Malcolm Knight wrote:

There was often considerable intermingling of central ("red") and
country ("green") buses in the outer fringes. Where I grew up, in
Belvedere, we had a choice of red buses (Woolwich-Erith) and green
buses (to Bexleyheath, Dartford and even Sevenoaks) passing the house.

As it happens I now live in Belvedere. There used to be direct buses
from the end of the road to Woolwich but now there are none, just
meandering single deckers.

Could this have something to do with the fact that the service is
parallelled by a railway, and the train to Woolwich is much faster?

I can walk to Bexleyheath slightly quicker
than the bus does the journey.

As there are more direct double deckers to Bexleyheath, that shouldn't
be a problem.

We used to catch the 101 from North Woolwich when visiting relatives
in Essex - I can also remember it being a real bone-shaking service,
although I wonder if some of that was the state of the roads through
the docks in the 1950s.

Could the tyres be to blame? My grandmother told me the buses used to
have solid rubber tyres, but I don't know how long that was the case.

It's the current ones that I called 'boneshakers'. I thought my teeth
might fall out.

IIRC the main cause of the shaking on those buses is the engine when
idling - a problem that's relatively easy to fix!