please empty your brain below
All parts I know very well, although now changed a lot.
In the early 1980's I had a shop in Wandsworth, the parade where I had the shop has gone and is now expensive residential houses.
I think the Vauxhall bus station was one of Ken Livingstone's projects, the proposed developent seems very high density.
The area is tranforming fast.

John | 03.08.18 - 7:24 a.m. | #

I wonder whether, following the James Bond films, at least some tourists would recognise Vauxhall’s Cross, which is the MI6 building.

dg writes: If we'd approached across Vauxhall Bridge, likely so. But the 77 passes the less memorable rear frontage.

And indeed some Russian tourists would wonder at the name Vauxhall which is, duly rendered into Cyrillic, the Russian for Station.

Robert Butlin | 03.08.18 - 7:40 a.m. | #

London Fire Brigade sold the Albert Embankment building some years ago and are now headquartered on Union Street near Southwark tube station.

Andy V | 03.08.18 - 7:53 a.m. | #

Very good, particularly since you’re now in my manor.

Two quick comments. First, I agree with another commenter that tourists would recognise the MI6 building, primarily from James Bond films. I see lots of people taking pictures of it from Vauxhall Bridge, and they can’t all be potential terrorists.

Second, the area around Larkhall Park where your bus stopped to change drivers isn’t really Nine Elms any more. That sticks closer to the river. Locals would think of it as South Lambeth - it’s strange that Vauxhall and Nine Elms sit between North and South Lambeth, but there you go. The area quickly becomes Lavender Hill a bit further up the road. I’m sure there’s work to be done on London micro-districts, past, present and future.

Baldassaro | 03.08.18 - 8:12 a.m. | #

The story about the Russian for "station" being "vauxhall" is that a group of Russian diginitories went / were taken to Vauxhall station and asked WHAT they were standing in. The double translation told them WHERE they were.
A bit like the River Avon ...

strawbrick | 03.08.18 - 8:15 a.m. | #

The Bond film had a route 15 going over Vauxhall bridge instead of a 77. Poor research. Also had a Central line train on the District.

scrumpy | 03.08.18 - 9:06 a.m. | #

Strawbrick: that's a story about Vauxhall and the Russians, but highly unlikely to be the story. Any such dignitaries would have known what a railway station was, since the first Russian one was opened by the Tsar many years before Vauxhall's. It was at Tsarskoye Selo, on the site of pleasure gardens that had been modelled on and named after those at Vauxhall.

Betterbee | 03.08.18 - 9:18 a.m. | #

And all thanks to the 13th century Norman warlord, Falkes de Breauté.

Andrew | 03.08.18 - 9:56 a.m. | #

I always wondered how many people on the 77 were going to/from hospital, considering there's St Thomas's at the north end and St George's at the south end of the route.

Marco | 03.08.18 - 10:12 a.m. | #

Garratt Lane is one of the few streets in London whose house numbering goes beyond 1000.

Jonathan Wadman | 03.08.18 - 10:48 a.m. | #

I like the observations of fellow passengers, passers-by and road workers.

Wedding dresses are often re-used for other occasions, dry-cleaned or not. But, depending on the exact details, use in a second wedding for the same bride can be a bit insensitive.

Malcolm | 03.08.18 - 11:35 a.m. | #

@Scrumpy
The Tube train in "Skyfall" was actually a Jubilee Line train, not the Central (filmed in the disused platforms at Charing Cross)

@Jonathan Wadman
DG's first bus on this trip, the 279, follows the Hertford Road, whose numbers go up to just short of 1000. The parallel Great Cambridge Road gets well into the 1100s. There are several others as well - e.g Eastern Avenue London Road (Norbury), North Circular Road (Staples Corner)

timbo again | Homepage | 03.08.18 - 11:40 a.m. | #

Vauxhall is also in the trailer for Johnny English Strikes Again. I worked at the time it was built for a company involved in building it that it had been bought by “a government department” (although it was common knowledge in the company who it was).

Sprout Eater | 03.08.18 - 12:09 p.m. | #

@timbo
Hertford Road reaches 966 just before the M25, and the Great Cambridge Road actually gets as high as 1798.

If you're going to be triflingly pedantic, at least do it properly ;)

Alan W | 03.08.18 - 12:21 p.m. | #

Apologies, everyone.

