping anyway. Now much fuller we continue to Worcester Park, Stop Seven, at which point we finally depart Sutton for Kingston. The railway bridge is also the closest the Superloop comes to the Greater London boundary (there, just the other side of that car park) and also the halfway point of the journey according to the timetable. We're currently only six minutes behind schedule.
Now, finally, the traffic eases and the journey speeds up. You might assume this to be the thinning effects of the outer suburbs but in reality what's happened is the time's just ticked past seven o'clock and the rush hour is over. Today's X-bus safari was perfectly speedy until four thirty and will be fine again from seven onwards, but expect the Superloop to be just as un-Super in the peaks as all the other buses. Old Malden is another suburb that apparently doesn't merit an express, whereas New Malden (Stop Eight) proves a particularly busy interchange. Look, there's the famous hairdressers called Curl Up And Dye, look there's another well-loaded X26 coming the other way and look there's the end of Dickerage Lane, as previously blogged.
The Norbiton Controlled Zone heralds our arrival into Kingston proper. Here we skip one bus station and don't quite stop outside the other, pausing instead in Clarence Street where a considerable exchange of passengers occurs. From above I watch all those outside patiently waiting for the hordes to disgorge before entering by the same door. The three gossipy girls take advantage of the hiatus to spread out across the front seats, only to be thwarted two minutes later at the next stop when an older lady asks them to move a bag and promptly sits down between them. I last saw the Thames three and a half hours ago and here it is again at Kingston Bridge, but narrower, untidal and more serene. That's three boroughs down and three to go, and if you're starting to lose the will to live while reading this then imagine what it's like sitting through it.
The 726 used to go round the south side of Bushy Park past Hampton Court but today's route follows the northern perimeter wall instead. Here we pass an X26 coming the other way which I note has plenty of passengers aboard. One minute later we pass another X26 coming the other way which is obviously less busy. Then one minute later we pass another X26 coming the other way, which given the half-hourly timetable really shouldn't be possible, and which looks like it has just one passenger. This absurd bunching up means that 40% of the ten vehicles in the X26's fleet are on the same stretch of road in Hampton Wick right now, and also suggests that normal service is completely buggered up. Just because it's an express service doesn't mean it's a reliable way to cross town.
Teddington is Stop Eleven and also a very long way from Stop Twelve. If you want any other stop between here and Hatton Cross you want the 285 instead, although that goes round the houses a bit and we're doing the five mile jump direct. The gossiping girls clearly haven't ridden the X26 before because when 'Hatton Cross station' comes up on the electronic display they ding the bell and start gathering their designer bags together. They will still be waiting to alight in 15 minutes time, because such is the fate of people who rely entirely on apps rather than maps.
The X26 takes shortcuts no other bus takes, which is nice, including Park Road in Hampton Hill and not twiddling annoyingly round Sainsburys. The roads are much wider now, proper arterial connectors that allow us to get some speed up and it feels like a proper express route for once. Many of the adjacent verges are suddenly covered with long puddles, including a couple of stretches of road we get to splosh cautiously through, suggesting that the thunderstorm I experienced in Lambeth had got a lot heavier by the time it reached Hounslow. We take one last shortcut to avoid Feltham, which is great unless you live in Feltham, and then as postwar homes make way for hotels we hit Hatton Cross, the first tube station I've seen since Elephant & Castle.
At the bus station there's a mass pile-off and an American-liveried jet roars almost directly overhead. It's the first time the bus hasn't felt busy since Croydon, so I finally grab the opportunity for promotion to the front seat. From here I'll be touring the perimeter of the airport at its less-loved end, initially past monumental concrete hangars reminiscent of the Cold War and later a sprawl of Nissen huts reminiscent of the war before that. Vast areas outside the perimeter road are given over to car parks, be that for long stay or for hire, whereas inside it's all grass, apron and distant glinting terminals. From this transient vantage point above the roll of barbed wire you really get a sense of the scale of Heathrow Airport, pretty much unobstructed, a treat unique to the X26 because all the other routes turned off earlier to serve useful bus stops.
The tunnel under the runways is a welcome sight, but only because it means we're nearly at our destination because visually it's pig ugly. Big blue signs alert drivers to the mandatory £5 drop-off charge whereas we've got here for £1.75 and travelled 24 miles in the process. We have to wait an extra minute before pulling up outside the bus station because a National Express coach is doing an awkward reversing manoeuvre, and only then does my double decker purgatory end. It's bang on eight o'clock and the bus is only five minutes behind schedule, though it feels much longer. The driver wheels off for a well-earned rest but I still have one more X to go because I need to be in Harrow before sunset.
TfL run three bus routes whose numbers start with an X.
X68: Russell Square → West Croydon X26: West Croydon → Heathrow Central X140: Heathrow Central → Harrow
...and if you look carefully at that list you might spot what I spotted, and subsequently attempted.
