A trip to Ipswich

Yesterday I got the call from my agency that I was to take a truck from a certain truck hire firm with a base in north-west London up to Ipswich. My boarding school, of which I have a whole lot of not-so-fond memories, was just outside Ipswich, but I enjoy going up there these days, because it can be quite a pleasant ride, particularly when you know you are just coming back home again. This is actually part of my way of dealing with memories of this sort – to revisit the pleasurable (or even neutral) parts and break their association with their more painful aspects. I was told 8am “sharp” by the agency, but I then rang up the hire firm and they told me to forget the “sharp” bit. Around 8 would do.

That proved fortunate, because the nearest tube station to their yard is Stonebridge Park, on the Bakerloo line, and there was a signal failure on that line this morning. So when I got to Waterloo (which is the main London train terminal for trains from the south-west), I discovered that my tube through to Stonebridge would only be going as far as Paddington. So I had to divert via Euston, from which an overland train runs to Stonebridge Park. This being the era of the privatised railway, they certainly wouldn’t have the fast trains make an extra stop at Queen’s Park for people to change onto the bit of the Bakerloo line which was running. They’re not delayed, you see … it’s nothing to do with them. It’s not their problem. So, the train I got on from Euston didn’t leave until after quarter past eight.

And when I got there, I was sitting round for nearly 45 minutes before I finally got on the road. That’s something I hate – being told to hurry at one point, and getting to the second point and finding that nobody’s really in any rush at all. They gave me a T-registered truck (i.e. the registration plate begins with a T), which means about six or seven years old, and as I suspected, the customer, when I got it to him, asked why. There were, in fact, some brand new trucks sitting round, although perhaps they don’t have lifts at the back.

The first leg of a trip from Park Royal to Ipswich involves the North Circular Road. I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents, because it’s a death trap. It has one excellent bit (in east London), and two good bits (around Park Royal itself and east of Finchley). The rest is bad for various reasons. The bit around Neasden has six lanes (that’s three each way), a 40 mph speed limit, and houses on both sides. It has side roads coming onto it at right angles. Worst of all, though, is what I call the “Wood Green Gap” (on this map, it’s the bit of the A406 road without a yellow line in the middle, meaning that it’s an undivided road). That bit is due north of London, lying in between the “good bit” east of Finchley and the excellent bit. It has particularly narrow lanes, which trucks have to negotiate. It’s pretty scary.

While I was in the middle of negotiating the Wood Green Gap, Jon Gaunt was on the radio and calling for the M25 (the outer ring or, as is said in some American cities, “Beltway” around London) to be widened to six lanes each way – a ridiculous suggestion. Currently it’s mostly three each way, except for a well-used stretch around south and west London. The reasons why this is busier than any other part of the motorway are likely to be (a) people avoiding the river crossing at Dartford, where a toll has to be paid (actually, the then Conservative government claimed, when it built a bridge over the Thames at that point to relieve the existing two tunnels, that the tolls would be abolished once the bridge was paid for, but Blair & co reneged on this promise); and (b) the fact that this stretch has junctions very close together, and passes through suburbia rather than countryside. Actually, I can think of a third reason: the South Circular Road is of nothing like the quality of the North. It’s a sequence of local roads which has been strung together with one number. It actually goes through two town centres. They can’t do much about that, short of driving a six-lane highway through south London as well (which would be extremely controversial). So plugging the Wood Green Gap might well get quite a bit of traffic off the northern parts of the M25 and onto the North Circular.

The North Circular has had all its signs replaced in the last few years, mainly due to a new signage system but also, I suspect, because the authorities had enough money for the replacement, but not enough money, time, or brains to do a bit of decent research. Some of these signs are just ridiculous, including one in north London leading drivers along a quite unnecessary “long cut”, because the guy who designed the sign forgot that the A1 and A41 (two major roads out of London) actually merge and then split again. Then there’s the disappearance of Southend – a major town and particularly a major tourist destination – from London’s signs. There are, in fact, two major roads from London to Southend! But you don’t know that’s where you’re going until you’re quite far along. (Perhaps this is to ensure even distribution along both routes.)

Driving up the A12 towards Ipswich, I noticed that another weird sign hadn’t been shifted: the one at the Suffolk county border telling you it’s no stopping for nine miles. There is (or at least was) another sign, on the way out of Ipswich, saying the same thing. The thing is that the A12 is now all no-stopping from its start in the London Docklands to Wickham Market, several miles past Ipswich. That must be about 100 miles. There was a time when parts of the A12 were ordinary two-lane road, but that hasn’t been the case since the late 1980s.

This journey has what I consider three great views. I really like it when you see a wide sweep of land opening before you, and you can see such a thing just outside both Chelmsford and Colchester, at the start of their respective bypasses, going north. The third is from the Orwell Bridge on the A14. This goes over the River Orwell, from which George Orwell took his name. (His real name was Eric Blair.) It’s a big wide river estuary. Big, flat and open. Plus, there are some great views of Ipswich itself from it also. It’s one of those views best seen from the top deck of a bus, something people might have difficulty with because any buses going to Felixstowe or Lowestoft are likely to stop in Ipswich, rather than bypass it, as this bridge does. It’s an amazing sight; the first time I saw it, I thought, “are we going over that?”.

The journey home wasn’t so much fun. For a start, the bus journey from Ipswich hospital to the town centre costs £1.40. That’s more than London buses cost (£1.20) – I thought provincial buses were cheaper. That didn’t prepare me for the shock of the train fare – £22.40 for a single, off-peak ticket. I’m told that if I pre-book I can get it for much less, which is really no excuse for this rip-off fare. Actually, I am a bit annoyed at having to effectively lend my employer money in order to get myself home from doing their job. It’s a major, international vehicle hire firm, and if they need someone to do a job for them, they should jolly well pay their fare. (I did get a look around Ipswich in between, which is even more huge than I remember it from the early 1990s – a lot of it has not changed, although the new Buttermarket shopping centre, which I remember as a building full of empty shop units, is now full of shops. That’ll change back soon though, because it’s biggest shop is a department store of the Allders chain, which has just gone bust.)