Today I'm completing my bus journey across the capital, riding four routes from the northern edge of the capital to the south. There may be more than one way to complete the feat, but my choice of route was fixed as soon as I spotted that the sequence 279, 76, 77, 280 consists of two pairs of consecutive numbers, lightly shuffled. Now all I have to do is see quite how close to the Surrey border I can get on my final bus...
ACROSS LONDON BY BUS(iv)
Route 280: Tooting - Belmont Length of journey: 6½ miles, 45 minutes
I reckon most passengers waiting for the 280 outside Shoe Zone in Tooting don't even know where Belmont is, let alone have any intention of going there. While I wait I have to listen to several of them collectively shrieking, because that's what they do in the school holidays, or moaning about the awfulness of an acquaintance into their phone. As I board and dash upstairs, I spy a policewoman resting with her eyes closed at the back of the lower deck. We set off past a couple of restaurants which last year inspired Lonely Planet to describe Tooting as one of the world's ten coolest neighbourhoods, but also several dozen minor outlets which suggest they called it wrong.
At Amen Corner a man walks out into the traffic immediately in front of us, then smiles and waves in gratitude after our driver manages not to run him over. The parched strip of grass stretching off beyond the station is Figges Marsh, on which a minor kickabout has just completed as its protagonists disperse. One lad in a Man U jersey boards the bus and climbs to the upper deck, reeking of some pungent aftershave he shouldn't yet be old enough to need. A parked Volkswagen Polo blocks the bus lane ahead, because technically it isn't a bus lane for another hour and a half, so that's alright. Self-descriptive local businesses include Food World, which sells world foods, and The Shed Centre, which sells sheds.
Mitcham town centre has recently been realigned to give buses and bicycles priority, sending other traffic on a less than magical detour. The chief beneficiary is a short semi-pedestrianised shopping street boasting nothing much more exciting than a Poundland, a mural and a couple of pubs. The bus ahead of us appears to be a 280, which it can't be unless the previous service was phenomenally delayed, and turns out to be a 270 with the wrong number displayed in the rear window. A small child drags his family upstairs and is disconsolate to find the front seat taken, and isn't satisfied with the second row so ends up with his parents at the very back. Mitcham Market is not open. The Tag Elezz cafe is very popular.
Mitcham's historic Cricket Green is not currently well named, apart that is from the central square, its outfield looking particularly dry and jaundiced. The two pubs beyond the boundary remain just as empty and boarded-up as they were last August. If you've ever wondered where London's Number 1 Family Sash Window Manufacturer is based, a ride through Mitcham on the 280 means you need wonder no more. At the other end of London Road we pause at traffic lights immediately above the tram tracks, allowing a Wimbledon service to pass directly underneath. The surrounding residential area has become positively semi-detached, with a splash of unprepossessing flats.
Across the River Wandle we enter the St Helier 'cottage estate', a massive out-of-town overspill built in the 1930s by the LCC. The bins on the right-hand side of the road display the Merton waterwheel, whilst those on the left are branded with the Sutton apple tree. Calling a block of flats 'Grosslea' seems an unusual choice. In a cluttered front garden, a topless long-haired pensioner stands with hands on hips and his potbelly drooping, beneath a big sign which reads 'Beware Dogs Running Free'. I bet his neighbours love him. An older man with an even longer grey ponytail overtakes us sat astride a modified Harley Davidson, whose personalised numberplate is attempting to spell BIG GUV.
The shopping parade at the Rose Hill roundabout has an Art Deco vibe, and a barbers shop which brands itself simply as 'Hairdressing For Men' rather than any of this modern grooming rubbish. Here we pass the 7th and final Lidl of my cross-London journey (for comparison, we've only passed two Aldis). Our next road splits Rosehill Park into East and West, with both halves looking conspicuously underused given it's the school holidays (other than a small seated cluster around the car park). Rosehill's bowls club seems overkeen to attract new members, its giant banner urging passers-by to "come in and try for free". And then we dip unexpectedly into cutting, as a faded sign on a footbridge welcomes us to Sutton Town Centre.