The 'X' signifies a Limited Stop bus, a route which skips several stops to get you to your destination faster. There is one other such route, an express between White City and Uxbridge, but thankfully they called that the 607 rather than the X207 otherwise my X-based challenge wouldn't have worked.
All these routes are due to gain additional significance as part of the Superloop, London's mostly-orbital express bus network, but that hadn't been announced when I first had the idea of riding all the Xs last autumn. Ooh, I thought, I could ride all the Xs in sequence one after the other and that would be a totally epic bloggable journey. However, due to the one-way nature of the X68 it's a journey that can only be made in one direction and starting no earlier than mid-afternoon, so I've had to wait until the summer to be able to complete the whole thing in daylight hours.
What I did was pack a rucksack with provisions and rock up in Russell Square to catch the first southbound X68 of the day, departing 3.40pm. On reaching West Croydon bus station I switched to the half-hourly X26 for a lengthy southwestern slog, and on reaching Heathrow I boarded the X140 to Harrow. I don't advise any of you to try this yourselves. Instead I'd like to invite you to predict at what time my 45 mile triple-X journey ended. Here's a comments box for that (and bonus points if you make your prediction before reading today's post). comments (60)
Buckle up, because all the drama is in the first bus ride...
Route X68: Russell Square - West Croydon Length of journey: 12 miles, timetabled 90 minutes
The X68 is a weird 'un. It only operates during peak hours and in one direction only - from Croydon to London in the morning and from London to Croydon in the evening. It makes a five mile leap between Waterloo and West Norwood, via whichever route traffic best dictates, during which period the doors do not open. And most importantly if you board before the hyperleap you can't alight until afterwards, so by stepping on board you are tacitly committing to a lengthy ride. It's been doing this since 1986, developing a loyal commuter clientele who ride the X68 to save money if not time. And you do not want to board it by mistake.
It's mid-afternoon on the north side of Russell Square, alas too late to buy a cuppa or a chicken escalope wrap from the cabmen's shelter on the corner. From this first stop it's possible to catch a bus to Putney Heath, North Greenwich or West Croydon, but the latter only twelve times a day. In an impressive example of information mismanagement the bus stop has no timetable for route X68 but does have a timetable for the 10, a route which was withdrawn from service five years ago. The only clue to upcoming unusualness appears in small type on the X68 tile (First set down West Norwood), and then on the front of the double decker when it arrives.
About ten of us are hoping to make the pilgrimage south. It's important we know what we're in for so The Driver has opened his cab to enquire "Express bus to West Croydon, yes?" before we step aboard. It must save a lot of time later if he can flush out the inappropriate dingers right at the start. I grab an optimum seat on the upper deck for what's essentially going to be a south London sightseeing tour and off we go. We don't get far. The timetable allocates ten minutes to get to Holborn station, just three stops distant, so there we wait until the clock eventually ticks round. Humidity is high and the upper deck is already approaching sweatbox conditions. A mum with two daughters licking Calippos nearly boards but The Driver swiftly dissuades her and so she steps back and waits for a real 68 instead.
A few of the X68's hardcore posse of regular travellers are waiting on Aldwych, flagging us down with an overexaggerated wave because they don't want to miss the special bus home. Nobody is waiting on Waterloo Bridge where the Thames is at mid-tide and glistening beneath a menacing sky. Waterloo station is another 10 minute timing point so here again we linger, nudging to the front of the bus stop so as not to get in the way of other vehicles. A chime sounds and The Driver makes an announcement directed at a passenger who's just tried to board the bus too early. "I only like to open the doors once," he says. Then he tells us which route we'll be taking to West Norwood... "There's been some kind of road traffic accident in Brixton so we're going via Camberwell, yeah?"... and I think, is this level of commentary normal on the X68 or is The Driver just chatty?
The onboard display is already showing the next stop as 'Norwood Road/Robson Road' even though it's over five miles away. Because we're going via the back-up route our first target isn't Lambeth North it's Elephant & Castle, where the first ring of scaffolding is starting to rise around the void where the shopping centre used to be. A would-be passenger tries to flag us down, then realises we're the X version and proceeds to wipe her t-shirt as if that were her intended hand movement all along. Walworth Road swiftly evolves from fresh towers to age-old shops, brightened by the greenest of trees. At the southern end a cyclist falls off her bike immediately in front of us - I didn't see why, only heard the shouts - and she's still picking herself up and dusting herself off as the lights change and we continue.
We reach Camberwell in 15 minutes flat, which is pretty good going but that's the advantage of not stopping anywhere. As we cross onto Denmark Hill we pass very suddenly from sunshine into shadow, our southward progress finally intersecting with a passing cumulonimbus. But it takes until we reach the summit to see the first evidence of puddles, then I see all the oncoming traffic has its headlamps on and on the descent of Herne Hill the rain finally begins. Looking out over the tents packing up in Brockwell Park it's clear the Lambeth Country Show had a narrow escape, calendarwise. Thus far I've been really impressed how fast the journey's been, despite going the long way, but at Tulse Hill we hit a long line of traffic and the lights barely let anything through. It's a good day to be on a bike, but then the lightning starts and it's a better day to be in slow-moving metal box.
