London Bus Routes: 301 - 400

No Passing At Passingford: Routes 301 - 400

Despite the fact that the title suggests Route 301 and 400 exists, they actually don't. Route 302 does however, but it's a rather standard affair travelling through uninteresting North West London suburbia from Kensal Rise to Mill Hill Broadway. Route 303 and 305 also runs nearby and again just serves back streets of housing around Edgware, Burnt Oak, Colindale and Kingsbury. Route 307 is the second and final bus to terminate at both of its destinations of Barnet Hospital and Brimsdown. Another North London route, the 313 runs between Potters Bar Station and Chingford Station, and I did do after finishing the 298, the other route to serve Potters Bar. It keeps the same amazing views over countryside near the start of the route until Enfield Town, but unfortunately didn't hold up afterwards because the slow traffic carried on all the way to Chingford. I did have pizza though on the bus, so you know, a silver lining. 

I was excited to return to one of my favourite areas that I've passed through on the bus before, and that was Biggin Hill. Starting off in Catford and down to Bromley on Route 320 wasn't the most interesting start, but afterwards down in Biggin Hill, it was amazingly scenic because of the service being a double decker and providing amazing views over the airport and down in the valley. The next route consecutively, the 321, runs between a Sainsbury's in New Cross to a Tesco in Foots Cray, but because of delays in Eltham, the bus terminated one stop early at a dusty main road next to a roundabout, which wasn't a pleasant spot to wait to continue one extra stop to the Tesco. The final numbered Brent Cross routes next with 324 being the only service not to terminate at the shopping centre, but at the Tesco's on the other side of the North Circular, and the 326, which got packed immediately at the first stop, as well as terminating early at Barnet Church rather than the Spires Shopping Centre. The third and fourth route to serve Waltham Cross, just outside of London, is 317 and 327, and the latter I believe is the shortest journey time on any bus route in London. The timetable suggests it runs for only 8 minutes to its destination of Elsinge Estate, before continuing round on the loop, getting back to Waltham Cross after 20 minutes. The other end of 317 connects up with the 329 at Enfield Town, one of my local routes, so I can't help but always come up with ways in how I would improve the services around here. 

Route 331 from Ruislip to Uxbridge was fairly interesting, leaving London twice on its route, loops around the Northwood Station car park, reminding me of Chartwell, crosses over the Grand Union Canal twice and passed through unheard areas of Harefiepd and Denham. Unfortunately, 333 is the service to terminate at Tooting Broadway and not the 222 so you could get the ridiculous announcement of "222 To Tooting Broadway". It was notable near the start of the challenge that a lot of the routes kept travelling through Central London, but that's started to cease the later I got into the challenge. There was still a few Central London 300 routes like the 344 (the only route to use Southwark Bridge), and the 341, a fairly long route that starts at Waterloo, London's (and the country's) busiest station. Interestingly though, it terminates at "Angel Road Superstore's", the location of Tottenham's massive Tesco and IKEA, and Angel Road Station which was nearby, which was actually London's Least Used Station. Therefore, the route ran between London's busiest and least busiest railway stations, however, Angel Road no longer exists, and Meridian Water has taken its place, which is a much better location for the Tesco and IKEA. 

Route 346 is another one of them routes that's so very short and exists to solely get people home from the nearby station or shops, and in this instance it just runs from Upminster Station to Upminster Park Estate. Route 347 also serves Upminster and is a very interesting route. Starting off at Romford Station at 10AM, it only runs 4 times a day, at 2 hour intervals, making it London's least frequent regular numbered bus service. It also runs through some very rural farmland on the very edge of London's border, and you'd be forgiven if you thought you was already deep into the Essex countryside. The route ends at Ockendon Station, after passing through the village of North Ockendon, known as the only area outside of the M25 but within the Greater London boundary. On the other side of London on Route 350, it had recently slightly changed up its service, starting at Hayes Asda rather than Hayes & Harlington Station, and for the first time, got to go to Terminal 5 at Heathrow on the bus. This was exciting, because Terminal 5 features a driverless pod that links the terminal to the car parks, taking polluting buses off of the roads, which takes longer and it was my first time getting to experience these, which were really cool. Switching to another side of London again on Route 353, travelling through Addington and Keston, two of my favourite areas, providing great views, it starts down at Forestdale. The route used to start up at the Addington Village Interchange, and there used to be 3 T lettered routes around here, which would have stood for the Trams running down this way. The T31, one of these routes, terminated at Forestdale, but when it got axed, Route 353 took over this small section, and the terminus is actually fun to explore there because of the woods. The other end of the route is Ramsden Estate, near Orpington, and is another one of them routes I rather like.

