please empty your brain below
Good to see part of my old journey from Romford to SW Essex Tec at Walthamstow through different eyes in a different era.
The old Eastern National 251 travelled this bit of route (and previous to that, the weird City Bus) before the new mega-roads were built over the old Southend Road and C.B. Roundabout.
I imagine such mega-roads will be converted to tramways when cars eventually become too expensive to use.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/tour-de-france-map5-dr.pdf
BUT "to follow the North Circular... I'd best go back and try another way." suggests otherwise.
But how far back? And will we be following he modern NCR as closely a spossible, or the actual route of the original NCR?
A 15mph average speed has brought the total up a bit, whilst a bus less than noine months old has brought the average age down. The sum of the route numbers is now 501.
"when cars *eventually* become too expensive too use"
for some the "dream/luxury" of car ownership never became a reality...and never will. for others it already too expensive when you consider buying car, VED, insurance, service, breakdown cover, residents parking permits, parking fees, fines, tolls...
those slabs of tarmac may one day become pathways for computer-controlled electric pods in which everyone has access to travel in climate-controlled comfort. no more fumes and over-bearing noise. And while they at it they will have found a replacement for those
I've been on 2 recently whereby someone has got on wanting to pay with cash (both with very broken English) and were told by the driver that they couldn't pay with coins!
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/new-motorway-through-woodford/query/woodford
I'd forgotten that the North Circular used to join Forest Road just below the Waterworks roundabout. It was a traffic nightmare even forty years ago, unimaginable what it would be like now if it hadn't been realigned.
Lastly, the 123 replaced the old trolleybuses that used to run on the same route -- 685 or 687, IIRC. One of the last trolleys north of the Thames.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/14281143950/
The low-digitness, not a complete answer, that probably is a co-incidence as you say. But it is a not-very-well-known fact that the digit 1 occurs much more frequently in real life text than the digit 9, with 2 to 8 in between (not sure where 0 comes). Look in John Bull printing sets, etc. The reason is something to do with Poisson distributions.
As ever with a DG post I've learnt things I didn't know about a bus journey I do loads of times. I had no idea I crossed the Greenwich Meridian on my way to Ilford nor that Charlie Browns was named after a pub. The video link of the pre motorway Charlie Browns is fantastic to see.
I knew from the photo of the 123 that it was a weekend jaunt as those buses only appear on Sats and Sundays. How sad am I? Interesting observations about Clayhall - it was due to get some extra bus access from a planned 306 bus route but it was cancelled before ever seeing the light of day.
Your next bus route? I was trying to figure it out (no other bus route from Gants Hill has a digit less than 5), then you said you had to go back and try again, so I'm completely stumped.
The aerial view of the M11/A406 junction shows just how much land the junction consumes. Apart from the challenge of the meandering River Roding and it's flood plain the original intention was to have junctions with the M12 and M15 motorways neither of which was built. I recall at least 1 truncated piece of carriageway attached to the southbound M11-there may be others. I was told that the consequence of not building the M12 was that extra slip roads were necessary at the M11/M25 junction a few miles to the north creating some tight bends and additional hazards at that junction.
An interesting post. A 366 bus from Redbridge would take you to Beckton but it doesn't follow the North Circular.
I doubt it: firstly, if he was going to Ilford he could have just stayed on the 123. Secondly the hint about low digits.
I think DG went two stops.
@Malcolm
"a not-very-well-known fact that the digit 1 occurs much more frequently in real life text than the digit 9,"
This is true of the first digit of quantities (such as money) where a distribution is not self-selecting - amounts of money for example. A good example is house numbers: every road has a No 1. There are far more roads with numbers getting into the 100s than those getting into the 200s (for every house number 2xx there must be a 1xx in the same street - the converse is not true)
DG's sample is not very large, is not a set of quantities but simply labels (a number 8 is in no way half as good as a No 16: you can't use a 24 and a 14 if a 38 isn't available (well, I suppose you can if you're going from Victoria to Green Park!), and the sample is self-selected because the original Bassom plan only allocated the numbers 1-256 to "red" bus routes, and even now 3xx and 4xx numbers are less common and numbers above 500 very rare.
OSM far superior to everything else btw, including google maps.
The 123 seems to have stuck pretty close to its old route, aside fro the major road upheavals along its way.
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