100 British Bus Routes: Route 29
Tunbridge Wells to Brighton ("The Regency Route")
21 January 2024
ABOVE: Brighton & Hove 415, (BJ11 XHR), a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 2, is in Vale Road, Tunbridge Wells. All Brighton & Hove buses are named; this one is "Tommy Loates"; Loates was a Champion Jockey three times, and rode 222 winners in 1893. All pictures in this article were taken on Friday 17th November 2023.
Runs: Daily (limited Sunday evening service)
Operator: Brighton & Hove
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 30 minutes
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: 10 buses
Off-peak journey time: 118-120 minutes
Estimated route length: 36 miles
Operator: Brighton & Hove
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 30 minutes
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: 10 buses
Off-peak journey time: 118-120 minutes
Estimated route length: 36 miles
Runs alongside routes 28 (Eastbourne to Brighton) and 29A (Heathfield to Brighton)
It's a stunning autumn morning. I have just arrived at Tunbridge Wells station. It's a station of two separate buildings - one on each side. The 'up' station building (the London-bound side) is Grade-II listed. There's a down side as well (I mean the opposite to 'up' - not a negative side). The down side is not listed, but it doesn't look bad.
ABOVE: Taxis wait for business at Tunbridge Wells station - the 'down' side.
This is Royal Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, a spa town 30 miles south-east of central London that was granted a Royal Charter by King Edward VII in 1909. I'm here to ride on "The Regency Route" 29 to Brighton. It starts from the Town Centre, just up the road from here.
There are three bus stops opposite the station, and I notice that Stop S is served by 21 routes:
The adjacent stops T and U are served by a further ten and nine routes respectively. That's 40 routes in total - imagine if they all came at once!
My 29 arrives one minute early at 0922. It's a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 with audio 'next stop' announcements and accompanying displays.
We're swiftly heading out of town past the famous "Pantiles", a Georgian colonnade featuring boutiques, galleries, open-air cafes & even summer jazz concerts!
Shortly after, we come to the old Tunbridge Wells West station building - also Grade-II listed. Closed to passengers in 1985, it is now a "Wild West-themed" hotel and restaurant called "Smith & Western", but its origins are obvious:
ABOVE: 'Smith & Western', a Wild West hotel and restaurant that was once Tunbridge Wells West station
Incidentally, there is now a station called Tunbridge Wells West again - the heritage Spa Valley Railway operates from a station at the other end of the former station site. There's a complicated set of agreements and covenants to preserve the station footprint for future railway use, should there ever be a desire to reopen the railway line.
We join the A26 trunk road, which we won't stray far from for the next hour or so of the journey. A sign of where we are heading comes in the form of the Brighton Lake, at the southern edge of Tunbridge Wells Common, which was apparently built as a labour creation scheme for the unemployed of Tunbridge Wells by the incumbent of King Charles the Martyr Church, William Law Pope. This earned the lake the nickname 'Pope's Puddle'.
ABOVE: Brighton Lake, or "Pope's Puddle", in Eridge Road, Tunbridge Wells
Most of this journey is going to be in East Sussex, and we cross the boundary at Broadwater Down, less than a mile-and-a-half, as the crow flies, from the centre of Tunbridge Wells.
We pass through Eridge - the other end of the Spa Valley Railway - and come to the first sizeable town on the route, Crowborough. We're at the edge of the Ashdown Forest, in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Not that we need to be told that as we head through.
The highest point in the town is almost 800 feet above sea level - the highest point of the High Weald and second highest point in East Sussex (the highest is Ditchling Beacon, near Brighton).
ABOVE: Brighton & Hove 466 (BK13 OAL, "Sir Norman Wisdom"), passes along Eridge Road in Crowborough on route 29 towards Tunbridge Wells
We deviate from the A26 to call into Crowborough High Street, and then travel through the Whitehill area, a residential part of this town of 20,000 people.
ABOVE: Hurtis Hill, Crowborough
Back to the A26, and back into the countryside. We pass the hamlet of Heron's Ghyll and the village of Five Ash Down, less than two miles from Uckfield.
Wikipedia tells us that Uckfield developed as a stopping-off point on the pilgrimage route between Canterbury, Lewes and Chichester. The settlement began to develop around the bridging point of the River Uck (a tributary of the River Ouse). Legend has it that travellers were also able to visit a public house, to buy slices of pudding cake, on what is now known as Pudding Cake Lane. (A cake is baked in an oven, whilst a true pudding is made using suet, and is steamed in a muslin bag - who knew!)
