Around the Outside of London
Part Three
30 August 2025
ABOVE: First Essex 33574 (SN58 ENT), an ADL Enviro400, is in Miles Gray Road in Basildon, on a route 300 service to Chelmsford. All photos in this article were taken on Saturday 17 May 2025.
There's a good view of Chelmsford Bus Station from the railway station country platform that passes almost overhead. But, as my train from London pulls in, the view has gone past too quickly for me to register it and take a photograph. I'm at the wrong end of the platform to go back and get the required picture, because time is short and I need to get downstairs. I have a bus to catch in just a few minutes!
I wasn't intending to be in Chelmsford at all - I should have been in Brentwood this morning. I'm resuming my trip around the 'outside' of London, which started in Slough (the story so far is covered in Parts One and Two of this saga). The 'rules' are very simple. My circuit must stay outside the Greater London Authority border, avoid using Transport for London services and, as much as possible, stay outside the M25 Orbital Motorway.
Had the 21 bus operated by NIBS turned up in Ongar (see Part Two), I would have ended up in Brentwood. But, because it didn't, I had to travel out to Chelmsford instead, hence I am restarting from here this morning.
ABOVE: Three First Essex buses are in view as I sit upon a fourth one in Chelmsford Bus Station. Immediately in front is 44541 (YX13 AHU), an ADL Enviro200, working local route 47 to Broomfield Hospital. Behind are 36838 (YN69 XXV, left), a Scania N250UD ADL Enviro400 MMC and 34426 (SN17 MTZ, right), an ADL Enviro400 MMC. Both have been working route X30 (Southend to Stansted Airport), although BusTimes.com suggests that 34426 didn't cover any more trips that day. In the background are the platforms of Chelmsford railway station.
I have had to recast my plans for today, although that may be a blessing as route 269 (Brentwood to Grays) that I had been planning to take would have nipped just inside the Greater London boundary in the North Ockendon area, albeit a tiny section that isn't even served by a Transport for London bus. I would have stayed outside the M25, though, as this is the one area where the motorway (just) strays into the Greater London area.
But I've plotted a route that keeps outside the boundary, and well away from it (as far as possible). I'm starting today on route 300 towards Basildon. This is a frequent service (every 20 minutes on Saturdays and even better on weekdays), and I'm after the 0930 departure.
An ADL Enviro400 turns up a couple of minutes before departure time and I am soon on board, settled in my favourite seat (upstairs, front left aisle). I have a moment to consider how tatty this bus is. Some of the seats have leather coverings (often torn), whilst others have traditional cushions; some looking new, some faded. It's not a good look.
ABOVE: Taken from above, the tatty front seats.
There's a low bridge under the railway, and my double-decker will have to complete three sides of a square in order to get around it. However, one double-decker bus did recently attempt to get under the bridge, and got well-and-truly stuck. (How it got "stuck" rather than losing its roof is something of a puzzle to me.)
ABOVE: The low bridge on Duke Street, Chelmsford. Note the clear instruction sign to drivers of double-deckers to go the opposite way - looks like someone has even signed to acknowldge the instruction!
ABOVE: On the other side of the bridge, with Chelmsford station entrance in the background. An ADL Enviro200 (left) and an ADL Enviro 200MMC have been able to use the short-cut.
Now a city, Chelmsford started growing as a settlement from 1100 AD, when a bridge across the River Can was built. The town grew in importance after King John issued a Royal Charter in 1196, allowing Chelmsford to host a market. By 1219 Chelmsford had become the county town of Essex.
It takes quite a few minutes to clear through the City Centre, despite how quiet it is at this hour on a Saturday. After navigating the streets of the City Centre, we have to turn left onto Parkway, a busy dual-carriageway, and do a 360-degree turn at the Odeon Roundabout in order to then turn left and start the journey proper. It's taken eight minutes from the Bus Station and we're less than half a mile from the starting point as the crow flies.
ABOVE: Chelmsford City Centre
Things obviously speed up after this. We're soon into the suburbs of Tile Kiln and Galleywood, after which we escape into open country.
In West Hanningfield, just after crossing the major A12 trunk road (London to Lowestoft), we pass the British Headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses' movement.
We come to the village of Stock. A Grade II*-listed windmill stands to the east of the village - sadly not visible from the bus. It's a pretty village, though...
The major intermediate town for route 300 is Billericay. In 1620, four local people were on board the Mayflower as it sailed to Massachusetts, to establish the first English settlement in what would become the north of the United States. Billericay has long taken pride in this connection, and many businesses and other organisations use the name Mayflower, with the Town Council and other local organisations using it as their emblem.
A row of bus stands represents the interchange with the railway station.
ABOVE: Billericay station (just visible on the left) and the bus stops lined up outside the entrance.
