Flâneurs

[Image: A composite image showing bus route information at three bus stops; Stalham Street (1 route), Peckham Rye Station (8 routes plus 2 night routes), and Lewisham Bus Station (alighting point only).]

Last Thursday I did the first theme in the June challenge: buses. I decided on the third option, where you get on the next bus that arrives at your stop, stay on for n stops, get off, and repeat; and I chose n=5.

My starting point was the closest bus stop to my house, which serves a single route, the P12. The P12 is quite an odd route, winding its way back and forth for up to an hour (timetable) but ending up a mere 5km (3 miles) almost directly due south (or north) of where it started out (route map). Indeed, I've never actually taken the bus from this stop before, since it terminates 7 stops later at a point which I can reach faster by walking.

I won't describe the journey in detail; but in total, I used 13 buses on 9 distinct routes. I've plotted a Google map of the journey. As shown there, the first four buses took me on a little loop around the Rotherhithe peninsula and then back again almost to my starting point, with the key difference that I wasn't on the P12. So instead of heading down the back streets I was dropped off at Bermondsey Station (a bus stop that I do in fact use frequently), where a 188 whisked me down to Druid Street and the start of my encounters with buses I use rarely if at all.

This could have gone quite differently; if the 47 had arrived at Bermondsey before the 188 then my route would probably have gone into the City of London, from whence I might have ended up anywhere. As it turned out, my random buses took me through Peckham and Brockley (where I stopped for a very nice vegan lunch), to finally terminate at Lewisham bus station.

It was a lot of fun! I initially thought that n=5 was too small for London, but it turned out fine in the end. One surprising thing was that I never actually got bored of waiting at bus stops (this being one of the terminating conditions in the challenge); it's a lot less tedious when you're not waiting for a particular bus. Indeed, I was planning to take a photo of every bus stop (see my Flickrset for those I did photograph), but didn't always have a chance, since often the next bus arrived directly behind the one I'd just got off.

I'll definitely do this again. If I get a chance before I move house, I'll do it again a few times from the same stop to see where things diverge.

How's everyone else doing with the challenges? I would like to emphasise that you do not have to do an extended writeup to complete the challenge — just leaving a comment on the instruction posts with a couple of details (e.g. which option you picked and where you did it) is quite sufficient. Though extended writeups are great if you have the time!