Route 12 is operated by London Central (part of the Go Ahead group) using long Routemasters (RML type). You will start off at the western terminus at Notting Hill Gate, famous for the film Notting Hill (with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts) and also interchange with Central, District & Circle Lines. Starting from the stand on Kensignton Church Street a right turn will take you on to Bayswater Road joining routes 70, 94 & 148. The bus picks up passengers at all stops along the route, as most are compulsory stops. You will be driving along the tree lined Bayswater Road alongside Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. You will then come to Queensway Station on the Central Line where the 70 leaves us to go to Bayswater.

Kensington Church Street
Notting Hill Gate >

< Kensington Church Street
Notting Hill Gate

You continue on to Lancaster Gate, passing the Thistle and Lancaster Hotels. Here there is a triangular junction in the middle lies the hotel and Central Line station. The 274 also begins here and joins us for the ride. Continuing past the junction still along Bayswater Road, we approach Marble Arch, the North Eastern end of Hyde Park. This is a large roundabout letting the old roman Watling Street, now known as the A5 Edgware Road cross our path. In the centre lies fountains and the Arch it self moved here from Buckingham Palace, where it was the Tyburn Gallows, a contraption to hang twenty people at once! Also in the middle is a bus lane where terminating buses can stand. Several other bus routes also join us here to make our way down Oxford Street.