Day forty nine a trip way outside the TFL area

I was in a bit of a quandry as to what to do about the No 82 as TFL had dispensed with the route in April 2017 by rearranging the No 13 to start from Victoria and extending it to North Finchley. So I could have not bothered; quite justifiably and moved straight on to the No 83. However, I found that Arriva Kent had a short route in Maidstone from the Town centre to an outlying area called Park Wood. Thus I resolved to keep the chronology going and drove down to Allington where I parked the car and then walked into the town centre. I left home about 1150 and arrived outside a friend's house in Allington where I parked at 1245.

Walking down the A20 into Maidstone

Crossing the River Medway

It then took me 3/4 of an hour to walk to the bus station where the latest Arriva bus news had told me the bus left from stop J2.










The bus arrived and I was able to purchase a return to Park Wood Parade for £5.20; no use of the TFL Oystercard here, although there appears to be a local equivalent.

Awaiting the arrival of the bus under the shopping mall

Arriva Kent 4094 arrives an AD E200 of last years intake

The bus left at 1350 and headed east to run for quite a while along the road to Sutton Valence called Sutton Road. After a while we turned right into Wallis Road and this is where our traverse of the Park Wood estate appeared to commence. What I wasn't expecting, however, was that the bus did not come to a terminus but just goes around the estate emerging once more at Wallis Road just before its meeting with Sutton Road.

One of the bungalows on the Park Wood estate

Bus layover point back in Maidstone town centre

A quicker way back to Allington was
using the path that runs by the railway bridge
from Maidstone East station across the Medway
to Maidstone Barracks station

From here the bus ran back into town and we reached the clock tower at 1430. The bus driver then announced the bus would wait ten minutes before it headed to the bus station. There seemed little point covering that short distance which I had walked previously just to complete the circuit when all the other bus trips to this point have been done as one way trips.