please empty your brain below

Orpington High Street has more charity shops than almost any other, and the rest are nearly all estate agents !

Yes, it's a real drag...
Really, the 51 in Hong Kong is probably much easier to ride, although double deckers are gone for 18 years on that route.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMB_Route_51 (newer buses had since replaced the white bus shown on the Wikipedia page)
I know little or nothing of this part of London, and your piece has hardened my intent to keep it that way.
Very interesting read - don't know much about that part of London. Next year's looks quite different !
Won't be too long before you're back in Woolwich again on the 53 and 54, I doubt you'll need to worry about the 96 and 99 though.
The same conditions apply all week,not just weekends,to make bus journeys slow. By the way,DG, like that you've been posting at 00.51 this week. 😉
The scheduled time of 97 minutes for the X26 is longer than the 51's seventy minutes. (although not as long as the 110 it actually took!)

Your report on the X26 in 2010 doesn't say how long you took (or even if you actually travelled on it!)
Good grief, I will have to trek from Marks Gate to Gascoigne Estate next month.
Riding these buses is a 'treat' is it? Birthday coming up, must get myself onto a constantly stopping vehicle on a journey to nowhere. Noooooo, noooooo, nooooooo etc as per screaming tantrum often to be witnessed on one such journey.
According to TfL's bus speed reports (surely you must have blogged about those statistics before?), the 51 in the Orpington direction is actually on average 1.5mph faster than the average London bus route.

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/buses-performance-data#on-this-page-4
You're definitely making an effort to appeal more to the ladies, yes. Definitely.
Love this report as this is the bus I use! Very accurately observed :)
I believe the longest bus journey in London is the Croydon to Heathrow bus, although I don't know if it takes the same amount of time to complete its journey as the 51 bus in this article does.

dg writes: London's longest bus routes are listed here. The 51 does not feature.
@Adrian
It is the X26 - the scheduled end-to-end time at peak hours is 97 minutes. Doubtless there are times when it has exceeded that, although unlike most routes the drivers seem to have discretion to choose which way to go on the long non-stop section between Hatton Cross and Teddington, which means they can avoid some snarl-ups.
@geofftech
"You're definitely making an effort to appeal more to the ladies, yes"

Well, certainly the "Ladies Who Bus", whose journey, in snowy conditions, took only 55 minutes - mind you, they were going the other way, which is downhill!

Anyway, it's not really about the buses - DG doesn't even mention what make it is (other than being a double decker), or which company operates it. The bus is merely a (vehicle) (platform) vantage point from which to observe Londoners in their natural habitat.
Unless the new mayor does to them what Boris did to the bendies, you'll have to endure a Heatherwick Heavyweight in 2020. Journey time about 70 minutes, but it will seem much longer.
DG: It's St. Mary and St. Pauls Cray, not St. Peter... ;-)

dg writes: Fixed, thanks.
But why is it St Mary Cray (nominative) but St Paul's Cray (genitive)?

Not to mention Foots Cray (rather than Foot's, or possibly Feet)
Borked was a new word for me but I was able to guess it's meaning! Glad to read that the strikes and the traffic didn't ruin your birthday celebrations.
I commute from Croydon to Hong Kong monthly.

The X26 usually takes 3 hours during rush hours and weekends. If you are prepared for it to take 3 hours, then it doesn't matter (read a book or work on your laptop).

More often than not I have to get off at Hatton Cross and take the next bus, which for some reason has caught up - meaning that I could have just left 30 minutes later. However, this means that sometimes there is a wait of over 1 hour at Heathrow.
The War Memorial roundabout is borked because Bromley Council introduced a "shared space" scheme to a high street used by 19 bus routes! and halved the width of the road. They really thought this wouldn't increase congestion. Lunacy by design
If the link works, here's a pic of the same route in earlier times
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10209394623165800&set=gm.998043680286523&type=3&theater










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