Tudorbethan semis make way for the edge of the CBD, and two modern block of flats which'd look normal in inner London but here seem jarringly out of place. Ah, here are the local children, splashing in the sunken fountains in a small piazza outside Sainsburys. The 280 is allowed to follow some of the High Street, at the fish'n'chip and Polish deli end, but is whisked away outside the former Red Lion to follow a north-south access road instead. This has a separate bus slalom lane, which occasionally swings in behind the back of the shops to allow access to the main pedestrianised core. By the fourth swing, almost every passenger has alighted. The final bus shelter contains a long row of ladies in floral blouses.
Even by outer London standards, Sutton often feels like a welcome throwback to simpler times. But a major mixed use development project by the station is bringing an injection of highrise modernity, namely Sutton Point, whose hoarding-blurb describes the rising towers as "Sutton's latest landmark". Well, obviously. We dawdle outside the station for a while because, even though the journey's nearly finished, we're running a few minutes ahead of schedule. Most of the adjacent shops serve sit-down food or drink, but it looks like Beds To Go has already gone. The green-faced clock on a pole slowly ticks round towards quarter past three. And eventually we begin the final climb up the Brighton Road.
The contrast to Hertford Road at the start of my journey is stark indeed, my final mile being along a leafy avenue dotted with private nurseries, dental clinics and retirement flats. Everyone has ample space to live, and shrubbery, and most likely a car rather than relying on an outer London bus. Even here, stubbled youth are sporting topknots with sharply shaved sides, a hairstyle which future historians will use to date photos to the year 2018. A brand new secondary school is being squeezed in on land below the hospital. And dammit, here comes the bus's final stop immediately outside The California gastropub, which is still 100m from the boundary of London I'm trying to reach.
I sit tight, and the bus pulls off, and only then does the driver play the "This bus terminates here" message. Hurrah, I have a legitimate reason to have stayed aboard, as only a regular passenger would have known they were supposed to alight before. It's a very short ride to the bus stand, a sweeping red-tinted apron (plus a toilet for driver relief), where I'm allowed off with a reluctant opening of the doors. And a dozen steps across the tarmac brings me to the edge of Banstead Common, accessed via a short wasp-infested footpath, which means I've just enteredSurrey and my journey is complete. Four buses is all it takes to cross Greater London, if you choose them carefully enough, and oh the contrasts you'll see along the way.
It's Day Three of my bus journey across the capital, riding four consecutive routes from the northern edge of the capital to the south. In a particularly nice arithmetical touch, the bus which follows my ride on the 76 is the 77, which'll take me just far enough south for the the Surrey border to be one ride away.
ACROSS LONDON BY BUS(iii)
Route 77: Waterloo - Tooting Length of journey: 7½ miles, 60 minutes
The halfway point in my cross-London journey is a bus stop named County Hall, a building once full of politicians, now home to sharks. After a short wait my 77 arrives, uncluttered by passengers, although that's not particularly surprising at what is only its third stop. Everyone else boarding has suitcases, so sits downstairs, which means I get the top deck to myself and an uninterrupted view of Waterloo's hotel quarter. It's by no means picturesque. Heading south means missing Westminster Bridge and the queue of sightseeing buses feeding off it, and avoiding the gloomy underpass beneath two dozen terminating tracks. But St Thomas's Hospital brings a welcome splash of colour - notably staff in uniform green and ambulances in dazzling yellow.
The 77 is the only bus to complete a full run down the Albert Embankment. The old brick wall on the left-hand side conceals Lambeth Palace's back garden, the archbishop's resplendent residence eventually emerging, topped off by Tudor chimneys. I remember to look back across the Thames for a fine view of the Palace of Westminster - the last building on this trip that a foreign tourist might recognise. Rather less familiar are the stark Thirties facade of the London Fire Brigade Headquarters, three particularly repellent 'landmark towers' packed with multi-million pound apartments, and ssssh, I think that's MI6.