The timetable allows 35 minutes to get from Waterloo to West Norwood but we've taken an extra 10, having spent 40% of the allocation within walking distance of our target but unable to alight. Just before we get there a chime heralds another unexpected announcement from The Driver. "No standing on the upper deck or stairs please", he says, even though nobody is standing on the upper deck and there's nobody on the stairs. The ladies in the adjacent seat share a look with me, raise their eyes and smile. The Driver goes on to tell us he's on a "Double Espresso" today, a shift that involves driving the X68 twice with an empty run back to Russell Square inbetween. Sharing shift patterns with your passengers isn't normal and means I've concluded he is indeed unusually chatty, whereas in fact the stairs announcement was the significant one and will shortly lead to an attempted assault.
From West Norwood onwards we become a normal bus, effectively a 468, and passengers can board and alight as they please. Given it's now nigh five o'clock they do this in some numbers. The seat beside me is taken by a man clutching a security-tagged packet of dishwasher salt who promptly fires off a photo of his treasure via a messaging app. Progress remains slow, especially up Knights Hill which proves a struggle for our decently-laden bus and we crawl up it at tortoise speed towards the summit at Crown Point. Here we finally enter Croydon, but only the borough of Croydon because real Croydon is still over three miles away, alas, which is plenty long enough to listen to several unnecessary phone conversations about what went on at school today.
On Beulah Hill, amid the general cut and thrust, an upper deck passenger dings the bell and prepares to disembark. The Driver promptly calls out "Come off the stairs please" and the miscreant duly continues downwards. That was a bit harsh, I think. I often pause on the stairs if a bus is decelerating and throwing me off balance because I prefer to hang on where I'm standing rather than risk continuing downwards. The Driver is not so forgiving. After the lad's left he sets off the chime again and delivers a full-on lecture about injuries on stairs, ending with the immortal line "you tell passengers and they still do it". Well of course they do, I think to myself, because there are thousands of buses out there but only one Driver with a stairs-obsessed bee in his bonnet.
We've passed the TV mast and are now on our final descent, although West Croydon is still far ahead somewhere down there amid a wooded suburban plain. And then it happens, another passenger pauses too long on their descent of the stairs and the driver plays his safety announcement again. But this time the target isn't having it. "But I was coming down the stairs!" he shouts. The driver isn't having it either and reiterates the safety argument, and so the argument continues. I'm with the passenger here, he was coming down the stairs and he might have lingered much longer than a health and safety assessment would recommend but it's hardly a public shaming incident.
Except things then ramp up, from "But I was coming down the stairs!" to "You can't tell me nothing!!" to "Just do your f***ing job!!!" and ultimately, with tempers at flaming pitch, to "Come outside and I'll slap you!!!!" I am no longer on the passenger's side, this is an appalling state of affairs, eased only when the incandescent one alights and fumes away. "We'll that doesn't normally happen' says The Driver, and I think thank goodness because that was the worst argument I've experienced on a bus for many a year. And then The Driver plays the "No standing on the upper deck or stairs please" announcement again, just to ram the point home to those still on board, and I think well maybe if you stopped lecturing your passengers unnecessarily maybe the thing that doesn't normally happen would never happen at all.
The atmosphere aboard the bus rapidly calms, like the aftermath of a particularly zingy thunderstorm. We're still only in Thornton Heath although the timetable suggests we should be there by now, there being the clump of futuristic stumps we can finally see on the horizon. The queue of traffic down Whitehorse Road is particularly dreadful but that's rush hour Croydon for you. I know what time my next bus is due to depart and I am increasingly pessimistic of making the connection, especially when the temporary traffic lights by Strathmore Road turn amber and trap us for at least the fifth time. If I'd been the driver I'd have accelerated through, I think, and then I remember what being The Driver entails and change my mind. When the final set of lights on Wellesley Road holds us back but allows the empty X26 into the bus station I think damn, and indeed by the time I make it downstairs and over to the far bus stop it's closed its doors and departed without me.
The X26 is normally a half-hourly service but it has one 39 minute gap in the morning and one 36 minute gap in the evening and I've just hit the start of the latter. I retreat to the benches where the X68 is still flipping its blinds and, oh hang on, The Driver reopens the doors and addresses me. "Can I help you?" he asks, which seems an odd question and I shrug and he asks again. "You looked lost," he says, and I can't work out if he's being genuinely helpful or sarcastically suspicious because I've been paying too much attention to his vehicle - the grin on his face could professionally be either. I tell him I've just missed my next bus and he says he's sorry, and I think "and I hope I never find myself on your bus again" but I keep that to myself because some arguments just aren't worth having.
Route X140: Heathrow Central - Harrow