Here's the second paragraph it appears you wanted instead...

"The 77 is the only bus to complete a full run down the Albert Embankment. The old brick wall on the left-hand side conceals Lambeth Palace's back garden, the archbishop's resplendent residence eventually emerging, topped off by Tudor chimneys. I remember to look back across the Thames for a fine view of the Palace of Westminster - the last building on this trip that most foreign tourists will recognise, although some may later observe that 'Vauxhall' is their Russian word for station, a name derived via an apocryphal historical encounter at the station which actually turns out not to be true, and which is ultimately derived from the name of the home of the wife of 13th century Norman warlord Falkes de Breauté. Rather less familiar are the stark Thirties facade of the former London Fire Brigade Headquarters, three particularly repellent 'landmark towers' packed with multi-million pound apartments, and ssssh, I think that's MI6, whose building at Vauxhall Cross is instantly recognisable from Vauxhall Bridge by those who've watched the James Bond film Skyfall (in which, horrifically, a Jubilee line train pulls into what is supposed to be a District line station), or by anyone who has seen and remembered a very brief drone shot in the trailer for the forthcoming movie Johnny English Strikes Again, except the 77 bus doesn't approach from either of these directions as it does not cross the bridge and cannot fly".

diamond geezer | Homepage | 03.08.18 - 1:03 p.m. | #

I prefer the original!

Malcolm | 03.08.18 - 1:16 p.m. | #

My local, and helpfully some of London's newest buses - until a couple of months back route 77 consisted of a motley assortment of distinctly tired double deckers, with an unusually high probability of turning this in to a 5-bus crossing by breaking down en route.

David | Homepage | 03.08.18 - 1:48 p.m. | #

What about the Wandle?

dg writes: I don't cross that until tomorrow.

Mike D | 03.08.18 - 1:52 p.m. | #

77 This use be my school-bus! My Saturday going into London bus too! LT got bit carried away with this route-numbering as there was also a 77a, 77b and a 77c! Those were the days!

OnTheBus | 03.08.18 - 5:07 p.m. | #

I can't see which bus comes next to truly get into Surrey. The 280 looks like it terminates literally at the border of Sutton and Surrey!

ambient | 03.08.18 - 5:12 p.m. | #

Ambient - the goal which dg is following is to reach the Surrey border. The 280 will do just that!

Ian | 03.08.18 - 5:20 p.m. | #

"temporary traffic lights while the man in the digger..."

Well this here I-Spy Roadmaking book (News Chronicle I-Spy Number 33) awards 30 points for an excavator, 35 for a calf-dozer or a mule-dozer and a whopping 45 points for a grader. Pity you didn't spot a snow-blower though. 50 points for one of those.

Pimlico Pete | 03.08.18 - 6:48 p.m. | #

Still maintaining the same average speed, I see. Re-reading the east-west journey, I see that DG said he did it on a Saturday, where for this one he said he would have had to wait a few hours for an X68, implying it was a weekday. That probably accounts for the slower speed this time - although it is remarkable how consistent the buses on both trips have been.

timbo again again | Homepage | 03.08.18 - 7:25 p.m. | #

Sorry I just find it fascinating that large railway stations in Russia are named indirectly after an Anglo-Norman mercenary, whose name seems to come from the Latin for falcon. I don't think we need any of that in your narrative, indeed much better without. But fascinating nonetheless.

Andrew | 03.08.18 - 7:47 p.m. | #

Taking a guess here, but were the buses the daughter recognised the 219 and 319?

Not sure if there are any others 100 apart in Clapham Junction

dg writes: Thumbs-up emoji

LBOTG | Homepage | 03.08.18 - 8:41 p.m. | #

I make no claims for wanting DG’S narrative to be any different than it was. But I did think that comments were allowed to add extra colour to an existing narrative. In that sense I think it’s a bit churlish to argue that we wanted the text rewritten. If comments are not wanted then don’t allow them.

Robert Butlin | 03.08.18 - 10:28 p.m. | #

One of your previous cross-London trips was done again as your birthday trip (this year, no less). Hopefully we could see the ones blogged yesterday and today featured in 23 and 24 years from now respectively. That would be interesting.

Patrickov | 04.08.18 - 2:35 a.m. | #











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