please empty your brain below

(think bathroom centres and gun shops, not kebaberies and tat)

I'm sorry , your 96 must have taken a diversion I don't recognise that Bexleyheath at all, there's one gun shop and that's opposite Danson Park.
Bexleyheath Broadway is a standard chains High St with a hideous ASDA.

Up until Welling it's all been a bit outer-London-white,

Try it on a week day between 4.00pm and 6.00pm

I only write posts like this so that readers can tell me I'm wrong. Consider those two sections duly rewritten. And the howler that Neil spotted by email. Thanks!

The twenty minutes your No 96 took between Bluewater and the next stop is not a record. The time scheduled between Hatton Cross and Teddington on the X26 varies with the time of day, but is generally between 17 and 21 minutes. The X68 is allowed 28 minutes between Waterloo and West Norwood, The 96 is actually scheduled to take twelve minutes to Dartford, but your diversion must have caused a delay if, as you say, there were jams!

And you seem to have missed Len Goodman's Dance School situated above the Rumpy Cafe in Dartford Market Street. You can see the heads of dancing clients passing the window while waiting for a bus. Makes the time pass guessing what music they're dancing to!

Fantastic ... Ewan McGregor will be doing it by bike next, but i like the bus. "The Red Way Across". Hoping that a North/South transition also occurs at somepoint, yes?

You went right past my house in Welling and didn't wave?

One thing about the 96 is that it's schizophrenic. If it gets behind schedule its very common for it to randomly change its mind at the last second. Woolwich to Bluewater? Oops now its terminating at Welling Corner. Usually with about 10 second's notice of course. Bluewater to Woolwich. Now terminating at Bexleyheath. Etc, etc. Its worst trick is to fling everyone off at Plumstead garage instead of Woolwich.

Quick side question for you after having read your blog for two years (and apologies if I've ever missed a post where you describe your technique):

Do you take notes in some manner whilst out on your various escapades or do you just have a phenomenal memory for details?

dg writes: This one's done with notes, because 30 miles of cross-London bus journey isn't something I can remember.

Well, this looks interesting - looking forward to the next instalment!

(Incidentally, did you ever decide what your 'project' for 2012 was going to be?)

...And: five one or five nil?

I'm wondering quite where the other side of London is and how many buses DG used and if he insisted on "end to end" trips.

I can see how he can do the trip on either 4 or possibly 5 buses (in total) and either touch the edge of Greater London in one case or wander just outside the western boundary in another.

I won't spoil matters by giving the real numbers but it might be like the
xx, xxx, xxx or xx, xxx, xxx, xx. Of course, DG will undoubtedly have a completely different route. We shall see!



Using TfL's journey planner from Bluewater to as far west as you can go, leaving at 15;30 on a Saturday, gave four possible routes, all taking about 4h30 and using five buses. Only two of them start with the 96, namely the 96,ww,xxx,yyy,zz, with two different possibilities for both the xxx and the yyy, one of which involves a "letter" route

(The other routes two started with the 477, and use a non-TfL route for the last leg). We shall see.

A recent discussion on another forum identified a circumnavigation (staying outside Zone 1/c-charge zone) using eight buses
210,106,425,108,and then either:
177,37,220,260 or, more circuitously
75,X26,65,112 or, even more circuitously
75,X26,140,186

Hey, so DG revisits SE18 :)
Funnily enough, I was thinking, just the other day, of suggesting a trip to Woolwich Common... to see the, er... "thing" that's been built there, to do with the Olympic shooting events.
It's, erm... quite colourful

"Do you take notes in some manner whilst out on your various escapades or do you just have a phenomenal memory for details?"
I've often wondered that too Adam.

"Please join me for a top deck parade through the capital... because it'll save you from ever wasting a Saturday trying the same."
Oh I don't know, it sounds like fun. It's amazing what you see and/or learn from the top of a bus!



This reminds me of all those trips with my Dad on buses when we used a Red Rover- that shows my age!!

And I hope you take a packed lunch with you. Do you take any photos from the top deck? It was always a treat to sit at the front of the bus when we were kids, bit dodgy if the driver brakes suddenly of course.

dg writes: To answer your question, yes :)

The journey to Bluewater is a bit of a bargain if you have any form of travelcard, a long way out of London for a London pass!

Not possible now to get one bus right across London, but until 1999 the 726 (now X26) ran right across from Dartford to Heathrow, and some time earlier several Green Line services ran right across the middle e.g. the 712 Dorking to St Albans











TridentScan | Privacy Policy