ABOVE: Having just crossed the railway line at Billericay, we come across First Essex 33573 (SN58 ENR), an ADL Enviro 400, heading back to Chelmsford.
Once over the railway line at Billericay, we pass through the main High Street of the town - only to then leave it prematurely as we branch off at Chapel Street, in front of St Mary Magdalen church.
We come to an area called Barleylands, where the main attraction is a Farm Park, with "farm animals, craft workshops, rides, play areas & more". Apart from the Farm Park, this area is mainly rural - considerably rural, in fact, for somewhere just seven miles from the border with Greater London. But we are in the Green Belt of course.
Things change abruptly when we reach Noak Bridge. My initial hunch on reaching this housing estate is that it is modern (based on its appearance).
My hunch is right. First planned in the 1970s as part of Basildon New Town, construction of Noak Bridge began in 1979. Within three years, almost 400 dwellings had been built, as well as a school, a surgery and shops. A nature reserve lies to the south-east, and consists of twenty acres of meadow, scrub and woodland. It contains several ponds which reportedly attract a variety of amphibians and dragonflies.
We pass into Basildon itself, where a huge out-of-town retail park dominates. We reach Basildon Bus Station, on time, at 1033. The Bus Station is perfectly functional, but it's not pretty.
ABOVE: Look closely and there are SEVEN buses, all belongng to First Essex, in view at Basildon Bus Station. In the foreground is 47650 (SN15 AEM), a Wright Streetlite DF, next to fellow Streetlite 47652 (SN15 AEP).
This has been a decent ride - not too hurried, not too slow, and we have kept to schedule with no stops for time along the way. And I've seen some lovely places along the way. All on a route that was never intended to be part of this particular adventure. I shall ride it again some day!
The punctual arrival has enabled me to make a very tight connection into route 100 to Grays and Lakeside. Only two stands away from where I am dropped off, I can easily make the 1035 departure, where the bus is open for business. The driver is reading a sci-fi novel while he waits for departure time, but he quickly comes back down to Earth to attend to me! There are a few people on board already.
This is another ADL Enviro 400 from First Essex, but this time without the variable seat coverings.
I have covered most of this route before, I took a ride on route 200 as part of my 200th article. The 100 is marginally quicker than the 200, but covers broadly the same route most of the way.
We pass through the wonderfully-named Fobbing, but I get the brush-off every time I try to find out something about this place... (Actually the name means "Fobba's people"; Fobba being a shortened form of the name Folcheorht - the village was one of the main villages involved in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.)
The town of Corringham was formerly served by the Corringham Light Railway which connected the Kynoch munitions factory with the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway. The railway was open to the public from 1901 until 1952. Further back in history, it is thought that St Cedd, who established Tilbury Monastery in AD 653, may also have established a church here.
ABOVE: Central Connect 218 (RX23 TUW), a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter EVM Cityline, passes along Gordon Road in Corringham, working route 375 (Grays to Horndon on the Hill).
Stanford-le-Hope has an 800-year-old church, St Margarets, at its centre, and the River Hope, a tributary of the Thames, runs through the town. The town name is derived from Norman settlements and refers to Stanna's Ford over the river Hope. Meanwhile, Grays, the largest town in Thurrock, has archaeological evidence to indicate that the area has been inhabited since the Palaeolithic period.
ABOVE: First Essex 33418 (WA56 FTT), an ADL Enviro400, passes along Maidstone Road in Grays, working a route 100 service towards Basildon.
We're on time at Grays Bus Station (1125), but lose a few minutes on the approach to Lakeside Shopping Centre. Lakeside is the seventh-largest shopping centre in the United Kingdom, but loses out to Bluewater, just across the river (fifth-largest); we will come to Bluewater later.
ABOVE: Lakeside Shopping Centre
Our arrival at the somewhat-underwhelming Lakeside Bus Station is at 1141, three minutes behind schedule. Here I find a reminder that we're not far from London, in the form of Transport for London (TfL) bus services 370 (from Romford) and 372 (from Hornchurch). These services cross the Greater London boundary - I haven't accidentally strayed inside!
It's curious that these are the first TfL buses I have stumbled across since setting out from Slough (the preserved buses on the 339 Epping to Ongar / Shenfield are London buses, but not on TfL services so they don't count).
ABOVE: Arriva London T229 (LJ61 CFZ), an ADL Enviro400, lays over at Lakeside Bus Station between trips on route TfL 370 from / to Romford.
I have stipulated that I must stay outside the M25 motorway on this trip as far as possible. But I must now actually use a stretch of the motorway as there is no other way to get across the River Thames. In the old days, I would have used the Tilbury to Gravesend ferry, but that was discontinued in April 2024. So my next bus is the X80 service, across the river, to Bluewater.
