Riding Route #93

A few weeks ago, an elderly friend - in my mind, my pseudo-great aunt (PGA) - told me a story about travelling on a Number 93 bus in London during the Second World War.  She and her husband had been to the theatre and coming out found they couldn't use the underground due to an air-raid.  They'd caught the first vaguely suitable homebound bus and found themselves in Putney.  From there they'd caught a Number 93 to take them across the river to their home in Wimbledon.  Amongst the few other passengers on the top deck was a woman huddled deep inside her coat a few seats behind.  Suddenly, the woman got off the bus, leaving behind a package on the seat.  My PGA's husband snatched it up and dashed downstairs to look for her but without success.  He returned to my PGA clutching the package and announced that they were now the proud "parents" of a tiny kitten - for that's what was in the package.  The kitten was named Lucky and provided my PGA with many years of welcome company (for her husband was an airman); along with plenty of wonderings about how many other apparently unwanted kittens the woman had left on buses that day.

I decided to take a ride on a Number 93 bus - not in the hope of finding a kitten (I'm sorted in the feline pet department) but because I've often thought about travelling random London bus routes for the joy of it and the Number 93 seemed as good a one to start with as any.  Looking it up on the Transport for London website, I found that rather than running between Putney and Wimbledon, as I'd supposed from my PGA's story, it continued to North Cheam, which felt as if it might be rather a long way into Surrey.  I was still undecided about whether I would travel the whole route or just the part in my PGA's story when I arrived, by tube, at Putney Bridge to embark upon my adventure.