Everybody loves Vauxhall's twin-pronged bus station, so it is of course to be demolished to make way for a dense commercial redevelopment with a line of bus stops at its heart. The current bus station is not designed to be entered from our angle, so we're required to follow a ridiculous loop round the one way system, passing underneath the railway twice, then all the way back to the pronged end before finally returning to the direction of travel. A snaking line of passengers awaits, impeccable in its diversity, as if the route has finally discovered its purpose. And still, it seems, nobody wants to sit upstairs with me.
We're not going to Battersea Power Station, we're taking the Wandsworth Road, past a gaping hole filled with diggers which will soonarise as 2300 high-end flats and a luxury hotel. The main driver behind Nine Elms' transformation is soon visible on the right hand side - a Sainsbury's car park dug up to create a new tube station, the line of its tunnels clearly visible in the concrete beams exposed across the construction site. The Northern line will be swinging in the long way from Waterloo, all around the Kenningtons, whereas the 77's route has been rather more direct (Vauxhall bus station excepted).
How rapidly the neighbourhood flips. In less than a minute we go from designer towers to municipal estates, and from letting agents to betting shops and pizza takeaways. This is the Nine Elms which existed long before the tube extension was mooted, and whose residents will live alongside richer neighbours they may never see. We park up for a couple of minutes opposite a halal butcher and an Ethiopian restaurant, apparently while the drivers change over, although no announcement is made to confirm. One stop ahead at Larkhall Park, a bereft-looking woman sobs and clutches her head, and is then comforted by a random waiting passenger. Of everything I'll see along the entire journey, I think this scene will stay with me the longest.
Foreign tourists who've booked into the Chelsea Guest House must be somewhat underwhelmed to discover it's a) a house, b) alongside a McDonalds, c) not in Chelsea. The council estate past the Overground station is even less upstanding, but soon the smarter villas of Clapham and Battersea nudge up closer, and we start to ascend Lavender Hill. A couple of pubs on opposite sides of the road have been boarded up and are being used only by 'Guardians in Occupation', but it's not long before the retail offering is heading upmarket again, with shops selling organic jars, cult furniture and parlour drapes. The very concept of a Social Pantry Cafe makes me queasy, but the avocado crowd appear to be enjoying it.
After riding solo for twenty-five minutes, a passenger finally deigns to join me on the upper deck, alas moaning loudly into his phone about a so-called friend. Thankfully he sits up the back. By now we've climbed up quite high, relatively speaking, with intermittent views down immaculate Victorian streets towards the other side of the Thames. Ahead lies the Clapham Junction crossroads, where the level of collective spending power is such that Arding & Hobbs, now Debenhams, still hasn't succumbed and gone under. To prove the point, St John's Road doesn't have barbers, it does grooming, The phalanx of pushchairs heading for Northcote Road is much in evidence.
As the top deck becomes more popular, a mother and her two daughters (lower infants, upper primary) shuffle into the front row. While the younger one pretends to drive the bus, the elder mimics the announcements ("77... to... Tooting") and is sparky enough to point out that the route numbers of the two buses ahead are precisely 100 apart. Our next hill is Battersea Rise, which is technically the A3, although the pubs remain genteel enough to festoon their entire frontage with hanging baskets. We cross over two railway lines, then turn left to follow the tracks southwest, past the memorial stone for the Clapham Rail Disaster.
The 77 is the only bus to serve Spencer Park, the local millionaires row. As it continues it becomes the sole route on Windmill Road, which has an actual (sail-less) windmill at the halfway point. And then it provides exclusive service along Earlsfield Road, a charming street lined with smart villas whose front gardens are large enough for multiple cars and a bit of shrubbery. I think this is the longest we've gone on this journey without seeing a shop, a sequence eventually broken by a single Chinese restaurant, because needs must. Half of the road outside this takeaway is coned off, so we wait at temporary traffic lights while the man in the digger rests his feet on the control panel and takes an early afternoon nap.
