Last September I had two medical appointments on the same afternoon. The second of these, at the dentist, had been booked six months earlier: the twice-yearly check-ups for me and my two children. Having turned 60 I am eligible for free eye tests, but still have to pay for all dental visits (including check-ups). So does my son now, having turned 19 in 2023. My daughter, still 17 at the time, has another couple of free check-ups at least. The first of my medical appointments that day was a follow-up to my (free) eye test in the summer: a glaucoma clinic at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

I now know that in addition to the well-known Moorfields site in Central London there are clinics at Brent Cross Shopping Centre and Ealing Hospital. I have been to both in the last few months. In September I went to the one at Brent Cross. I had been to the shopping centre there a handful of times, always by car. This time I took the tube. The 10-minute walk from Brent Cross station to the shopping centre is, I discovered, notoriously grim, taking you over the North Circular Road on concrete walkways. It was bad enough on a sunny autumn afternoon. It must be horrendous on a wet winter night. I was 10 minutes late for my appointment. The clinic called three times while I was on my way. Within five minutes of my arrival, I was sat down for the first of four different tests. The next three tests followed one another with a gap of no more than two minutes each time. I had been expecting delays but I was all done before 2pm. My dental appointment was at 4.10pm. I had over two hours to get from Brent Cross to Acton, a 20-minute journey by car. I hadn’t planned my route between the two but figured it would probably involve the tube again. Checking out the bus-stops I saw that it was the start of the 266 route, which would take me virtually door-to-door.

The 266 was a key bus route for my contemporaries at school who lived in Acton. My London Buses “Map and List of Routes” from 1973 lists the following stops: Hammersmith, Starch Green, Acton Vale, Acton, Harlesden, Willesden, Cricklewood (Extended Mondays-Fridays to West Hendon and Monday-Friday peak hours to Colindale Station). These days it starts at Brent Cross and finishes in Acton High Street. The bus that takes you from there to Hammersmith is the 218. Back in 2016 I wrote this “meandering bus route article” reflecting on routes past and present, and noted changes to the 88, the bus route of my youth:

At some point in the 1980s or 90s the routes and numbers of various buses were changed. The 88 was shortened, and began at Oxford Circus to follow its original route southwards, towards Penge and Dulwich. The western part of the route, the route of my childhood and which flowed through Tony Benn’s life, was renamed as the 94. It still starts at Acton Green but now it ends at Piccadilly Circus. The re-routing and renaming took away part of my childhood.

I expect there are people who feel the same way about the shortening of the 266 route. They would have no attachment to the 218.

I took the 266 from its starting-point of Brent Cross. I sat upstairs, in the back row, and took out an A4 notebook in case I wanted to jot anything down. I did so occasionally, throughout my 75-minute journey. The top deck was quiet for much of the time. At one point a couple of guys (in their early 20s I would guess) sat near the back and conversed mostly in Arabic. Otherwise there wasn’t much noise from the seats around me.

I had no idea what route the bus was taking, only that I would end up where I wanted to be. I see from checking the TfL website that these were the stops:

Brent Cross Shopping Centre, Tilling Road, Brent Cross West Stn / Edgware Road, Humber Road, Gladstone Park Gardens
Cricklewood Bus Garage, Mora Road, Cricklewood Lane, Sheldon Road, Anson Road
Willesden Green Station, Willesden Lane, Willesden Green Library, Villiers Road, Willesden Bus Garage
Pound Lane, Beaconsfield Road, Willesden Magistrates Court, Ilex Road, Roundwood Road
Curzon Crescent, Dixon Way, Inman Road, St Mary’s Road, Tavistock Road
Harlesden Jubilee Clock, Willesden Junction Station, Webb Place, Old Oak Common Lane, Shaftesbury Gardens, Chandos Road
School Road, North Acton Station, Wales Farm Road, Gypsy Corner, Noel Road
Acton Main Line Station, Faraday Road, Acacia Road, Creswick Road, Rosemont Road
King Street, Acton Old Town Hall, Acton Old Town Hall / Salisbury Street

43 stops in all. The journey from Harlesden Jubilee Clock onwards was familiar. I took it a few times in the summer of 2023 to play music in a pub in NW10.

While travelling I realized that this would be just the third bus route that I have followed from start to finish. I have taken the 94 a few times from start to finish, in both directions: from Acton Green to Piccadilly Circus and vice versa. I have also taken the 267 from Hammersmith Bus Station to Fulwell once. It was July 2018, travelling to a party hosted by an old school-friend and his wife. And that’s it. Despite living in London all my life, and taking buses regularly through all those years, there are only three routes that I have followed from start to finish in a single journey: the 94, the 267 and now the 266. In the 1970s the 94 followed a completely different route (Lewisham to Petts Wood Station) and the other two were longer than they are now. As noted above, the 266 extended to Hammersmith. The 267 went beyond Fulwell to Hampton and Hampton Court Station.

Right now I can’t think of any other routes that I might take from start to finish any time soon. If my appointment at the glaucoma clinic at Brent Cross hadn’t been scheduled just before my dental checkup I would never have travelled the entire length of the 266. For the record, these glaucoma checks (there was another one at the Moorfields clinic at Ealing Hospital in November) have not revealed anything to worry about. And my teeth were given the all-clear too, for another six months at least.