June Challenge, Theme I: Buses, (c)
Jul. 13th, 2011 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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flaneursSo I did the June Challenge Theme I (c)! Obviously, I did it in June, so this write-up is a little delayed. The theme itself was one based on buses, where one starts at home/work, takes a bus for n stops (where n in my case was 10), and then get off and get the next bus that comes along. I repeated this process 10 times. It took a few hours to complete.
Rather than start at home or work, I started on a Saturday afternoon after some lunch with friends, in gloomy north-west London. Here is a Google maps link for the route I ended up taking.
Starting Point
As my friends walked off towards nearby Golders Green station, I started here with a 245 that was conveniently pulling up just opposite our friend's home. The 245 is a low squat bus, of the type used for local suburban routes (rather than the major commuter routes that tend to travel in towards the centre of town, and which use double-decker buses, or the articulated "bendy" buses). I have a friend who calls these buses "hoppas" (as opposed to "Titans" for the double-decker ones), which is what I always think in my mind when I see them.
Some typical north-west London architecture.
So far (travelling through Childs Hill and Cricklewood), so suburban residential.
Stop 1: Cricklewood Bus Garage
The route travels through Cricklewood and the 10th stop is by Cricklewood Bus Garage, which is actually just to the north in Dollis Hill. It's on the Egware Road in any case, which sort of limits my option to the many routes all travelling in exactly the same direction (towards Edgware). Hence the next few stops are just points on that long route to Edgware. There's a bus already at the stop, waiting to change drivers, but in the meantime a 32 bus pulls up behind, so I get on that.
Already you can see the start of an industrial/retail warehouse sprawl, which continues for more or less the length of Edgware Road, and which also pops up in plenty of the other locations I pass (Wembley, for example).
Under the Northern Circular
The bus passes under the busy Northern Circular route (as it suggests, this is the northern stretch of a circular road around London, which was later superseded by the larger M25, which takes in a much wider area) near Brent Cross, which is more or less where the national M1 motorway begins (this is the main trunk route passing through England to Scotland).
Stop 2: Kingsbury Road
From this stop one can see further expanses of warehouses and car parking lots, with the additional of the occasional high-rise residential tower block and, as here, the "Wonderful Patisserie". It looks quite nice all things considered (it has started raining). A bus pulls past the stop and turns to the left on Kingsbury Road where, a short distance away, is another bus stop. I try to run for this bus, but I don't quite make it. I wander back to the shelter of the original bus stop and another 32 arrives to carry me onwards. It is a respite from the rain, at least.
Stop 3: Edgware Community Hospital
We pass through Colindale and Burnt Oak. There's a Tesco Express on Burnt Oak Broadway which plainly misspells the street as "Edgeware Road". The tenth stop serves a hospital, but the more eyecatching view from the bus stop is of a lighthouse. This seems to be attached to a self-storage unit, but the link between the function of the facility and the architectural form is not evident. Maybe the lighthouse predates it, but quite what function it could possibly have on a suburban trunk road is unclear. A new bus, the 204, pulls up though it's going in the same direction as the 32, and is terminating not too far away.
Stop 4: Edgware Bus Station
The terminus for both buses is here, Edgware Bus Station, next to the Edgware tube station, itself a terminus for the Northern Line. The bus drop-off point is just before the station itself, so I wander onwards and grab the first bus I see, which is the one pictured at the left, a 186 towards Northwick Park Hospital, which is to say, out to the west. I feel like I've dodged a bullet, as some routes would have taken me even further north, beyond the limits of London (to Borehamwood).
The word in Edgware
Edgware is a mixture of suburban shops, ugly 60s-era office blocks, and boarded-up old pubs, with the usual proselytising of churches.
Stop 5: Belmont Circle
I've never even heard of Belmont, let alone visited, but it turns out it's just a fairly identikit north-western London suburb. The focus seems to be this large roundabout (not unusual in suburban areas of this part of the world, many of which have their own large roundabouts with shops around them, cf. Kingsbury, Northolt, Fulwell Cross, et al.). There's a large former pub on the far side of the roundabout from the bus stop (now a bar and Indian restaurant, you can see it just at the right edge of the above photo), and by the bus stop is an Irish pub called The Life of Reilly. There's a small canopy and a couple of guys standing outside under it smoking, though the rain is pouring quite hard now. People waiting for the bus try to fit under the bus shelter, which results in a bit of distemperance on the part of one chap, who is standing by his bags of shopping and is being nudged by an elderly man in a motorised wheelchair who has trouble speaking but is trying to get past him out of the rain. A group of young kids are sitting at the other end of the shelter, and one of them is kicking a football with considerable force at the back of the bus shelter, just above their heads. On one occasion, the ball rebounds out into the traffic on the roundabout and he stops the passing cars to retrieve it. This is not a pleasant part of London to be in, and I look forward to the next bus, which turns out to be another 186 (there's not much choice).
