Around the Outside of London
Part Four
20 September 2025
ABOVE: Arriva Kent & Surrey 6141 (FJ56 OBD) passes through Pembury Village whilst working route 6 from Tunbridge Wells to Maidstone. All photos in this article were taken on Saturday 17 May 2025, unless otherwise stated.
Earlier articles about this journey:
Part One (Slough to Hatfield)
Part Two (Hatfield to Chelmsford)
Part Three (Chelmsford to Bluewater)
Earlier articles about this journey:
Part One (Slough to Hatfield)
Part Two (Hatfield to Chelmsford)
Part Three (Chelmsford to Bluewater)
Bluewater Bus Station is possibly not the most elegant introduction to the major shopping centre near the River Thames in North Kent. There used to be an Information Centre with toilets in the Bus Station, but this was all closed down a while back. If you need toilets now you need to venture into the shopping centre itself.
Whilst there is plenty of room for the buses themselves, the walkways for passengers are quite narrow. I'm one of the probably quite small number of people to come here who is just changing buses. I've jumped off the X80 from Lakeside and only have to move along one bay for my next bus.
But I have to squeeze through a crowded space to do this - there's a big queue for my next bus, whilst a 96 from Woolwich has just dropped a heavy passenger load off a couple of bays further down, meaning that they're all coming towards me - and there's limited room for everyone to pass.
I'm about half-way through my journey around the outside of London. My circuit, which began in Slough, must stay outside of the Greater London Authority border, avoid using Transport for London services and, as much as possible, stay outside the M25 Orbital Motorway.
I want to get to Tunbridge Wells, but the direct route through Swanley and Sevenoaks isn't practical due to lack of buses on route 2 from Swanley to Sevenoaks (last bus of the day - there are only two - is at 1408)!
ABOVE: A selection of buses in Bluewater Bus Station. Go-Ahead London MEC 6 (BG09 JJY) and MEC 5 (BG09 JJX), Mercedes-Benz Citaro O530s, await their next duties on the Fastrack network, whilst Arriva Kent & Surrey 6570 (SK74 AXT) and 6571 (SK74 AXU), ADL Enviro400 MMCs, represent route 700 to Chatham.
Therefore, I have had to be a bit creative with this next leg. Although staying outside the Greater London area is the basic idea, I only want to be just outside it, which is why I'm not in Scotland! But, on this leg, I have no choice but to venture further out, starting with route 700 to Chatham.
This important service - judging from the number of people waiting for it - is operated by Arriva Kent & Surrey, and runs every 20 minutes on weekdays (half-hourly on Sundays). The fleet has recently been upgraded, with 74-reg ADL Enviro400 MMCs now running the route - and very smart they look too, even if I can't get the destination display to show properly in my images.
ABOVE: Arriva 6570 again, pulling into the bay to start a run to Chatham on route 700.
There's an oddity here though. The 1223 service has not departed (which is why there are so many people around). The bus pulls onto the stand and the driver announces that, due to late-running, he is going to go "via the tunnel", direct to Chatham. I have no idea what tunnel he is talking about. Clearly the bus is going to Chatham, but I would prefer to wait to enjoy the full route, so I let this one go.
The "tunnel" in question is actually the Medway Tunnel. Work started in 1992 on the UK's second immersed tube tunnel (the first being in Conwy, North Wales). The engineering design required for this construction was substantial, and the tunnel opened in 1996.
In terms of route 700, it looks like the diversion avoids most of the intermediate points on the normal route (notably Strood and Rochester), coming out of the tunnel near the Historic Dockyard area of Chatham. The diverted bus does take quite a few of those waiting, though, and it should be able to make up the lost 13 minutes en route.
The 1243 comes out on time. Whilst the bus is smart and modern, the upstairs front windscreen is filthy, and there's a regular creaking sound from the vehicle that suggests a structural issue of some kind.
As we pull out, I spot one of Go-Ahead London's new ieTrams for the Fastrack service across North Kent. This is a second batch to follow on from those in use on Transport for London route 358 (Crystal Palace to Orpington), which I visited for a previous article.
ABOVE: Go-Ahead London IE 26 (LJ25 BRV), an Irizar ie tram 12, navigates Bluewater Shopping Centre. Also in view is Go-Coach 1201 (LG14 OFX), a Fiat Ducato, which MAY be operating a Demand Responsive service.
