Day 7 - The Road Turns North(ish)

Day Seven - Brighton to Leatherhead

Brighton marks a turning point in my journey to John O’Groats. From here I head for London, which means that for the first time the route before me is pointing northwards. After a week gently pootling around the lanes of the West Country and along the South Coast of England, I'm at last heading for Scotland and I feel ready for the road ahead.

So I'm in an optimistic mood as I make my way through the early morning streets towards The Old Steine and my first bus of the day. And it is here that a surprise awaits me –two, in fact.

The Old Steine is a traffic-strewn area of lawns and flowerbeds that at one time was Brighton’s village green and was used by fishermen to dry their nets. During the 18th century, this area was gradually encroached upon by the town’s foppish and fashionable visitors until it became less of a village green and more of a well-tended square bordered by grand houses. And surely none more grand than the exuberantly-decorative Royal Pavilion, my first surprise of the morning

Brighton Pavilion

This faux Moghul palace set among the flowerbeds and traffic islands was the product of the cultured though lascivious mind of George, Prince of Wales, the vain and dissipated eldest son of George the Third. In the mid 1780’s George was renting a small farmhouse overlooking the promenade, but this was no rural idyll. The town, stimulated by the endeavours of local physician Dr Richard Russell who attracted fame and fortune with his therapeutic health-giving remedies – which mostly amounted to taking regular dips in the sea - was developing into a fashionable seaside retreat for the rich and famous.

The Prince, advised by his doctors to take advantage of Brighton’s therapeutic sea water, arrived in town but quickly devised a few therapeutic remedies of his own, mostly involving drink, gambling and women. 

As well as a fondness for Brighton’s more fleshy delights, the future Prince Regent also had a love of architecture and the decorative arts, and he set about making improvements to his farmhouse, converting it into a lavishly-furnished villa which he named Marine Pavilion. By 1811, sworn in as Prince Regent whilst his father’s apparent madness rendered him unable to carry out his monarchal duties, his entertaining had grown to match is new-found status and Marine Pavilion was deemed too modest for his uses. He therefore commissioned John Nash to transform it into the extraordinary and eccentric oriental palace we see today.

With its minarets and domes, the Brighton Pavilion was intended to make a statement, yet for all his ambition for the place George was only to visit it twice after its completion in 1823. Perhaps he had grown tired of Brighton’s licentious charms. More likely the heavy responsibilities of the Crown – he had succeeded his father in 1820 – combined with his increasing ill health conspired to keep him at Court

Today, the Pavilion is one of Brighton’s most familiar landmarks. In the sheer scale of its architectural daftness, the Pavilion is probably the most impressive and, frankly, campest pieces of architecture in Brighton. No wonder people love it.

Bus shelter, Old Steine, Brighton

I found my second surprise at a bus stop in front of the Pavilion in the form of one of the most elegant bus shelters I have ever seen. Executed in a sweeping 1930's style and with a passing resemblance to an ocean liner of the period, these are the kind of bus shelters you might imagine Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers taking shelter in before flying down to Rio or having a gay divorce or something. OK, they are little grubby here and there, but these are deliciously elegant structures which must rank as some of the finest bus shelters in the realm. No, really. 

Two surprises later and in clear warm sun, my bus to Tunbridge Wells arrives and I begin my journey out of Brighton. This time I’m sitting on top of Elsie and Doris Waters and rather comfortable they are, too.

Having scarcely visited this part of the country, I'm not really sure what to expect. So I am genuinely excited to discover that this is, in fact, a conspicuously beautiful corner of England, all trees and meadows, green rolling downs and deep, lush hedgerows. I hadn’t quite expected it to be so sparkling and attractive but there's more to come.

We roll into Lewes under the pale and forbidding walls of the Her Majesty’s Prison but even this chill is brief. The town is elaborately picturesque, with narrow streets of timber-framed buildings mixed with a generous dash of Georgian grandeur. I'd like to explore but onwards we go, back into quintessential English countryside before arriving in Uckfield, a bustling little town of buildings topped with red sun-softened roof tiles. I find myself gazing at a view I’ve seen a thousand times before in framed prints of fox-hunting scenes or stage coaches arriving at the inn, of the type seen on the walls of country pubs or on the placemats of their restaurants. Yet this is not Georgian or Victorian England – it’s the present day. Amazingly it’s all still here, if you ignore the parked cars.

Long before I left the north east I'd decided to visit Tunbridge Wells, the home of that Letter's Page cliché ‘Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells’ which first emerged during the 1950’s when the then editor of the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser found himself with too few letters on his Letter’s Page. He needed to stimulate some debate and his solution was simple – get his reporters to draft a few of their own but purporting to be from the local populace. One of those letters was signed “Digusted, Tunbridge Wells” and it somehow struck a chord. ‘Disgusted’ seemed to typify precisely the kind of reader who might exercise their indignation by writing to the editor of a provincial newspaper, and it quickly became a by-word for an angry and comfortable middle-class which had, in all honestly, very little to be angry about.

I also wanted to visit Tunbridge Wells because of a delicious irony attached to its erstwhile stage coach.

