Day 144 An opportunity to try out the Elizabeth line, opened three days previously, in order to reach Ealing Broadway to ride the No 226.

 I invigilated GCSE Chemistry so was unable to start this journey until the 1205 train to London Bridge. I crossed to the Thameslink train to Peterborough at 1233 and alighted at Faringdon. The intention was then to catch the Elizabeth Line to Ealing Broadway. 

The entry at Faringdon

Approaching platform at Faringdon

Signal posts indicating platform destination 

No trains are going beyond Paddington though, so having boarded the train, 345011 at 1245 I arrived at Paddington at 1253. This was much quicker than by the Hammersmith and City, although Bond Street station is not open as yet so there was only one intermediate stop. I then had to cross over the concourse to reach platform 11 for the 1302 train to Heathrow Terminal 5 345052. This allowed me to arrive at Ealing Broadway at 1310 only 1 hour and 5 minutes since leaving my local station.

Metroline's DE1660 on a glorious day at Haven Green 

Not in a bad state for a thirteen year old bus

The bus starts from the Haven which is where the No 112 starts from as well. The bus stop suggested the bus would take 74 minutes and Metroline DE1660 was already waiting to leave as I left the station at 1313. However it didn't leave until 1322. I had looked at the map view on the TFL website and this route is very convoluted. It initially heads west down Castlebar Road before swinging north up Eaton Road and then east along Montpellier Road. The housing in this part of Ealing is a mixture of blocks of flats and late Victorian or Edwardian villas. The bus continues to wiggle right then left but eventually emerges onto the North Circular Road just south of the Hangar Lane Gyratory. The bus turns through around 260 degrees of the roundabout and in doing so it created an issue for a lorry driver on the inside who had to drive over the pavement and gave our driver a lot of cursing at the next set of traffic lights. Turning off the North Circular Road we took Twyford Abbey Road, the eastern end of which I had used very recently on the No 224. The bus turned right up Bodiam Way before I duplicated my steps and entered a new estate of corporate and residential units which according to my map used to be the Guinness Park Royal Brewery. After this, however, we reached Rainsford Road at its junction with Corporation Road and took this road to Acton Lane and then into the Central Middlesex Hospital.

As always on a single decker it is difficult to take photos, but here is the Central Middlesex Hospital with which I am getting quite familiar, with the outside at least!

We left the hospital at 1347 and took Acton Lane to Harlsden station and on to Harlesdon High Street where we took Park Parade as I had earlier this year on the No 206. The difference came after the Willesden health and community care centre when the bus headed left to go past Willesden bus garage. I next discovered the delights of Dollis Hill which required first heading north-west so as to be able to cross the Metropolitan, Jubilee and Aylesbury lines and then immediately east down Burnley Road. There were rows and rows of neat turn of the 20th century housing here and we worked our way north to Kendall Road and then east along Anson Road to reach Chichele Road which took us into Cricklewood. We crossed the A5 and went up Cricklewood Lane to turn left just after the railway station down Claremont Road, visited previously on the No 189 amongst others. Turning right up Pennine Way with its little roundabout in the middle we continued in a straight line to the A41 then it was a brief right with a No 102 behind us and left down The Vale to reach Golders Green at 1437. A very windy route which was almost exactly 74 minutes so well done to the driver.

We have arrived at Golders Green and its still sunny and warm

I then took the Northern line to London Bridge by the now re-opened City line from King's Cross to London Bridge, an Uckfield train to East Croydon and a No 407 bus home. This journey took an hour and a half but 25 minutes of this was the traffic in Croydon because Waddon Road is shut for sewer works.