This is an hourly local service operated by Ensignbus, formerly a local independent but now part of First Bus, albeit still trading separately at the moment.
ABOVE: Ensignbus 179 (LX71 AOO), a Wright StreetDeck Ultroliner, approaches the Lakeside stop of route X80.
Ensignbus has now introduced a tap-on payment facility that charges on a sliding scale. The first ride of the day is £2.70, the second is £2.20 and the third would be £1.90, bringing you to a £6.80 cap for the day. In this case I am only making one trip so my fare is £2.70.
There's one of those horrid large TV screens in the upper front windscreen, with an poorly-presented message:
ABOVE: Taking this literally, does this bus terminate in Hornchurch? The time stamp on my photo suggests that it is 1204 rather than 1159 as well.
It's all aboard for the 1205 departure. There are very few stops on this service and I find myself wondering why people at a large shopping centre on one side of the Thames would want to leave that shopping centre in favour of a large shopping centre on the other side. Or maybe, like me, they need to get across the Thames and this is the only viable way of doing so?
The whole area around here is dominated by retail. As well as the Lakeside Shopping Centre itself, 1.4-1.7 million square feet in area (depending what you read), there are other shops and retail parks on the outskirts.
ABOVE: The Lakeside Retail Park stands adjacent to the main shopping complex
The X80 is a journey better done north-to-south. South-to-north services pass through the Dartford Tunnel, but we have the pleasure of crossing via the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, opened in 1991.
Of course, you don't get the best views of a bridge by actually being on it, but there is a preview to be had as we approach:
Technically, this is the A282 rather than the M25. But, as it's a link road that joins the two bits of the M25 together, and you can't see the join, one may as well think of it as the motorway.
ABOVE: The view from the north side of the crossing shows the "High Speed 1" railway line on the viaduct to the left, whilst the railway line at the bottom of the picture is a local freight line that appears to service the local businesses here (of which there are many, as can be seen). it links to the main railway between the QEII Bridge and Grays
ABOVE: Crossing the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge
There's a warning on the Ensignbus website that, "due to major disruption or closure of the Dartford Crossing, this route may occasionally be severely delayed or suspended". I'm sure I heard a story recently of a bus on the X80 arriving hours late for this reason, but today, all is well, and we have landed in Kent in good time (well we're so high up on the bridge that it feels like landing)!
As we leave the bridge, and the motorway, we swing right round to get another look at it, now from the south side of course. It's certainly a sight to behold! With return traffic using the tunnel, I wonder if it's the only major one-way traffic bridge in Britain?
From here, it's only a mile-and-a-quarter as the crow flies to Bluewater. It's a little further by road and we take a short detour to 'Greenhithe for Bluewater' station.
As with all of these major shopping centres, it takes a few minutes to navigate ourselves around to the Bus Station. The driver runs through a red light at a Bus Gate on the outskirts of the Centre, but we are still three minutes late arrving, at 1228. Which actually isn't bad, considering the territory (as noted above).
We're in Fastrack land now. Fastrack is a local network of routes using a series of "busways" in the North Kent area. The network was transferred in November 2024 to Go-Ahead London, which is starting to introduce some ieTrams to the route, similar to the ones used on TfL route 358. And like the 358, deployment of the new vehicles is decidedly slow. I'll come and 'do' Fastrack properly when the new buses have settled down.
Go-Ahead London is a TfL operator, of course, but Fastrack represents a commercial venture, and these buses are not part of the TfL network. There is plenty of TfL representation here, though, from routes 96 (from Woolwich), 428 (from Erith) and 492 (from Sidcup). We're still beyond the London border, though.
ABOVE: Go-Ahead London MEC 32 (BD09ZVX), a Mercedes-Benz Citaro O530, is seen at Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent, heading for Dartford on the Fastrack service B. A Stagecoach London ADL Enviro400 MMC can be seen on TfL route 96 in the background.
A Go-Coach vehicle on route 470 passes through:
ABOVE: Go-Coach 3802 (YJ59 PKV), an Optare Solo, passes a Fastrack Citaro as it starts a trip on route 470 towards Longfield.
One of my possible ways of progressing from Bluewater was planned as a convoluted route to Dartford (via Fastrack to avoid the TfL 96) and Swanley, to take Go-Coach route 2 to Sevenoaks. But the car is king in this region, and the last bus on route 2 from Swanley is at 1408! Because I started at Chelmsford and not at Brentwood, the 2 is out of reach - I cannot get to it in time.
I need to find a different route to get me around this south-eastern side of the capital - the most difficult bit, perhaps, as buses are less plentiful here. So I need to venture rather further from the Greater London border than I was originally intending...
TO BE CONTINUED...
BELOW: An approximation of the route covered in this article, also showing the M25 Motorway and the Greater London boundary