Earlsfield's main drag is a jolly place, plied by angelic kids on scooters, and appears ethnically mixed but not especially diverse. The launderette still has an 0181 phone number, and does do duvets. Food options include DeRosier (for chocolate and coffee), Kruger's deli (for whom biltong is a speciality) and hallowed belly (a defiantly lower case eaterie). The road we're following is Garratt Lane, a former rural track so long that the house beside the Summerstown bus stop is numbered 777. The local housing's a lot more terrace-y out here, unless you happen to live in the almshouses, or have a detached plot in Streatham Cemetery.
Our bus is a lot busier now as it feeds folk towards the joys of Tooting, with headphones advisable for blocking out the yelling baby, the jabbering teenager and the ranting man. The A1 Dry Cleaners near the leisure centre makes a particular effort to announce that it does wedding dresses, suggesting a high proportion of second hand or second marriage clientele. As we approach Tooting Broadway an announcement I've not heard before urges those intending to change for the tube to check the TfL website for potential disruption, presumably because the onboard system isn't capable. I hold on until the first stop beyond the station, where the next bus I want to catch is just (dammit!) pulling away. So near, but Surrey remains so far. 280>>
It's Day Two of my bus journey across the capital, riding four consecutive routes from the northern edge of the capital to the south. Today, lots of famous bits, and a crossing of the Thames.
ACROSS LONDON BY BUS(ii)
Route 76: Tottenham - Waterloo Length of journey: 8 miles, 70 minutes
I'm starting my second journey at a bus stop called Tottenham Town Hall, not that Tottenham has a town hall any more, the building in question having recently been rebranded The Dream Centre (for Conferences, Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Gala Dinners etc). Thankfully I'm not stopping. My next bus is already coming round the corner as I step off my first, and what joy, it's one of those overheating New Routemasters Boris wanted to be remembered by. Don't worry, I had the sense not to make this journey on one of the hotter days of the week. The top deck front seat is mine, indeed the top deck front seat is going to be mine on every journey I take, which is particularly excellent news for narrative perspective.
The High Road is briefly six lanes wide as it careers down to the major junction at Seven Sisters. I spy the 279 I've just alighted from turning off down the Seven Sisters Road, in the shadow of a single concrete liftshaft rising 23 numbered storeys into the sky. By 2020 this'll be Apex House, a residential tower far taller than Haringey is used to, and precisely the kind of thing councils turn their Customer Service departments into nowadays. We're going straight ahead, beneath the railway bridge at South Tottenham, which I notice is six inches higher if you believe the warning sign on the bridge rather than the sign by the roadside.
My first travelling companions are a well-fed trio who, thankfully, spread back to the second row rather than squidge in fully alongside. The largest man's Givenchy-sponsored football top is of such girth that I bet no professional player has even worn one in his size. The bus is now climbing the first hill on my journey, which isn't yet Stamford Hill but leads to the suburb of the same name. The area's Jewish residents are much in evidence, some sporting traditional kippahs, but considerably more the high-crowned black hats worn by the local Hasidic community. A ghost sign on a dirty brick wall promises Costumes To Order, including "Mourning Wear Promptly Measured". Another more modern sign for a minimarket advertises "Polish and Brazilian Products", because these days every niche counts.
From behind me comes the unwelcome sound of my journey's first unplugged video, which some self-centred passenger is evidently enjoying. At the foot of Stamford Hill we're sent off on a tour of the Stoke Newington one-way system, where I see with sadness that punning white goods store Sellfridges has now completely disappeared, not simply renamed itself for copyright reasons. For balance, the West Hackney Recreation Ground now has a circular labyrinth at its heart. As we round the common I notice a strong smell which my nose is convinced must be urine, but my brain reminds me is almost certainly the bus itself, this model being notorious for olfactory pollutant.