The first part of the 700 is a fast run along nearly eight miles of the trunk A2 dual-carriageway.
ABOVE: Another 700 heads along the A2 towards Bluewater. This is the junction of the A227 for Gravesend.
We leave the A2 to the west of Strood, just before it becomes a motorway. A complex road layout here sees us soar over the A289:
Incidentally, the A289 is presumably the road that the previous 700 took, as it does lead to the Medway Tunnel in due course.
Meanwhile, the official route of the 700 brings us into Strood, which forms a conurbation with the neighbouring towns of Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham. We take a detour into the Earl Estate, a residential area to the south of the town.
ABOVE: Bunching on a route that runs every 20 minutes is far from ideal, but here are two 700s heading through the Earl Estate, Strood, on their way to Bluewater. They are 6566 (SK74 AXO) and 6563 (SK74 AXJ).
The bus works its way into Strood Town Centre, after which we pass under the Medway Valley railway line that links Strood with Maidstone and Paddock Wood. This line reached Strood in 1856, joining the North Kent line into London, which had opened in 1847.
The River Medway guards our route to Rochester. It is spanned by the Rochester Bridge. It is believed that the first crossing at this site was built by the Romans. The current crossing actually comprises of four separate bridges - two road bridges, a railway bridge and the Service Bridge, which carries pipes for gas, clean water and sewage, as well as cables for electricity, telephones and so forth.
The "Old [road] Bridge" was built originally in 1856 and stands on piers made of cast iron cylinders sunk through the riverbed to the rock underneath. The bridge was partly reconstructed by 1914, with bowstring-shaped trusses above the deck. The "New Bridge" was opened in 1970 to provide an increase in road capacity.
ABOVE: We are about to cross the New Bridge. The Old Bridge is on the right, with the Service Bridge not really visible between the two. On the extreme left is the railway bridge, whilst Rochester Castle can be seen on the right.
Rochester was a favourite place for author Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who based many of his novels on the area.
The Diocese of Rochester, the second-oldest in England, is centred on Rochester Cathedral and was responsible for founding a school, now The King's School, in 604 AD, which is recognised as the second-oldest continuously running school in the world.
The association with Dickens is the theme for Rochester's two Dickens Festivals, which take place in June and December. I went to the December event some years ago, and it was great fun! Many people dress up as Dickens' characters, or more generally as people from the Victorian era, and there are street shows during the day in the High Street and in the Castle Grounds, as well as a Christmas Market. I must pay another visit...
Since 1980, Rochester has also seen the Rochester Sweeps Festival - a revival of the historic May Day dancing chimney sweeps tradition. In Victorian times, chimney sweeps only had one day off a year, on 1 May. Held over the May Bank Holiday weekend, the Festival is reportedly now one of the biggest in the world.
It doesn't take long to work our way into Chatham. The town developed around Chatham Dockyard, which housed barracks for the British Army and the Royal Navy. By the 16th century, warships were being moored in this area because of its strategic sheltered location. It was established as a Royal Dockyard by Queen Elizabeth I in 1568, and most of Chatham Dockyard actually lies within Gillingham.
As we reach Chatham Town Centre, we are greeted by the statue of Thomas Waghorn, complete with a new hat that some wag(horn) has seen fit to climb up and add:
Thomas Fletcher Waghorn (1800–1850) was an English naval officer and postal pioneer. Born in Chatham, he promoted the idea of a new route from Great Britain to India, overland through Egypt, prior to the development of the Suez Canal. This journey almost halved the mileage, and also substantially reduced the journey time - either from two years to three months, or from three months to 35-45 days, depending what you read...
Word is that, although Waghorn (the statue) is pointing north, the intention was for him to point east, towards the route that he created.
ABOVE: Arriva Kent & Surrey 4264 (GN64 DXE), a Wright StreetLite DF, leads two other buses along Waterfront Way in Chatham. The main bus station is just out of sight in the distance.
We are soon approaching Chatham's "Waterfront" Bus Station, where the 700 terminates. When the Bus Station opened in 2011, there was lots of talk of a "dynamic bus facility", where allocation of buses to stands would be undertaken in "real time", according to what stands were available. That idea seems to have been dropped, with all routes allocated to a specific stand.
