please empty your brain below

A wonderful summary of a route I traveled north from Ponders End in my school days and south during my earliest work days. One tiny thing, Manor Park should read Manor House.

dg writes: Fixed, thanks.
You also passed, on the High Street the ex Palace Cinema Tottenham, which although unlisted has survived.
It was an unsual cinema, the building opened in 1908 as a theatre and when cinema took over there was no room to fit a projection booth at the rear of the circle. So the projection box was build at the back of the stage. One of the very few rear projection cinemas.
It is now a church.
My guess for where DG will go next is 149, 133, 60.
Alas route 60 never reaches the Surrey border. So it isn't that.
Glad to see you were able to see the emergence of the best football stadium in North London, DG!!
As well as the Tottenham Palace Theatre from 1908, you passed the Ponders End Picture Palace of 1913, still extant and now (inevitably) a Wetherspoons - http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14659

Incidentally, I was a leader for some years at the Scout Hut you mention in Freezywater.
Mention of 'Dewhursts the Butcher' triggered a google search and a sad story attached to the Stratford part of this 2 shop empire, privately purchased when the former huge High Street name finally went bust in 2006.
Many years ago, the 279 had the strange destination of Hammond Street. Middle of nowhere, hardly anyone living there, just a small housing estate, pylons, and a plant nursery. I have a photograph from 1985 of not one, but two very out-of-place looking RML buses, taken as part of a one-day odyssey tracking down last day of Routemaster operation of two unlikely routes, all the way from Chessington Zoo to Hammond Street
Didn't it take five buses, not four, to get from east to west? (as the 607 doesn't quite make it to the border)

dg writes: My first sentence says "riding four consecutive buses from Dartford to Uxbridge", in a vain attempt to avoid such pedantry.
I suspect this journey is done partly in the rush hour, otherwise you would need to do a fairly short (10-15 minute) walk, otherwise a mix of night and day routes would have allowed you use 3 buses.

dg writes: You suspect wrong. 11am-3pm.

The opening date for the new stadium still seems a bit flexible, with the possibility of a string of away games at the start of the season.
It's so amusing watching everyone try to guess DG's route and get it very wrong...
On the High Road, you also passed 2 newly-opened pubs:
The Bluecoats, near the stadium, which was originally a school.
And the High Cross, by the memorial, which used to be a public convenience!
Corection to my earlier comment. It seems the Palace Totenham is now a Grade 2 listed building.
A new challenge, how fun!
My parents have walked across London via green spaces from North to South, and East to West, which is something I'd also like to do.
Will follow your journey with interest.
This has been bugging me all day! How about 76/77/280?
I love when you make these journeys. I follow along on one of the live bus maps.
Good game, good game!
76 Tottenham, X68 Waterloo, 403 West Croydon?
The small mythical beast is an Enfield: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_(heraldry)
The 279 used to go all the way to Smithfield, but that was back in the early 90s.
Ian - that was pretty much my guess too, except I had the 243 instead of the 76.
Ned, maybe it depends on which of 76 and 243 shares a stop with 77. It would be arithmetically satisfying if the route sequence was indeed 279, 76, 77, 280.
The X68 would have been my preference as well, then for maximum northsouthedness you could have done Waltham Cross - Redhill in four buses - 279/76(or 243/341) from Tottenham/X68 from Waterloo/405 from West Croydon.

Ians guess must be the correct one, and you can still visit California.
Did you manage to get the second bus (whether a 76, 243 or something else) within the Hoppa fare's 70-minute hour?

Routes 76 and 77 do indeed share stop W on York Road, and routes 77 and 280 share several stops in Tooting. And what almost perfect numerical symmetry!

But, DG, you usually manage to surprise us.
This is brilliant, I'm loving it.
'Hot Nuts' sounds uncomfortable but to be expected after several hours on a London bus perhaps.
Dewhurst: in its heyday, one end of the vertically integrated Vestey meat empire, from cattle stations in South America and the Antipodes, through the Blue Star Line, to a chain of over 2,000 retail butchers in the UK. And then, like the independent butchers they had themselves displaced, they were eliminated by the supermarkets.
Factoid about the new stadium: The retractable grass pitch, which has to be moved out of the way when American Football or other non-grass events take place, weighs 10,000 tons.
Turns out it was the last day of operation for the bus company which ran the orangey-black buses out of Waltham Cross.
https://twitter.com/66EOS/status/1022102380274479104

"Operating buses in today's economic climate is very tiresome"










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