We return to the High Road in the midst of a concentration of Turkish restaurants and takeaways. I've been watching for signs of gentrification since Waltham Cross and essentially seen nothing, but as we nudge towards Shacklewell and Dalston the first signs of affluence very gradually appear. The Hackney Peddler would never survive in Ponders End, even with a change of name, while Pelicans & Parrots is targeting a market Upper Edmonton could never support. Harvest E8 is the journey's first hipster eaterie, quickly outdone by La Petit Bretagne, and blimey there's an M&S Simply Food beneath the newbrick apartments at Dalston Kingsland. But thankfully the majority of what lines these streets remains raw and real, and long may it remain.
The bus station behind Dalston Junction has become slightly less useless since the 277 was curtailed to stop there too, I note, but the 76 continues to roll straight past. Instead it turns right, making the first break from the road I've been travelling down since Waltham Cross, to follow the considerably more minor Englefeld Road. This plies through the heart of De Beauvoir Town, a gorgeous neighbourhood of late Victorian villas laid out along spacious geometrical avenues. We pass a garden centre and a craft beer dispensary, then the De Beauvoir Arms and the De Beauvoir Deli, as if we've suddenly entered a different world. You will never live here unless you do already.
Ooh, it's the Regents Canal, which we briefly run immediately alongside to reinforce the allure of a waterside setting. A digital sign on the bridge smiles at us for doing less than 20mph, which it would be difficult to exceed because the traffic lights are on red. Hackney council remain very proud of their three year-old speed limit, and have hung banners praising it from the majority of lampposts. Past Shoreditch Park the vista ahead becomes a peculiar mix of Victorian brick and jagged glass shards, as the despoliation of the City Road continues apace. Dozens of builders are enjoying a lunchbreak on the kerb beneath the latest steel skeleton, which promises future residents concierge facilities and a studio gym. The transition to upstart London is swift indeed.
Wham, we're out onto the Old Street Roundabout (which still is a roundabout, for now, but is scheduled to be de-circulated soon). One corner has already been reborn as the White Collar Factory, which is the kind of travesty which occurs when a burgeoning digital cluster disappears up its own artifice. Nobody earlier in the journey ever needed an Oliver Bonas, but here's one flouting its wares opposite the peace of Bunhill Fields. Finsbury Square appears to be half covered by picknicking workers listening to a brass band, and half covered by a bowling green on which a single intense match is taking place. Welcome to summertime in the City.
Moorgate station, whose new entrance still isn't looking anywhere near complete, is the single point where my Crossbus journey crosses the arc of Crossrail. It's one o'clock, so the pavements hereabouts are thronging with city workers on a quest to find yet another meal which isn't a sandwich. The men are all in white, blue or pink unbuttoned shirts, pushed out either by a pectoral bulge or a beery paunch, depending on their preferred choice of after-work activity. Further staff continue to pour out from modern office blocks overlaid on the site of countless generations of commerce. A few older buildings survive closer to the centre, many of them banks, and one of them the Bank.
Bank junction is supposed to be closed to all but buses and bikes, not that this appears to stop cars, vans and minicabs from sneaking through, and hopefully being slapped by a £65 ticket. Our bus should be heading down Queen Victoria Street, but that's blocked one-way for longterm roadworks, so the on-board display flashes up * for diversion and we tackle Cheapside instead. It too is seething, if not quite so well dressed. Some punters queue for the £4 meal deal at Deli Box, while others are shelling out considerably more on coffee pods in the Nespresso boutique. A Cheapside Ambassador, resplendent in blue-banded bowler hat, checks his phone while he waits for a passer-by to find him useful.
