Route 24 runs between Grosvenor Road on the river in Pimlico and the Royal Free Hospital at the bottom of Hampstead Heath: 34 stops northbound, 39 coming back, and a bus in every hour of the day and night, seven days a week. One flat fare of £1.75 covers the whole thing.
It is an ordinary red double-decker on an ordinary bus route, which is the point. The 24 crosses Westminster, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross Road, Tottenham Court Road and Camden Town in a single ride, then keeps going into back streets of Kentish Town that no visitor ever sees. Our round-up of bus routes worth riding for the view explains why it belongs on that list; this page is about the route itself. If you have not used a London bus before, read how paying and boarding work first: no tickets, no cash, and no touching out.
Route 24 in numbers (September 2026)
- Termini
- Grosvenor Road (Pimlico, SW1V) and Royal Free Hospital (Pond Street, NW3). Southbound journeys start one stop earlier, at South End Green
- Stops
- 34 northbound, 39 southbound
- Hours
- 24 hours, every day, on all four timetabled day types
- Frequency
- Five or six an hour from 06:00 to 20:00; four an hour in the late evening; two an hour between 02:00 and 05:00
- End to end
- 35 minutes at 03:00, about an hour at 08:30, and 70 to 72 minutes late morning
- Fare
- £1.75 flat, rising to £1.85 on 1 November 2026. Daily bus cap £5.25, rising to £5.55
Both ends are slightly not where the name says
The southern terminus is a bus stand on Grosvenor Road, on the Thames embankment below Churchill Gardens. Nothing else stops there: the two stands, CM and CP, belong to route 24 alone. It is a five-minute walk from Pimlico station and about ten from the middle of Pimlico and Victoria, so hardly anybody joins at the very start. That is exactly why you should.
The northern end is signed for the Royal Free Hospital on Pond Street, above South End Green, where Hampstead Heath Overground station is and the southern edge of the Heath begins two minutes uphill. It is not Hampstead village, which is another twenty minutes of steep pavement further up. For Hampstead Heath the bus puts you at the right gate; for the pubs and bookshops of Hampstead, get off and climb.
It runs all night, and that is the most useful thing about it
The 24 is a 24-hour route, not a day route with a night replacement. There is no N24. TfL's timetable for the Grosvenor Road stand lists journeys in every one of the 24 hours on all four day types, including Sunday night into Monday morning, when much of the night network thins out.
Counted out of that timetable, a northbound bus leaves Grosvenor Road four times between midnight and 01:00, three times in the next hour, and twice an hour from 02:00 until about 05:00. Southbound from South End Green the pattern matches. Half an hour is the longest wait at any point in the night, which is generous for a route that also runs a full daytime service.
That matters if you are staying around Victoria and going out in the West End. A bus from Trafalgar Square or Cambridge Circus at two in the morning gets you back with no taxi and no change. Our guide to London's night buses covers the wider network; the 24 is one of the few you can simply stay on.
The night run is almost half an hour quicker than the daytime one. Journey Planner gave 35 minutes for the 03:25 from Grosvenor Road and 71 minutes for the 11:11. Same bus, same 34 stops, same fare.
How long it takes, by the hour
Ask most people when a central London bus is slowest and they will say the evening rush. On the 24 that is wrong. We checked nine northbound departures from Grosvenor Road for a Wednesday in late September 2026 on TfL's Journey Planner:
| Departure | Grosvenor Road to Royal Free Hospital |
|---|---|
| 03:25 | 35 minutes |
| 08:38 | 60 minutes |
| 11:11 | 71 minutes |
| 12:31 | 71 minutes |
| 14:03 | 70 minutes |
| 16:10 | 69 minutes |
| 17:30 | 66 minutes |
| 19:14 | 59 minutes |
| 23:17 | 43 minutes |
TfL's own speed measurements agree. Its published bus speeds by route, for the five accounting periods from 1 April to late August 2026, put the 24 at 6.46 to 6.74 miles per hour in the weekday morning peak and 6.48 to 6.61 miles per hour averaged over all hours and all days. The morning peak is marginally the faster of the two, because bus lanes and signal priority are doing their work then. From mid-morning to mid-afternoon, Whitehall, Charing Cross Road and Camden High Street fill with deliveries, coaches and turning traffic, and the bus sits in it. Southbound the shape is the same: 62 minutes at 08:04 against 68 at 14:00. Allow an hour and a quarter for the full length in the middle of the day, and note that the hours worth avoiding here are not the ones you would guess.
Which seat, and which window
The front two seats on the upper deck are the ones to want, and the way to get them is to board at a terminus or near one, while the bus is empty. Northbound that means Grosvenor Road, Claverton Street or Pimlico Academy; southbound, South End Green or Cressy Road. By Victoria in one direction and Camden Town in the other, the front row has gone.
Once upstairs, the side matters more than the row. Travelling north, the left-hand window gets the good half of Whitehall: the gated mouth of Downing Street, the Cenotaph standing in the middle of the road, then the long front of Horse Guards. The Banqueting House is on the right. Coming south the sides swap, and the right-hand window takes Horse Guards and Downing Street, with the Palace of Westminster filling the screen ahead at Parliament Square. Our page on Horse Guards and Whitehall explains what you are looking at.
Northbound only, the bus runs the length of Victoria Street and stops at Westminster Abbey with the west front on the right. Southbound it comes down Whitehall instead and misses that stop, so north is the better sightseeing direction of the two. Among the other routes with pages of their own, route 11 covers the same Westminster stretch from the west, and route 88 links the museums.
