Around the Outside of London
Part One
19 July 2025
ABOVE: Carousel Buses 80893 (BF62 JZM), a Mercedes-Benz Citaro O530, still carries its old number, 893, as it calls at Amersham Station on a journey on route 1 from High Wycombe to Hemel Hempstead. All photographs in this article were taken on Saturday 26 April 2025.
Slough Bus Station remains abandoned. Unloved, untouched, unoccupied. Following a fire in October 2022, the site was cordoned off and it remains so when I arrive here in May 2025 to start another of my epic journeys.
Slough gets a bad press, right back to Sir John Betjeman's poem of 1937, Slough, in which he called for "friendly bombs" to fall on the town. The poem is not specifically about Slough; it's about industrialisation and modernity in general, with the transformation of Slough being seen as the epitome of these evils, probably because it was used as a dump for war surplus materials between the wars. The sudden appearance of the Trading Estate, 850 new factories built in the area just before World War II, reportedly prompted the poem.
Sadly, I'm not about to say how wonderful the town is, because I don't think it is. To me, it's run down and hasn't moved with the times. Shoppers who might once have come here now go to nearby Uxbridge instead. The Bus Station stands as a symbol of that neglect.
I've come here to start a circuit of Greater London by bus - but a circuit very specifically staying outside the Greater London Authority border, avoiding using Transport for London services and, as much as possible, staying outside the M25 Orbital Motorway. Slough is my chosen starting point, as it's only nine miles / 15 minutes by train from home.
It's likely to take three days to get right round. This won't be a continuous trip - I'll be heading home at the end of each day and then resuming from wherever I leave off. There won't be a more straight-forward start, then, than this first day.
I'm going clockwise, and my first trip is to be on Carousel Buses route 107 to Amersham. This leaves from Stop B in Wellington Street, less than one hundred yards from the Bus Station. Anyone looking for this bus from the stop flags will be sady disappointed, as this only references route 4 - a route that was renumbered to A4 in August 2023.
No-one has updated the stop flag, but there are posters in the Bus Shelter to confirm which routes actually stop here:
Wellington Street is part of the trunk A4 road, and remains as a dual carriageway right through the centre of Slough. Lots of traffic and plenty of buses, even at 9.00 on a Saturday morning.
ABOVE: Redline T25 RRT (left), an ADL Enviro200, passes Thames Valley 744 (FL74 ASC, right), an ADL Enviro400 City, in Wellington Street, Slough. The Redline bus is on local service WP1 to Wexham Park Hospital, whilst the Thames Valley bus is heading to Heathrow Airport (Terminal Five)
Due at 0900, my 107 appears just a moment after:
ABOVE: Carousel Buses 80877 (BT09 GOH), a Mercedes-Benz Citaro O530, is in Stoke Road, Slough, and is about to turn into Wellington Street to start its run to Amersham on route 107.
We set off at 0902 with eight passengers, although we lose four of them in the early stages of the journey.
This is one of Carousel's comfortable and smooth Mercedes-Benz Citaros, in Chiltern Hundreds livery. This is a marketing name that Carousel introduced a few years ago, when it renumbered its key routes in the High Wycombe / Beaconsfield / Amersham areas as routes 101-107.
It's a good marketing idea. A "hundred" is a traditional division of an English county, with the Chiltern Hundreds being the ancient administration district of Buckinghamshire. "Taking the Chiltern Hundreds" once meant the act of resigning as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons; perhaps now, it means catching a bus to Amersham!
We dive quickly into the residential area to the north of the town centre, doing a thorough circuit of this area (and I do mean a circuit - we pass the same school twice)! A shame that none of the bus stops around here recognise the presence of the 107:
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Route 107 , and companion 106, provide a broadly-hourly service along this corridor. Once out of Slough and past Wexham Park Hospital, it is affluent, commuter belt territory.
ABOVE: Stoke Poges
We cross over the Chiltern railway line at Gerrards Cross. This was the scene of a tunnel collapse in 2005, when an arch being built over the railway to allow Tesco to build a supermarket on top of it collapsed. Fortunately, no-one was injured.
We now come to Chalfont St Peter, one of a group of villages collectively known as "The Chalfonts". It's another of these settlements that is classed as a village, but has over 13,000 residents. And the flags are up - perhaps for the forthcoming (at the time) VE 80 celebrations?
ABOVE: Chalfont St Peter
This is a lovely ride, through open countryside and some delightful villages. All too soon, we are pulling into Amersham, where the bus terminates at the station.
We're three minutes late, at 1023. The driver won't be hanging about, though. At 1025, he, and his bus, become a route 41 service to High Wycombe, and he's off again!
NB: If you want try the 107 as described above, don't leave it too long... It's being "restructured" at the end of August 2025.
ABOVE: Carousel 80877 again, at Amersham Station, the end of route 107. The bus will now become a route 41 service to High Wycombe. The vehicle is still showing its old designation of 877.
There are two distinct parts to Amersham. Old Amersham is set in the valley of the River Misbourne, and has a 13th Century parish church (St. Mary's), as well as several old pubs and coaching inns. But I'm in Amersham-on-the-Hill, which developed in the early 20th Century around the station that is now the end of the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground. We might be 27 miles north-west of the centre of London, but we have a direct tube service to central London (not to mention the even faster Chiltern Railways service from Aylesbury to London Marylebone).
The railway is commemorated here by a half-size model of the Metropolitan 1 steam locomotive (with carriages). The first official train service to Amersham departed Baker Street at 10.47am on 1 September 1892. The Metropolitan 1 was a mainstay of the Metropolitan Railway services to Aylesbury for twenty years. It was an E class locomotive, designed by the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway, Mr T. F. Clark.
