116 Chatham – Gillingham – Rainham – Wigmore – Hempstead Valley

The 116 is one of those everyday Arriva routes that quietly stitches together a remarkable amount of Medway in a single circuit. It begins at Chatham Waterfront Bus Station, where the Medway slides past the bus stands and the chalk bluff of Fort Amherst rises on the other side of the road. Within a couple of minutes the bus is alongside the council offices at Fort Amherst and the imposing stone gateway of Chatham Historic Dockyard, where HMS Cavalier, HMS Gannet and the submarine Ocelot sit just out of sight beyond the wall.

From the Main Gate the route swings into Chatham Maritime, the regenerated quarter built around the old basins. The window frames the modern apartments and student blocks around St George's Centre, the cinema and outlet shops at Dockside, and then the campuses of the Universities at Medway as the bus picks up Western Avenue and Central Avenue. There is a brisk handover of scenery here, from Georgian naval architecture to glass and brick newbuild, before the route drops down to New Kent Road.

Gillingham proper begins at Purser Way. The 116 calls at Mid Kent College and runs past the Royal Engineers Museum, whose collection of pontoons, tanks and Wellington's map of Waterloo sits behind a quiet brick frontage. A short detour around Brompton brings the King Charles Hotel and the edge of the Lines into view, then the bus rejoins the main drag at the Medway Park War Memorial and St Mark's Church.

Beyond the Westcourt Arms and Medway Maritime Hospital the housing thickens and the route climbs steadily. Through Jezreels, named for the unfinished Victorian tower that once stood here, the bus turns out towards Darland and the long ridge of suburban streets above the Medway. Featherby Road, Eastcourt Lane and the Tesco at Rainham mark the eastern edge of the built-up area, and from here the run through Twydall is a study in postwar planned housing, neat closes named after cathedrals and West Country towns.

The climb up through Parkwood is the scenic surprise of the route. As the bus works its way around Deanwood Drive the view opens out across the rooftops towards the river, and on a clear day you can pick out the cranes at Sheerness and the Isle of Grain power station chimney on the horizon. At Wigmore the 116 reaches its turning point, calling at Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre, a green-roofed mall tucked into a fold of the North Downs.

The return leg retraces the loop in reverse, dropping back through Parkwood and Rainham, past the Britton Farm Mall in Gillingham and along New Kent Road to Chatham Maritime, before sliding back down to the Waterfront stands beside the river.