Stop 6: Harrow Bus Station
Ten stops later, through Wealdstone and the chain-bar-dominated Harrow town centre (Yates's and O'Neill's, among others), and I'm in Harrow Bus Station (though the bus itself continues on from there), alongside Harrow-on-the-Hill tube station. It's bustling with people in rain jackets, many Indian families and other ethnicities from a similar part of the world. The bus station itself isn't very interesting, and few of the routes seem to head back towards central London. I wander around a bit looking for a bus, with little success despite the size of the place. Eventually I get a 182, which unlike the 186 is a double-decker.
Stop 7: Copland Avenue
The route picks its way through some rather greener areas (parks, one presumes), with more residential development, and eventually stops opposite a tall blue Metropolitan Police building. The next bus is a 92, which goes to somewhere called St Raphael's, with which destination I'm not at all familiar, but appears to be an estate development in Neasden; quite a few bus routes terminate there or make reference to it.
Where stop 8 should have been
If I'd been following this more accurately, I would have got off at the above destination, but there are no other bus routes passing by, just the 92. It is as bleak and dull a part of London as anything I've yet seen: not even a sign of any residential development, just huge warehouses lying just outside Wembley Stadium. Quite why the bus even stops here is unclear to me.
Stop 8: Brent Park Tesco
Instead I get off at Brent Park shopping centre, where there's a huge Tesco as well as an IKEA store. It's just a huge car park as far as the eye can see, sure, but at least there are other bus routes. I get on another hoppa, the 332, which heading towards Kilburn, more central than here.
Stop 9: Humber Road
The bus moves along the North Circular before delving into the backstreets of residential Dollis Hill. I pass a pub on Oxgate Street memorably named The Ox and Gate, and am dropped off at a residential stop. There is another bus serving this stop, but the next one is another 332, which is heading back via Cricklewood.
Finishing Point
This means that my final stop is The Crown (well, actually it's 7 stops to The Crown from stop 9, but it's a pub, and there's not much around where stop 10 would be). It's a grand place, now also a hotel, and would be a great place for a drink if I weren't keen to scurry off home for dinner. It's getting late.
Rather than start at home or work, I started on a Saturday afternoon after some lunch with friends, in gloomy north-west London. Here is a Google maps link for the route I ended up taking.
Starting Point
As my friends walked off towards nearby Golders Green station, I started here with a 245 that was conveniently pulling up just opposite our friend's home. The 245 is a low squat bus, of the type used for local suburban routes (rather than the major commuter routes that tend to travel in towards the centre of town, and which use double-decker buses, or the articulated "bendy" buses). I have a friend who calls these buses "hoppas" (as opposed to "Titans" for the double-decker ones), which is what I always think in my mind when I see them.
Some typical north-west London architecture.
So far (travelling through Childs Hill and Cricklewood), so suburban residential.
Stop 1: Cricklewood Bus Garage
The route travels through Cricklewood and the 10th stop is by Cricklewood Bus Garage, which is actually just to the north in Dollis Hill. It's on the Egware Road in any case, which sort of limits my option to the many routes all travelling in exactly the same direction (towards Edgware). Hence the next few stops are just points on that long route to Edgware. There's a bus already at the stop, waiting to change drivers, but in the meantime a 32 bus pulls up behind, so I get on that.
Already you can see the start of an industrial/retail warehouse sprawl, which continues for more or less the length of Edgware Road, and which also pops up in plenty of the other locations I pass (Wembley, for example).
Under the Northern Circular
The bus passes under the busy Northern Circular route (as it suggests, this is the northern stretch of a circular road around London, which was later superseded by the larger M25, which takes in a much wider area) near Brent Cross, which is more or less where the national M1 motorway begins (this is the main trunk route passing through England to Scotland).
Stop 2: Kingsbury Road
From this stop one can see further expanses of warehouses and car parking lots, with the additional of the occasional high-rise residential tower block and, as here, the "Wonderful Patisserie". It looks quite nice all things considered (it has started raining). A bus pulls past the stop and turns to the left on Kingsbury Road where, a short distance away, is another bus stop. I try to run for this bus, but I don't quite make it. I wander back to the shelter of the original bus stop and another 32 arrives to carry me onwards. It is a respite from the rain, at least.