A little delay here as my next bus isn't due until 1111. This is route 1 to Hemel Hempstead - another Carousel Buses service although this was, until fairly recently, a joint operation with Arriva, when buses would run as "The Red One" (Carousel) or "The Blue One" (Arriva).
Now we only have "The Red One", and it's another of Carousel's MB Citaros. The bus has already come over from High Wycombe, and is on time here. We head first for Chesham but, whilst I am used to just jetting along the Amersham Road, this bus deviates into some of the nicer residential parts of Chesham Bois.
It's a little slow on the approaches to Chesham itself, and we lose a bit of time here.
On Chesham Broadway, I stumble across a brand-new Carousel vehicle:
ABOVE: New ADL Enviro200 MMC 80597 (YX25 OHV) hasn't yet been painted into Carousel colours as it prepares to work route 77 to the local suburb of Chartridge - an end-to-end journey that is scheduled to take all of seven minutes!
There's lots of open countryside on this route, but the bus is still busy, with plenty of churn.
We reach Ley Hill, on the Hertfordshire border.
ABOVE: The Crown public house in Ley Hill
A few miles further along is Bovingdon:
Adjacent to the village is the disused airfield at RAF Bovingdon. Built in 1942, it became a B-17 operational training base between 1943 and 1946. The US Air Force was based here from 1951 until 1962, flying B-26 Marauders, B-29 Superfortresses and B-50 Superfortresses. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal aircraft was said to be located here.
Flying ceased in 1969, since when several films have been made there, including "633 Squadron", "Hanover Street", an episode of "The Persuaders!", "The Man with the Golden Gun" (the flying car scene) and the "Live Aid" recreation in "Bohemian Rhapsody".
There's a working Customer Information screen on this bus, but it carries advice about a driver recruitment day that is now in the past, and details of the services operating over the Easter weekend - also now gone. There's nothing, though, to cover the forthcoming early May Bank Holiday, which would be more pertinent.
We are soon on the approaches to Hemel Hempstead, passing the main line station which is a long way out from the town centre. We reach Hemel's version of Swindon's "Magic Roundabout" (slightly less scary to drive through in my experience). Basically one big roundabout has been turned into six little ones, and you can go whichever way round works for your intended destination:
The approach into the town centre is on a bus-only road that passes the River Glade:
We reach "The Marlowes", Hemel Hempstead's bus interchange, at 1201, six minutes late.
ABOVE: Carousel 80893 again, in the Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead, has just completed its journey from High Wycombe. It is being overtaken by Arriva Herts & Essex 6525 (YX17 NFC), an ADL Enviro400 MMC, working cross-town route 2 to Bennetts End.
I have a tight connection here, which has become even tighter because of the late running. Fortunately I only need to cross the road to catch the 1208 departure on route 302.
And this is late as well! The bus is heading for Welwyn Garden City but I'm only going to Hatfield today. This is an Arriva Herts & Essex service, with one of their standard Volvo B7RLE Wright Eclipse 2 single-deckers.
ABOVE: Arriva Herts & Essex 3567 (KX09 GYU, left), an ADL/TransBus Enviro300, calls in at the Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead, with a 302 service towards the station at Boxmoor, whilst stablemate 2949 (MX09 LXU, right), a VDL SB200 Wright Pulsar 2, is heading the other way to Welwyn Garden City.
We leave at 1215, seven minutes late. It's a busy service.
On the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead is Leverstock Green, which was badly affected by the 2005 Buncefield oil depot explosion (the largest explosion in peacetime Europe), being just over a mile away. There was damage to buildings here, including broken windows, fallen chimneys and, in some cases, more serious structural damage.
Here, the 302 passes the "Leather Bottle", which has been here since 1725.
We come to St Albans where, despite being eight minutes late, the driver stops for two minutes before proceeding. It's a very busy scene in Chequer Street; lots of people, lots of buses, but not easy to photograph from a busy single-decker! So I console myself with a view of (a very quiet) St Albans City Bus Station instead!
Traffic is heavy around the Morrison's store on the Hatfield Road, but we don't seem to lose any time here so I guess it's always like this.
There's another short stretch of countryside through the Oaklands area. The flow is easier but we stand for 30 seconds outside the "Three Horseshoes" public house.
We enter Hatfield, where the University of Hertfordshire has a significant presence through its de Havilland Campus. Along from that is the Hatfield Business Park:
The Galleria shopping centre is visible from the A1(M) road, which tunnels right underneath it!
With hindsight, I should have got off the bus here - this is where the food, drink and facilities would have been. But I stay on a little longer, to the Town Centre stop. I'm expecting... well, a Town Centre full of shops. But what I get is a small precinct with a handful of shops, next to the main road (and a very busy roundabout). None of the shops look especially inviting, and neither do some of the people hanging around in the square outside the precinct.
It turns out that there is a pedestrianised Town Centre, but I don't find it, and I don't even find a signpost pointing towards it. Even Google Streetview hasn't been there, so it must be a secret kept just for the locals! Maybe next time...
ABOVE: Arriva Herts & Essex 3032 (MK59 JKZ), a VDL SB200 Wright Pulsar 2, passes the area known as Hatfield Town Centre, even though actually on the main road, working a route 302 service to Hemel Hempstead.
My journey now heads east, towards my intended end-point for day one, Brentwood. I'm about to board what might well be the longest bus route in the Home Counties, before heading to another extremity of the London Underground, albeit this time one that is no longer served. And then, I'm in for a disappointment, and an enforced change of plan...
TO BE CONTINUED...
BELOW: An approximation of the route covered in this article, also showing the M25 motorway and the Greater London boundary for context