By the 1700's, Tunbridge Wells was a prosperous and growing spa town. Many of the people who flocked there arrived by stagecoach, a means of travel which was growing in popularity as Britain’s network of turnpikes began to spread and travel became quicker and more comfortable. Most large towns had their own stage coach taking passengers to and from London and stopping at coaching inns en route. These also carried a hugely sought-after commodity - news. 

Previously it could have taken weeks for news of a major event – the passing of a new law, or a Royal pronouncement - to reach the countryside. Now, with a regular stagecoach linking the capital with every major town in the realm, such news could be had in a matter of days. People would often await the arrival of the London coach so that they could be the first to glean the news of the day. It wasn't long before the stage coach operators started to give themselves imposing names like 'Telegraph' and 'Herald' and 'Star', names which they felt reflected their new-found importance.

With newspapers popping up all over the country, publishers looked around for titles which suggested they were filled with the latest news - and many looked no further than their nearest coaching inn where stage coach names like ‘Telegraph’ and ‘Herald’ had already become synonymous with urgent and important news.

The name of the regular stagecoach to London from Tunbridge Wells was somewhat ironic. It was named the 'Morning Star' which, as you may know, is also the name of Britain's only communist daily newspaper. Given the town’s undoubted conservatism, one wonders whether the coach’s daily arrival was perhaps the only occasion in recent times when ‘The Morning Star’ was ever warmly welcomed into Tunbridge Wells.

I begin a short wait for my onward journey to Crawley and once again find myself surrounded by older people on the move.

Jill Viner, London's first female driver 1974

“We had a lady driver on my bus into town today,” says one old lady to her friend, a well-polished gentleman of about 80 years. “She looked about 20,” she jokes, seriously.

“Oh, I know,” says the man portentously. “We are getting a few more of them now. I spoke to a man driver the other day to ask what they are like…”

He pauses, then half-whispers: “He said they were lovely, but they couldn’t reverse…”

The lady chuckles. “Oh, I know…”

“They have to get a man out to do it for them,” adds her gentleman friend, with the mild disbelief of a man who believes every word of it. “I mean, I know they have trouble with width, don’t they,” he says, apparently unaware that he is talking to one of them.

“Oh, I know…” chuckles the lady, clearly too polite to kebab him with her umbrella, at least not in full view of the bus queue.

From Tunbridge Wells my journey takes me north-westward across The Weald through rich farmland, dappled woodland and villages such as Groombridge and the elegantly oak-timbered Forest Row. It's puzzling. I've never been here before yet it all looks so familiar. Finally it strikes me - I have seen this before. This is exactly the kind of luscious countryside depicted in ripping British war films of the Forties and Fifties such as “Went The Day Well’’ and “The Way To The Stars”.

I had always assumed that this archetypal English country landscape was nothing more than a rose-tinted myth, an idealised vision of the kind of Britain our brave boys were fighting to protect - cricket on the green, warm beer in ivy-covered pubs, roses around the windows. Now, it seems it wasn’t an idealised view at all – it’s clearly based on the villages and countryside of The Weald. And, amazingly, it’s all still here.

Bus shelter, Forest Row

Gaping mutely out of the window at the quaint charm of Forest Row, with its timbered houses and thatched roofs, my eye falls on a the village bus shelter. Dark-timbered with a roof tiled with hand-cut chestnut shingles, and a commodious oak bench inside, it is preposterously pretty and utterly at home in its thatched-roofed and cottagey streetscape. It didn’t have a bathroom, but I still reckon if it was offered for sale it would make six figures easily. I’d buy it just to sit in it. Bus shelters are certainly not like this where I come from. Most are damp, insanitary affairs. I particularly hate the tubular steel and glass shelters with sides that don’t quite reach the ground, thereby concentrating the wind so that it cuts like a blade just around your ankles. So I’m stunned to find a bus shelter that is in every way a thing of beauty.

That’s not to say that some are not trying to make the bus stop experience a little richer. In Atlanta, Georgia, for example, two local artists decided to turn a couple of derelict yellow school buses into bus shelters and install them around the city. Perhaps they weren’t conventionally pretty but they offered reasonable comfort and were certainly eye-catching.

In fact, bus shelters do seem to have a habit of bringing out the artist in people, and I don’t just mean graffiti. There's a bus shelter in Lexington, Kentucky, for example, made entirely out of empty soft drinks bottles. In Athens, Georgia, the local arts council launched a programme called You, Me and the Bus which, according to their website, aimed to “… enhance the public transportation system by integrating utilitarian public services with artistic ingenuity and inspiration.” The resulting bus shelters were astonishing.