Stop 3: Edgware Community Hospital
We pass through Colindale and Burnt Oak. There's a Tesco Express on Burnt Oak Broadway which plainly misspells the street as "Edgeware Road". The tenth stop serves a hospital, but the more eyecatching view from the bus stop is of a lighthouse. This seems to be attached to a self-storage unit, but the link between the function of the facility and the architectural form is not evident. Maybe the lighthouse predates it, but quite what function it could possibly have on a suburban trunk road is unclear. A new bus, the 204, pulls up though it's going in the same direction as the 32, and is terminating not too far away.
Stop 4: Edgware Bus Station
The terminus for both buses is here, Edgware Bus Station, next to the Edgware tube station, itself a terminus for the Northern Line. The bus drop-off point is just before the station itself, so I wander onwards and grab the first bus I see, which is the one pictured at the left, a 186 towards Northwick Park Hospital, which is to say, out to the west. I feel like I've dodged a bullet, as some routes would have taken me even further north, beyond the limits of London (to Borehamwood).
The word in Edgware
Edgware is a mixture of suburban shops, ugly 60s-era office blocks, and boarded-up old pubs, with the usual proselytising of churches.
Stop 5: Belmont Circle
I've never even heard of Belmont, let alone visited, but it turns out it's just a fairly identikit north-western London suburb. The focus seems to be this large roundabout (not unusual in suburban areas of this part of the world, many of which have their own large roundabouts with shops around them, cf. Kingsbury, Northolt, Fulwell Cross, et al.). There's a large former pub on the far side of the roundabout from the bus stop (now a bar and Indian restaurant, you can see it just at the right edge of the above photo), and by the bus stop is an Irish pub called The Life of Reilly. There's a small canopy and a couple of guys standing outside under it smoking, though the rain is pouring quite hard now. People waiting for the bus try to fit under the bus shelter, which results in a bit of distemperance on the part of one chap, who is standing by his bags of shopping and is being nudged by an elderly man in a motorised wheelchair who has trouble speaking but is trying to get past him out of the rain. A group of young kids are sitting at the other end of the shelter, and one of them is kicking a football with considerable force at the back of the bus shelter, just above their heads. On one occasion, the ball rebounds out into the traffic on the roundabout and he stops the passing cars to retrieve it. This is not a pleasant part of London to be in, and I look forward to the next bus, which turns out to be another 186 (there's not much choice).
Stop 6: Harrow Bus Station
Ten stops later, through Wealdstone and the chain-bar-dominated Harrow town centre (Yates's and O'Neill's, among others), and I'm in Harrow Bus Station (though the bus itself continues on from there), alongside Harrow-on-the-Hill tube station. It's bustling with people in rain jackets, many Indian families and other ethnicities from a similar part of the world. The bus station itself isn't very interesting, and few of the routes seem to head back towards central London. I wander around a bit looking for a bus, with little success despite the size of the place. Eventually I get a 182, which unlike the 186 is a double-decker.
Stop 7: Copland Avenue
The route picks its way through some rather greener areas (parks, one presumes), with more residential development, and eventually stops opposite a tall blue Metropolitan Police building. The next bus is a 92, which goes to somewhere called St Raphael's, with which destination I'm not at all familiar, but appears to be an estate development in Neasden; quite a few bus routes terminate there or make reference to it.
Where stop 8 should have been
If I'd been following this more accurately, I would have got off at the above destination, but there are no other bus routes passing by, just the 92. It is as bleak and dull a part of London as anything I've yet seen: not even a sign of any residential development, just huge warehouses lying just outside Wembley Stadium. Quite why the bus even stops here is unclear to me.
Stop 8: Brent Park Tesco
Instead I get off at Brent Park shopping centre, where there's a huge Tesco as well as an IKEA store. It's just a huge car park as far as the eye can see, sure, but at least there are other bus routes. I get on another hoppa, the 332, which heading towards Kilburn, more central than here.
Stop 9: Humber Road
The bus moves along the North Circular before delving into the backstreets of residential Dollis Hill. I pass a pub on Oxgate Street memorably named The Ox and Gate, and am dropped off at a residential stop. There is another bus serving this stop, but the next one is another 332, which is heading back via Cricklewood.
Finishing Point
This means that my final stop is The Crown (well, actually it's 7 stops to The Crown from stop 9, but it's a pub, and there's not much around where stop 10 would be). It's a grand place, now also a hotel, and would be a great place for a drink if I weren't keen to scurry off home for dinner. It's getting late.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 12:54 pm (UTC)Great writeup, thank you. Interesting that you ended up basically travelling in a circle.