After a week off having been positive for Covid I reached the station ready to catch the 1000 to Victoria. This took forty minutes to reach its destination and I then descended to the Victoria line to travel the entire route from there to Walthamstow Central where I walked onto the mainline southbound platform at 1109. My destination was Walthamstow St James Street in order to catch the No 212 to Chingford station. Had I gone the other other way on the mainline I could have reached Chingford station in less than ten minutes. St James Street station was reached in under two minutes at 1121 from the Central station and I quickly ascertained from the map where the bus might start from.
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| Bus stop just below viaduct on which I had just travelled |
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| London General's Ee49 |
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| Prepared to depart from layover stand Ee49 |
There were a couple of quite new London General buses of the type Byd ADL Enviro400EV. Thus these were electric vehicles and these were based at Northumberland Park depot for services in NE London. The first bus Ee49 arrived at the stop having done a circuit of the little driver comfort building at 1130 and we were off back towards Walthamstow Central. Indeed it did head straight back where I had come from running alongside the railway line on what is called High Street. We nipped into the bus garage and then out again before turning left just after The Goose public house along Hoe Street. After a short while the bus turned right along Church Hill where it is the only bus to serve the road and with a little wriggling arrived at Forest Road just by the Waltham Forest College.
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The impressive facade of
Waltham Forest College |
The bus went right at this point along Forest Road until we reached Wood Street and then swung north up Fulbourne Road. The 'countryside' was quite repetitive here with just monotonous rows of Victorian terraced housing which lead almost to the crossing of the North Circular Road.
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| The typical housing stock of the area late Victorian terraces looking north up Fulbourne Road |
Once across the A406 at 1252 we took Winchester Road across the River Ching to Highams Park level crossing where the signal box looked as if some tender loving care might be desirable.
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| The rather dilapidated wooden signal box at Highams park |
We did not cross the level crossing but beared left and ran parallel with the railway again past the stop where Charmaine and I had caught a No W16 to meet Tim at Chingford Mount for when we did the No 158. This is Larkshall Road and at the roundabout at the end we took the right under the railway and into Hatch Lane. At the next bus stop we couldn't get into the layby owing to two No 357s waiting there; both were of the same bus type as ours. Next we headed left at the roundabout and up Friday Hill past Friday Hall and then down the other side to Whitehill Road where we took a left turn into Kings Road which ran us up to Station Road, Chingford's High Street and to the station where we stopped at 1205.
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| Ee49 just squeezing into the bus stand behind a London General No 444 |
All services on this line are now operated by the London Overground class 710 and there were a plethora in the sidings here. I just missed the 1210 as it was announced to be in the wrong platform and settled for the 1225 to take me back to Walthamstow. As stated earlier this took all of nine minutes and then it was back to the Victoria line for a train to Vauxhall.
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| Class 710s of London Overground in sidings at Chingford |
However, on boarding the train which was leaving in one minute the driver announced there was a fault, so he would be terminating the train at Seven Sisters and then running it into Northumberland Park depot. 'OK I thought' still time to do the next bus. However, this didn't allow for the long stop at Green Park when it was announced that someone had pulled the emergency communication cord, not on our train, but ahead of us. The train slowly crawled to Victoria and then after a long stop moved at normal speed to Pimlico and Vauxhall. This actually meant I arrived at Vauxhall at 1315, exactly the time the Kingston train left.
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Vauxhall station on a day of hazy sunshine
but realisation that the journey to Kingston will have to wait for another day |
Therefore, having realised it would be half an hour's wait for the next one and crunching the numbers I could see the buses would be crowded with potentially infectious kids long before I got back to Sutton on the No 213. So it was a one bus day, I caught the next train to Wimbledon and then the tram home. Having got home I felt exhausted despite basically sitting down all day, COVID had certainly taken it out of me and I slept for best part of an hour.
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