Three things out of the window that nobody points out
Two stops into the northbound journey, at Claverton Street, look inland at a 136-foot glass cylinder standing among the Churchill Gardens flats. It is the accumulator tower of the Pimlico district heating system, built between 1947 and 1950 by Powell and Moya and listed Grade II. Churchill Gardens was the first district heating scheme in Britain, and the hot water originally arrived through a tunnel under the Thames from Battersea Power Station. The tower stored it.
Much further north, at the St Dominic's Priory stop on Southampton Road, the very large brick church on the west side is the Roman Catholic Priory Church of St Dominic, built between 1874 and 1883 by Charles Buckler and listed Grade II*. It was designed as a shrine to Our Lady of the Rosary and has fifteen chapels, one for each of the fifteen mysteries.
Then, at the last stop before the terminus, Lawn Road. The long white concrete block with external walkways and diagonal stairs is the Isokon building, by Wells Coates, built in 1933 and 1934. Historic England calls it the first block of flats built in Britain in the fully modern style and lists it Grade I, which for a 1930s building is exceptional. Marcel Breuer lived there, and so did Walter Gropius.
What the ride costs, and the change coming in November
Every London bus journey costs the same regardless of distance, so riding the 24 end to end costs £1.75, the same as one stop. From 1 November 2026 that becomes £1.85. The Hopper fare adds any number of further bus or tram journeys inside the hour for nothing more.
The bus and tram daily cap is £5.25, rising to £5.55 on 1 November. Children under 11 travel free with an adult and need no card at all, so a couple with two young children can ride buses all day for £10.50 between the two adults, less than two adult tickets on any sightseeing coach. Our explainer on how the caps work covers the traps, the main one being that a cap only counts journeys made on the same card or device.
Under-11s ride the 24 for nothing, with no card and no registration. The cap applies to the adults only, so two adults and two small children ride all day for £10.50 in September 2026.
Finding the right stop, and the right direction
London bus stops carry letters, and on a route that doubles back through Camden the letter is what stops you boarding the wrong way:
- Northbound: Grosvenor Road stand CM, Victoria Station stop J, Trafalgar Square / Charing Cross stop C, Camden Town station stop X, Royal Free Hospital stop Z.
- Southbound: South End Green stop A, Camden Town station stop S, Trafalgar Square / Charing Cross stop D, Victoria Station stop Z5, Grosvenor Road stand CM.
Stop Z5 at Victoria station is served by the 24 and nothing else, which makes it both easy to find and easy to walk past. Camden Town is the other place people go wrong, because the two directions use different streets rather than opposite kerbs; the Camden Town page has the layout.
Every bus on the route has a ramp and a wheelchair space, which matters on this corridor in particular: of the Northern line stations the 24 passes, Mornington Crescent, Camden Town and Belsize Park have no lifts at all in TfL's own station data. The bus is the level way along that stretch. For the wider picture, see accessible transport across the network.
What is actually documented about the route's history
The 24 is often described as the oldest unchanged bus route in London, following the same line since 1910. We could not verify that on any official source. TfL does not publish route histories, and the London Transport Museum's website does not answer automated requests, so the date is repeated widely and sourced nowhere we could check.
What is documented is that the corridor has been stable for a long time and the ends have not. TfL's timetable page showed the same pair of termini in 2014 as it does now, with small differences between: a stop called New Scotland Yard then, St James's Park station now. The northern stand is at the Royal Free Hospital, and the hospital trust's own history says it moved to its present Hampstead site in the mid-1970s. Whatever the 24 did in 1910, it did not stand there. Treat the claim as pub history; the ride is worth taking on its own merits.
What goes wrong
Whitehall closes for ceremonial events, and when it does the 24 is diverted away from the best part of its own route. State occasions, remembrance services and the mounted changing of the guard all affect it, so check TfL's status page on the morning if Whitehall is why you are going.
The other recurring problem is bunching: five or six buses an hour means one every ten minutes in theory and two together after a twenty-minute gap in practice, especially southbound through Camden on a Saturday. There is no luggage rack on a London bus, and the stretch north of Camden runs through residential streets with few shops and no public toilets.
Frequently asked questions
Does the number 24 bus run 24 hours?
Yes. TfL's timetable lists departures in every hour of the day on Monday to Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so the route runs right through the night on all seven nights. There is no separate night route: the bus at three in the morning is still the 24, at the standard flat fare.
How long does the 24 bus take from Pimlico to Hampstead Heath?
Between 35 minutes in the middle of the night and about 72 minutes late on a weekday morning, with roughly an hour in the morning peak. The scheduled running time is 56 minutes northbound and 57 southbound, which is optimistic for anything between 10:00 and 17:00.
Where should I get on the 24 for the front seat upstairs?
At or near a terminus, where the bus starts empty: Grosvenor Road or Claverton Street going north, South End Green or Cressy Road coming south. By Victoria northbound and Camden Town southbound the front row is almost always taken already.
Can I use the 24 bus with a wheelchair or a pushchair?
Yes. Every London bus has a ramp and a wheelchair space, and the driver will put the ramp down. That is worth knowing here because three of the Northern line stations the route passes have no lifts, so the bus is the step-free way along the Camden and Chalk Farm stretch.
Sources
- Transport for London - Unified API, route 24 stop sequences (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Unified API, route 24 timetable from Grosvenor Road (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Buses performance data, bus speeds by route to period 5, 2026-27 (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Bus and tram fares (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Detailed station data, lifts and step-free routes (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop, Churchill Gardens Road (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Isokon Flats, Lawn Road (checked September 2026)
- Historic England - Roman Catholic Priory Church of St Dominic, Southampton Road (checked September 2026)