Back on line of route at St Paul's Cathedral, my fellow front seat passengers are getting almost as good a view as those passing in open-topped sightseeing buses, but for a fraction of the fare. I count seven tour buses going the other way before we reach the foot of Ludgate Hill, one with a man holding a selfie stick aloft, filming himself giving a running commentary into his phone. On Fleet Street we pass a man clutching a pile of legal files wrapped in pink ribbon, and a Big Issue seller snuck in beside the alleyway down to the Temple. And at Aldwych my yakking neighbours finally alight, which means I have the top deck to myself on the final leg over the Thames.
The view from Waterloo Bridge is fantastic, as you'd expect, looking out across the bend in the river towards the City or the Palace of Westminster. The bus stop on the southern side of the bridge remains closed as a result of 'temporary' barriers introduced as a safety measure last year, and has been replaced by an underused dolly stop further along. The IMAX cinema at the Waterloo roundabout is wrapped in a giant advert for Deliveroo, rather than the latest blockbuster. We turn right onto York Road, along the drab edge of the mainline station, and I have to remember to alight at the penultimate stop because that's where my third bus departs. North London complete, South London to go. 77>>
In 2012 I undertook a red bus journey from one side of London to the other, riding four consecutive buses from Dartford to Uxbridge, and tracking a complete cross section of the capital along the way. In 2018 I've decided to cross London by bus again, but this time riding north to south rather east to west. Again I've managed to find a route requiring only four bus journeys, which wasn't easy, starting just beyond the M25 in Hertfordshire and ending up at the Surrey border. Even better, every time I got off one bus I caught the next from the very same stop, so it was an absolute doddle of a trip. Keep your eyes peeled, and here we go.
ACROSS LONDON BY BUS(i)
Route 279: Waltham Cross - Tottenham Length of journey: 7½ miles, 60 minutes
My top deck parade across the capital kicks off in Waltham Cross aboard the stalwart 279, the Lea Valley's uncontested spine route. A squat austere bus station was shoehorned off the high street in 2001, opened by a Mayor, an MP, the council chairs of Herts and Essex and not-yet-Sir Peter Hendy, back when he was merely Director of Bus and River Services. A row of red, turquoise and orangey-black buses are parked up on the far side of the tarmac, and every six minutes a driver on route 279 puts down their phone, revs up and manoeuvres their way towards Stand B. The game is afoot.
Joining me at the front of the top deck are a mum and her two young children - from their height I'd say twins. They're about four years old, and chatty, and quite excited to be making this one-off trip to Nan's. The boy's already demanded to know why they couldn't ride the orange bus, and is now pointing at a drive-thru KFC which he describes as "Chicken Lidl". Mum warns the girl not to lick the bar across the front window "because it's really dirty", then tells the boy that the door underneath is "where the numbers are". This family is narrative gold, and sadly nobody else on the entire journey will come close, meaning I've peaked too early.
After a spin round the bypass, missing the busker playing tunes to Queen Eleanor in the High Street, we swing round onto the historic Hertford Road. The 279'll be following this all the way down to Tottenham, a good seven miles hence, as did marching Romans (on a somewhat straighter alignment) many centuries before. Our first stop is immediately above the M25, not that you'd guess. The motorway passes beneath this peripheral urban landscape in a cut and cover tunnel, and is visible from the top deck only as a long green recreation ground scattered with seagulls. This is also precisely where London begins, and it'll be four hours (and twenty-five miles) before I finally reach the other side.
"Why aren't we going faster?" asks the small boy, and Mum has to explain it's because we're stopped at traffic lights. A grubby green sign welcomes us to the Freezywater and Enfield Wash Shopping Centre, which must be a council term for some intermittent shops strung out along a road. A Polish cash and carry, a nailbar, a carwash, a scout hut, several betting shops and a proper Lidl are but a few of the outer suburban treats. A line of cones marks the journey's first set of roadworks, and has also closed the adjacent bus stop, not that the two ladies waiting have noticed the yellow cover on the flag, and they wave their arms in vain as we sail by.