ABOVE: A selection of Arriva buses in Chatham Waterfront Bus Station on Good Friday, 18 April 2025.
The Bus Station sits in the shadow of Chatham's Old Town Hall, which is now The Brook Theatre:
ABOVE: The Brook Theatre, Chatham, on Good Friday 18 April 2025, is completely ignored by Arriva Kent & Surrey Wright Streetlite DFs 4280 (GN14 DXY, left) and 4289 (GN15 CWG, right).
I am well away from the M25 and it's time to turn south. My next bus is the 101 service to Maidstone. This is a frequent route (every 12 minutes on weekdays) and has already headed from Gillingham before calling in at Chatham Waterfront (incidentally, you can't actually see any water here, even though the River Medway is only 100 yards away, due to a housing development in between)!
The 101 is another Arriva Kent & Surrey service, operated from the same batch of 74-plate ADL Enviro400 MMCs as are used on the 700; this one, thankfully, doesn't have creaking sounds like the other one did.
The first part of this run is a straight-forward journey south, down the Maidstone Road. It's a busy service, with plenty of churn.
ABOVE: An unidentified ADL Enviro400 MMC of Arriva Kent & Surrey heads past Chatham Cemetery, on its way to Chatham and Gillingham on route 101. Taken on Good Friday, 18 April 2025.
Once we pass Blue Bell Hill, halfway between Chatham and Maidstone, we move onto a fast dual-carriageway for the run into Maidstone. For the second time today, there's a sensation of flying, as we use a flyover to pass the "Running Horse", a Harvester restaurant that I once took my Aunt and Uncle to for lunch.
We come down to earth again in time to appreciate Maidstone's Grade-II listed County Hall building, the headquarters of Kent County Council. The original Sessions House, which was designed by Sir Robert Smirke, was completed in 1824, with the new façade, designed by the county architect, F. W. Ruck, being completed in 1913.
Maidstone was the site of the discovery of a near-complete skeleton of an Iguanodon (now reclassified as Mantellisaurus), in 1834. This fossil was one of the first dinosaur finds and even predated the coining of the word "dinosaur". There are several dinosaur artworks in the town as a result. The main sculpture, "Iggy," is located at Maidstone East Station, apparently to welcome visitors arriving by train.
ABOVE: County Hall, Maidstone, on Good Friday, 18 April 2025, with "Iggy" in the foreground.
I leave the 101 in the Town Centre. The journey has taken 33 minutes from Chatham, as scheduled.
I take a lunch break at the local Wimpy before heading to the gloomy Chequers Bus Station, which I visited for my ride on route 71 a few months previously.
This time I am catching route 6 to Tunbridge Wells. Still with Arriva Kent & Surrey, this bus is due at 1500, and a bus marked as "Not in Service" pulls up at 1453. This is a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini, in partial Sapphire livery - a "quality" sub-brand that Arriva chose to let slip unil it was meaningless.
The driver leaves the engine running as he vacates the cab. He stands in the closed doorway, studying his mobile phone.
The engine stops after about five minutes - as modern buses are designed to do if idling for that length of time. It's now very close to the scheduled departure time, but there's still no movement from the driver. He makes a phone call - is there a problem?
Finally, at 1507, he gets back into the cab, loads up the appropriate destination display and opens the door. He's not a very responsive driver - a "thank you" is clearly beyond him. By the time we have loaded it is 1509, so we are nine minutes late setting off.
The general direction of travel now will be south-west. This is the quintessential English Village bus tour, as we move from one pretty village to another, through the English countryside.
Just off our route, the village of Teston has a narrow stone bridge crossing over the River Medway. It's single file for traffic, and the presence nearby of a railway level crossing must make progress slow at times. Wateringbury's existence is first documented in the 10th century will of Bihtric and Aelfswith, and in the early 11th century obligation to maintain part of Rochester Bridge, as recorded in the "Textus Roffensis".
