London Bus Routes: 1 - 100

The Beginning Of The Challenge: Routes 1 - 100

On the 22nd Of August 2016, after taking inspiration from The Ladies Who Bus, who had ridden the length of every bus route in London, I decided to try this myself by going to Tottenham Court Road to get Route 1 to Canada Water. 

This was also the month of the beginning of the Night Tube, so the tube station, I found out, had a specialised Night Tube Map, which I had a look at whilst waiting for the bus. I had never much explored London previously to this challenge apart from where tube stations are located, so it was a new experience to see places such as Bricklayers Arms and New Bermondsey, and I had enjoyed riding Route 1 that I decided to go to Marylebone to then do Route 2 to West Norwood, another place previously unexplored. Both buses used were older types, no longer used in London, and this was evident nearer the end of the challenge where a lot of routes were now using newer types of buses. The new places continued with Route 3 with Crystal Palace, which has now become one of my favourite parks in London.

Some earlier routes have been altered since the challenge, with routes such as 10 (Hammersmith - King's Cross), and the 48 (London Bridge - Walthamstow Central) being completely axed, and other routes such as the 82 (Victoria - North Finchley) being renumbered to 13, with the original 13 (Aldwych - Golders Green) being axed too.

Route 20 from Walthamstow Central to Debden quickly became one of my favourite routes, because it was the first to leave London entirely, going into Essex, and it was fun to leave the hustle and bustle of Central London, of which every route so far, apart from the 5 (Canning Town - Romford Market) spent large chunks of their route in. This trend continued with routes out of Central London going to new areas for me like Orpington with Route 51, Old Coulsdon with Route 60, Chislehirst with Route 61, and New Addington with Route 64, the extremity of The London Trams, which were all really exciting. 

There was a few routes I wasn't able to ride fully on the day due to various reasons, for example the 9, starting at Green Park rather than Aldwych, the 43 starting at Moorgate, Finsbury Square rather than London Bridge, and the 88, which was split into 2 between Camden Town to Oxford Circus and Westminster to Clapham Common, a trend which continued with several Central London routes because of events happening which cordoned off a lot of roads, causing shortened routes and diversions, something which got slightly frustrating but I didn't want to keep altering my days out to accommodate this, and as long as I didn't miss out anything interesting on route, or a different route would have covered the same roads at some point, I wasn't too fussed. I should also mention by the way, the 88 has since changed its route to now run between Clapham Common and Parliament Hill Fields.

Originally, the idea was to ride the routes in numerical order, and I did a good job of this up until Route 33, the first single decker bus, running between Hammersmith and Fulwell, but on the train to Walthamstow Central for Route 34, I passed through Clapham Junction, where I made a split second decision to get off and do Route 35 which starts there and runs to Shoreditch, and from that moment on, I didn't do them numerically, which ultimately did save me a lot of time, because there was some instances, for example, the 124 and the 126 which both end in Eltham, whereas the 125 runs at the complete other end of London in Winchmore Hill. Anyways, Route 42 at the time was temporarily cut short to south of Tower Bridge rather than Shoreditch, and I wanted the experience of crossing the bridge on the bus, so I would have to ruin the streak of numerical order anyways rather than wait for the route to run normally again.

There was several routes near the end of the first 100 which were quite exciting. Route 80 was one such route, which kind of bizzarely runs between a prison and a random housing estate, located ever so closely to the River Wandle, an interesting little river to walk along. Route 90 was another one, which ran right alongside the perimeter of Heathrow Airport, providing pretty good views into the actual runway grounds. Route 81 was yet another one that runs between Hounslow Bus Station and Slough, which actually is London's Most Westerly Bus Route, reaching rather far outside of London and the boundaries of the M25. This route also provides views into Heathrow Airport, including the Heathrow Pods near Longford, but not as good as Route 90, however, it does pass through a beautiful little village called Colnbrook, which is well worth an explore.

New towns such as Kingston, Bromley and Bexleyheath were also interesting to visit the first time. Early Kingston routes, like the 65 through Ham, the 71 to Chessington, which was cool to see the World of Adventures right on the border of London, and the 85 through Roehampton were all exciting too. One such route that passed through Bexleyheath was the 96, starting in Woolwich. When the route gets to Dartford, it does a rather unique thing for a London Bus Route, and that is it runs express for about 10 minutes, stopping at no bus stops until it reaches the shopping centre at Bluewater, outside of London at this point, and made me interested to see what other express services I would encounter later on. On the return from Bluewater to Bexleyheath, I switched over to Route 99 which starts there and runs back to Woolwich, where I started on the 96 earlier. That particular route goes through Slade Green and Erith, two areas I've grown to love. The 89 also terminates at Slade Green, which passed through Blackheath, a pleasant surprise when on Route 53 and 54 there too because of the open flat heath land you travel straight through. I was actually planning to go home at that point, but passing through Shadwell made me want to get off and do Route 100, a monumental service on the challenge, which travels along old cobbled streets in Wapping, to the Tower of London and London Wall. It used to go further to Elephant & Castle, and I noticed that on a Saturday evening, it wasn't getting much usage, but it was a good feeling to accomplish the first 100 bus routes. From something that started off as an interest to do the first couple of routes, and I never thought I'd get around to doing all of them, doing the first 100 gave me motivation to keep going and eventually ride every route...