It's evident on the 300 routes that there are so many numbers which don't exist. A lot of these routes though are now small housing estate routes like the 318 using the back streets of Tottenham, the 377 around Oakwood, and 3 routes around the back of Bromley. These routes were 352, 354 and 367, one of which use some narrow corners around Shirley, and another around Ravensbourne, two areas I had never heard of previously. This was also the final time I was in Bromley, a busy South London town, and featuring a lot of routes, so it was a surprise that I was clearing this area so soon. A lot of routes too just followed previous services on busy roads and therefore wasn't very interesting, for example, 317, 349 and 357. Route 357 however, is a double decker route, but on Sundays, it becomes a single decker route and gets extended one stop further from the Whipps Cross Roundabout to the nearby hospital, and because of a low hanging walkway over the road in the hospital grounds, double deckers can't go under them. I did do the route on a Sunday. Route 366 is another industrial Beckton route, going on a rather express section up towards Barking. It then continues towards Ilford, and ends up in a Hail & Ride section north of Redbridge Station on a loop, where I got off the bus and walked back to the tube along the River Roding, noting how the Central line diagram on the platform had the incorrect station name of Shepherd's Bush Green.

It was around this time that TFL introduced a new recorded announcement that would play 5 seconds after the destination was played. The new announcement was 'Please hold on, the bus is about to move', and I knew that immediately it would play after the bus has moved most of the time, and my prediction was right. It was common sense that it was a waste of time introducing it and the general public would backlash, so it only stuck around for a month, good riddance. Anyways, back to the routes with 370, running a slightly different route to the 347 between Romford and Ockendon, but because of this one being a double decker, it provided much better views over the countryside. It continued beyond Ockendon however, towards Davy Down, a brilliant little nature reserve to explore down in the Mardyke Valley, and then round some busy roads to the Lakeside Shopping Centre, Essex's version of Kent's Bluewater Shopping Centre, separated by the Dartford Crossing. That double decker route probably had the best views of any previous one I had been on, and interestingly, the only other route to terminate at Lakeside is the 372, also providing amazing farmland views in places I had never heard of like Wennington and Aveley, but got a little slow on the approach to the Hornchurch terminus. There is a 371 route though, on the other side of London, which I luckily caught a rare double decker, and reminded me very much of the 65 because of places like Petersham and Ham. The next route number after 372, is the 375 running from Romford Station to Passingford Bridge, which I just coincidentally spoke to the driver of my bus the night before, and reminded me of the 347. An infrequent route, running every 90 minutes, providing some more farmland views and passes through the cute village of Havering-Atte-Bower, right on the edge of London. If they could, they would terminate the route here, but because there's no way to turn the bus around, they send it up to Passingford Bridge, so it could use the roundabout, and I did wait an hour and a half for the next bus to see what the place had to offer, only to find that it wasn't much. I did notice the 575 route though, a Non-TFL service that runs once a day in both directions from Romford to Harlow, which recently got axed entirely.

Route 380 travels through Blackheath, just like 386 so you already know that I liked it. It got better though as we pulled up to a bus stop and I stared out at the window at a massive hill which I didn't know was there and knew I had to go back to. There was also a strange one way system where we travelled on the right side of the road rather than the left, before terminating at Belmarsh Prison, the other route apart from 80 to terminate at one. Actually, all routes ending in 80 seem to terminate at a place beginning with 'Bel'. Route 381 ran around Rotherhithe, over the road tunnel which no buses use and the railway station where the first tunnel under a river was built, now used by the London Overground. This route also included one of the best bus stop names ever, 'Dockhead.' At the start of the challenge, Route 390 began at Notting Hill Gate, but no route terminates there now after a slight Central London shake up, which cut the 73 from Victoria to Oxford Circus, and rerouted the 390 to take over this section. The other end of the route is Archway, which got rid of its one way roundabout, and pedestriansied one of the sides; confusing the first time I saw it as I'm familiar with the area. We did go by the abandoned York Road Piccadilly Line Station though, which was cool to see the old station building. Route 391, a now axed service, terminated at the Sands End Sainsbury's in Fulham, near to the new development of Chelsea Harbour/ Imperial Wharf by the River Thames, which was pretty chill to sit there. There was a closed bus stop on the opposite side of the road there where I believe the bus used to stop at instead. Route 396 usually had single decker buses, so I was excited to see a double decker waiting at the stand of Ilford Broadway, but it unfortunately drove away out of service. Luckily though, an older type double decker bus showed up, but I can't help but feel the route is slightly strange, because it follows the 296 all the way, apart from the very end when it comes off the Eastern Avenue to serve the King George Hospital.

Moving over to the final routes of the 300s and the last ones in Barnet, we start off with the 383. There's a variety of different companies running buses in London, some of which may even run at least a hundred routes. However, there is one company that only runs one service, and it is appropriately named Uno, and they run the 383. They are a Hertfordshire company so they run routes outside of London, but the 383 is the only TFL one they own. All the last Barnet routes start at The Spires Shopping Centre, with the 383 running to Woodside Park. Next up is the 389, running to Barnet, Western Way, and is actually the shortest distanced route in London. The timetable suggests it takes a couple minutes longer than the 327, but I do believe this one is actually of shorter distance. This route is interesting because when it gets back to The Spires Shopping Centre, the bus actually changes to run a different route, the 399, which goes up to Hadley Wood Station, the area supporting a lot of fancy big houses. Both of these routes are rather short, so the bus switches between the two, providing an hourly service on both, and the 399 is actually London's Least Used Bus Route.