Uckfield feels like quite a large town, perhaps because of its extensive High Street, but the population (at the 2011 Census) was 'only' 14,493, so it seems to have grown beyond what would be expected for a town this size:
ABOVE: Uckfield High Street
Access to the bus station is slow because of the traffic in town and the need to make a right turn off the High Street.
We are scheduled to stand for five minutes in Uckfield bus station, which is pretty quiet today, but a slightly late arrival has taken us down to three minutes. There's just one other bus in evidence; a community dial-a-ride minibus from CTLA Community Transport (for a busier view of the bus station see here).
ABOVE: A very quiet Uckfield bus station
There's a variant route 29A that joins us somewhere before Uckfield, having travelled from nearby Heathfield. We will be together the rest of the way to Brighton (and, in fact, there's a 29A that is briefly running in tandem with us).
Back to the A26 and we pass Rose Hill, where a brief stop enables me to photograph the specially-branded bus stop flags that are attached to most bus stops on the route.
The buses themselves are similarly-branded in an attractive purple livery. Well some of them are - there's a distinct shortage of them in the ones I managed to photograph, which are mainly in the standard (old) Brighton & Hove colours.
The most significant intermediate point of route 29 is the town of Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. In 1264, the Battle of Lewes marked the high point of the career of Simon de Montfort, sixth Earl of Leicester, and made him the "uncrowned King of England". King Henry III was an unpopular monarch due to his autocratic style, displays of favouritism and his refusal to negotiate with his barons. The barons eventually imposed a constitutional reform known as the 'Provisions of Oxford' upon the King, that called for a thrice-yearly meeting, led by de Montfort, to discuss matters of government (source: Wikipedia).
The modern town is a traditional market town, with tight streets and a one-way system to enable traffic flow.
ABOVE: A two-way section of Lewes High Street, at the junction of Station Street / Fisher Street. Roads to the left, right and behind us are all one-way.
A few hundred yards further down the High Street, we find the prominent clock of the Parish Church of St Michael in Lewes, the only remaining church within the walls of the ancient county town.
ABOVE: The Parish Church of St Michael in Lewes, with its prominent clock, on the narrowest part of the High Street
Companion route 28, which has originated in Eastbourne, joins us from Lewes. Also running half-hourly, and supported by the hourly 29A, and by hourly 'shorts' starting from Lewes (also carrying the number 28), we're now on an overall 10-minute headway into Brighton.
ABOVE: Brighton & Hove 454 (BK13 NZW, "Don Bath"), another Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 2, passes Lewes Prison on a service 28 short working from Brighton to Lewes. Don Bath was chairman of Streamline, one of Brighton's major taxi firms, for more than 30 years.
The A26 road pushes on towards Newhaven, as we turn westwards onto the A27 trunk road for the last part of the journey to Brighton. The route becomes limited stop as we head down this busy dual-carriageway. The service is getting busy as well, with quite a lot of punters for this last stretch.
After a three-and-a-half mile stretch of the A27, we pull off for the home straight into Brighton.
ABOVE: Near Coldean Lane on the outskirts of Brighton
This is student territory - the heart of the University of Brighton through Moulsecoomb, where things become rather slow.
ABOVE: Lewes Road, Moulsecoomb. The buildings of the University of Brighton dominate the skyline.
It's a slow final section as we work our way into Brighton, but we reach the terminus at Churchill Square on time, the best part of two hours after we left Tunbridge Wells. It may not be "Royal", but the city of Brighton & Hove certainly boasts royal connections. The Royal Pavilion, a distinctive Asian-style palace with gardens, was built for the future King George IV in three stages, beginning in 1787. And here it is, looking as good as new.
ABOVE: The Royal Pavilion in Brighton, photographed from (a bus on) the Old Steine
Route 29 is a lovely ride through the Sussex countryside. If you can get hold of the front seat upstairs, as I did, you will find yourself floating across the beautiful Weald, and calling in at some of the smaller towns that one would normally bypass if driving the direct route. Well worth devoting a couple of hours to - maybe more than once.
ABOVE: 428 (BF12 KXC, "Stanley Deason") shows off the official "Regency Route" livery, on Bell Lane in Uckfield, undertaking a double-run to the bus station (which is just out of sight on our left). Stanley Deason was a Brighton councillor and alderman from 1928 until his retirement in 1973.