My excitable neighbours are alighting at Ingersoll Road, just past the Squirrel House Chinese takeaway and the Blessed Laundrette. Each child gets a turn to ding the bell, the girl attempting several times before Mum warns her, paradoxically, that it should only be rung once. My replacement top deck companion immediately digs into his lunch of wrapped croissant and bottle of orange juice, both components of which he will leave neatly on the seat when he departs. Our next green-signed shopping centre is Enfield Highway, which is a little more substantial, and boasts a herringbone brick parade at its heart. Sorry we've closed down, says the sign in the window of the former KFC, but if you can't be bothered to drive to Chingford you always can order on Just Eat instead.
We're still in suburban semis territory, interrupted by the occasional park and kebabbery. A screen of rampantly sexist posters for the local timber merchant disfigures the approach to Ponders End, presumably because the target audience respond positively to well endowed ladies wielding chainsaws. We pull up outside what used to be the White Hart, fenced-off in the heart of a redevelopment zone, leaving The Goat as the last pub standing... until that (very soon) goes the same way. Ponders End High Street has been dramatically repaved as a shared space with low kerbs and different patterns of slab to represent roundabouts and crossings. Cycle lanes ramp up in front of bus stops, presumably to encourage everyone to occupy the space more cooperatively, but are easily blocked by a single badly parked car.
Next to join me at the front of the bus is an old man wearing a yellow hat, who shuffles across to grab the other seat as soon as it becomes vacant. His party trick is to shout "Hello?" repeatedly into his phone, and then to thump the bar in front of him whenever the conversation restarts. A brief Georgian terrace hints that Edmonton might once have been a bit swish, but we're not going to get the chance to see the town centre today because the road ahead is closed and we're off on diversion. This means skipping the bus station and heading round the back of the shopping centre, which is definitely not its best side, unless you like ventilation units, delivery access and cardboard-baling machines.
We return to the main road opposite Küçük Ev, a Turkish restaurant which impressively features three consecutive accented characters, and also serves kebabs. Other eateries nearby include Hot Nuts, Oriental Chef and Lobo Fisheries, because the cuisine along this bus's route is uncommonly diverse. It may or may not be a sign of the times that the former HQ of the Edmonton Labour Party now sells cheap water filters instead, but hasn't yet got round to covering up the sign. Angel Place is the misleadingly delightful name for the grade-separated junction with the North Circular, beyond which the locale is rebranded Upper Edmonton and suddenly there are 'proper' shops, assuming a Peacocks and Superdrug count.
It's taken three quarters of an hour but we have finally reached the other side of Enfield, which is still only borough number one. The transfer point to Borough Two is marked by an arch across the road bearing a small mythical beast in profile, or in a southerly direction simply by a dull sign saying Welcome to Haringey. The gradual appearance of pubs with cockerels in the window is a big clue to what's coming up ahead, as is a lofty silver rim above the rooftops. This is Tottenham's new stadium, utterly dominant on the local skyline, and apparently still due to open for play next month. We pass, sequentially, a hi-vis army taking a break on the pavement for a smoke, an unfinished flight of steps, two cranes, several diggers, a massive glass wall featuring a central sticky-outy-swooshy bit, and a single heritage building miraculously unconsumed.
Next up is Tottenham proper, a considerable linear retail opportunity sourced from a global diaspora, which makes Dewhursts the Butchers look curiously out of place. At Bruce Grove the A10 trunk road swings in from the right, under a blue-painted railway bridge, and for the first time the High Road feels like a proper High Street. It's not giving too much away to reveal that when my journey hits the other side of the capital, south London won't look anything like this. The Tottenham High Cross memorial lies somewhat adrift amid a major road junction, and is also my cue to alight before the 279 diverts off towards Manor House, because I need to keep going straight ahead. 76>>
ACROSS LONDON BY BUS (iv)