I had never heard of the Textus Roffensis until researching this article, but the document (the name is latin for "The Tome of Rochester") comprises of two separate works written between 1122 and 1124. The first part is a collection of laws and other, primarily secular documents, whilst the second is the cartulary (a medieval collection of documents such as charters, deeds and legal records) of the Cathedral priory. (And yes, I did have to look up "cartulary" as well.) Reportedly the first part of the document is of fundamental importance to the study of Anglo-Saxon law. Let's have a detailed look... Actually, let's not...
ABOVE: Arriva Kent & Surrey 6501 (SN66 WHU), an ADL Enviro400 MMC, in the countryside near the village of Nettlestead, en route for Maidstone.
The village of East Peckham is another of those places in this area that holds a personal interest for me. My grandmother lived here from the mid-1980s until the early-1990s. For various reasons, she and her family regularly moved home throughout her life, and even when she landed in the sheltered accommodation of Marvillion Court in East Peckham, she managed to rotate through four different flats on the site! I've just looked for Marvillion Court on Google Streetview and it isn't there any more - bit of a shock, that!
ABOVE: East Peckham, just before the Village Centre.
More widely, East Peckham was the residence of the first person ever to get a speeding conviction in the UK. In 1896, Walter Arnold was summonsed for travelling at 8 mph in a motorised vehicle, thereby exceeding the-then speed limit for towns of 2 mph. He was caught by a policeman who gave chase on a bicycle, and fined one shilling (5p) plus costs.
And James Pimm (1798–1866), who created the gin-based liqueur known as Pimm's, is buried at Holy Trinity Church here.
Despite our late departure from Maidstone, we are back on time as we arrive in the Village Centre of East Peckham - only for the driver to then wait here for two minutes, making us late again!
The major intermediate town on route 6 is Paddock Wood. The commercial areas of the town are separated by the railway line, with retail to the south and major industrial areas to the north. Paddock Wood station is the other end of the Medway Valley railway line from Strood that we passed earlier, and it meets the main line from London to Ashford International via Tonbridge here.
After Paddock Wood, we return to our procession of villages. Matfield, with its pretty Village Green and Pond, was Kent Village of the Year in 2010. Pembury's village green and High Street is a conservation area. Chef Michel Roux Junior was born here, as was Shane MacGowan, lead singer of The Pogues, and a seemingly disproportionate number of sporting stars also have links to the area, judging by this list.
ABOVE: High Street, Pembury
We're now on the approaches to Tunbridge Wells, but take a quick detour to serve Tunbridge Wells Hospital.
ABOVE: Hams Travel DW 72 (DW72 HAM), a Volvo B8RLE MCV Evora, leaves Tunbridge Wells Hospital on route 297 (Tunbridge Wells to Tenterden).
I say "quick" detour as we stand for another four minutes here for timing purposes. This gives me the chance to watch cars circling around the Car Park in the Bus Station, looking for spaces. There seem to be more cars than spaces, and I wonder, as I often do, whether more focus by the local authority and/or the NHS might deliver ideas for bringing more people into sites like this by bus.
ABOVE: Tunbridge Wells Hospital
Finally, Tunbridge Wells is in sight. We arrive at the Station terminus one minute late, at 1624. This bus left Maidstone nine minutes late, and spent a further six minutes waiting time along the route, but has still arrived broadly on schedule, suggesting that the timetable is far too slack. I see that the Saturday service has now been reduced from hourly to every 90 minutes, but the journey time is unchanged. Hmm.
ABOVE: Arriva Kent & Surrey 6205 (FJ58 KXG), a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini, at journey's end on route 6 in Tunbridge Wells.
I have a moment to appreciate the Great Hall Arcade. Opened in 1872, it was designed by a local architect in a contemporary French style with a large hall which was to supply the demand for public rooms for cultural activities including lectures, concerts and social events. There was also a library and reading room. It has since been divided into a number of separate shopping units. As I write this, it is up for sale with an expected sale price of around £10,039,000. Let me check my savings book...
ABOVE: The Great Hall Arcade in Tunbridge Wells
And this is where the second day of my tour around the outside of London comes to an end. This has been a tricky bit, as I have had to venture further away from town than originally expected. The route ahead looks easier, but there's still a lot of ground to cover to get me back to Slough, and scope for a mistake that I might not realise I'm making until it's too late...
TO BE CONTINUED...
BELOW: An approximation of the route covered in this article, also showing the M25 Motorway and the Greater London boundary