Even us Brits are not averse to letting artists loose on our bus shelters. Two were commissioned as part of the 2012 Olympic celebrations to turn the roofs of 40 bus shelters across the capital into LED message boards so that local people could talk to one another, play games and express what they loved about their city. Bus shelters also celebrated Christmas in 2008 - dozens were used by the Churches Advertising Network to display a Nativity scene in which the holy family were depicted huddled in a bus shelter with the shepherds and wise men replaced by waiting passengers. One bus shelter in Coniston, in the Lake District, even has its own website

Bus shelter, Unst

In the Shetlands, there is even a bus shelter that has, over the years, boasted a coffee table, a sofa, a TV, microwave oven, pot plants and ornaments, and even a computer. It all started out as a harmless prank but it eventually assumed a life of its own and it too now has its own website. It gets remodelled every year - recently, it became the UK’s most northerly and, with a capacity of only two, smallest cinema!

Perhaps we shouldn’t wonder that some people can become quite emotional about bus shelters. Or that one New Zealand couple should choose to formally register their child’s name as ‘Number 16 Bus Shelter’, possibly in commemoration of its conception. They are clearly relaxed about such things in New Zealand - other children's names that apparently got past the registrar included Violence, Midnight Chardonnay and Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

We arrive in East Grinstead which is awash with early summer flowers, squeezing first through narrow and twisting streets before popping out into a pleasing and spacious 1930’s High Street. Onwards we go towards Crawley, past a sign outside a church urging people to “Exercise Daily – Walk with God”, and through increasingly heavy traffic to Crawley bus station.

I should be making straight for London, but I'm having to skip about all over the countryside as its seems from my researches there's no direct bus from Brighton. My route is therefore elaborate and carefully planned to make use of scant, infrequent bus services between towns. It took ages to plan - now, Crawley does its best to scupper it.

The bus station, Horsham

My bus from Tunbridge Wells arrives a few minutes late and I then discover that my onward connection to Horsham leaves 20 minutes earlier than I expected, which means I now have no time for lunch other than a hastily-grabbed pasty. But although I'm back at the bus stop in time, ten long minutes pass and still no bus. 'Hey', I'm thinking. 'I missed lunch for this.' Eventually, a bus does arrive – not the one I expected though it still goes to Horsham. The by-now irritable queue troops irritably on board. Hmmph. Is the driver just late? Who knows? Nobody seemed about to tell us, least of all the driver who looked even more irritable than the rest of us.

Another quick change at Horsham and I'm now heading for Guildford, with the soft Surrey Hills ahead of us and large houses looming affluently out of the bluebell woods lining the road, indicating our arrival in the Stockbroker Belt. I had planned to include Guildford in my journey because of its small yet little-known place in public transport history.

In 1924, the government established a licensing authority to limit the number of buses operating on London's streets. This was in a desperate bid to control the excessive competition that was plaguing the city, with dozens of operators plying for too few passengers whilst battling with small 'pirate' operators who would undercut the bigger operators. The congestion this created was horrible, passengers hated it and nobody made any money.

The government's London Traffic Act changed all of that. Now, everybody knew what services they had to run and when to run them, and passengers were no longer fought over for their custom. The pirates were driven out. 

However, a few realised that services beginning outside of London, even if they then eventually ran along the same strictly-regulated London streets, were not covered by the act. Buses were now becoming quicker, more reliable and more comfortable so it was feasible to run longer services in reasonable comfort. The pirates discovered they could use these new buses to run services from outlying areas right through central London, completely circumventing the London Traffic Act. 

Greenline Coach, 1938   Photo: Lloyd Rich

London's strictly-regulated operators were not impressed though, and one - the London General Omnibus Company - decided to fight back by setting up its own subsidiary to run services from country towns within a 30-mile radius of London into the city. And thus, on 9 July 1930, Green Line Coaches was born.

Guildford has the distinction of being one end of the very first Green Line route into London, though in fact the origins of the Guildford - Oxford Circus route go back a few years before that to a joyously-titled Skylark Motor Services which began operating in December 1928. They ran this very route, taking advantage of the same loophole in the Transport Act, as well as a similar service between Oxford Circus and Hertford. In December 1929 they joined both routes together, pioneering the kind of long-distance cross-London service that would ultimately became the hallmark of Green Line buses which would go on to become such a familiar sight in the outlying areas of the capital during the 30's, 40's and 50's.

My own route out of Guildford will probably follow part of the route of that original Green Line service, a thought which encourages me as I wait at Guildford’s grim-looking bus station for my 479 Countryliner Coaches service to Leatherhead. I’m encouraged by the company’s name, too, but the bus that eventually arrives has me thinking that there must have been some mistake. It certainly isn’t a coach, but an elderly single decker and there isn’t much of the countryside about it – in fact, the interior has a distinctly urban aroma. We finally depart – four minutes late to allow the driver time to finish his fag – and head off across the heaths towards Leatherhead where I eventually arrive tired, hungry and, much like our bus, a little grubby. 

It’s been a long day. I’ve travelled for the best part of nine hours on five different buses and Brighton now feels a very long way away. I’m now on the edge of London on the cusp of an intimidating challenge. Somehow tomorrow, despite not knowing quite where I am going, I’m going to have to find my way to central London.

And I don’t really have a plan.

NEXT: Leatherhead – Central London - where I get completely lost in Sutton (wherever that is), take a nostagic ride on a quintessential London bus, and pay homage to the father of the British omnibus.

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Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google