Eighty thousand visitors, a few Saturdays, and the quiet Sunday after

A very large stadium at the end of ordinary streets

The home of English rugby is called the Allianz Stadium these days, and nobody who lives near it calls it anything but Twickenham. It holds around eighty two thousand people, which makes it the largest rugby union stadium in the world, and it sits not in some ring road wasteland but in the middle of a residential patch of TW2, with Whitton on one side, Twickenham town to the south and St Margarets and Isleworth off to the east.

Most of the year the stadium is a large grey neighbour that people barely notice. On a Six Nations Saturday it becomes the only thing that matters for a couple of miles in every direction. Anybody planning an evening anywhere between Hounslow and the river in February or March should read the fixture list before they read a menu.

How the championship falls

The Six Nations is England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales, five rounds played between early February and the middle of March, with a couple of rest weekends in between. England play either two or three of their five matches at home, alternating from one year to the next, and every one of those home matches is played at Twickenham.

Most home fixtures fall on a Saturday, though Sunday afternoon matches do happen, and kick off times move around to suit the broadcasters, anywhere from lunchtime to the evening. The dates are published many months in advance, so there is never any excuse for being surprised. Iris checks them for every booking in TW1 and TW2 during the championship, and would rather move a date by one day than watch an evening fight its way through a crowd.

What a match day does to TW1 and TW2

The trains go first. Twickenham station takes the bulk of the crowd, with Whitton and St Margarets absorbing the overflow, and after the final whistle the queues to get onto a platform are managed with barriers and patience and can last a very long time. Services through Whitton and Hounslow are packed in both directions for hours either side of the match.

The roads follow. Streets immediately around the stadium close to traffic, and a wide ring of residential roads across Twickenham and Whitton has extra parking restrictions on event days, so a car arrival that would be easy on a Tuesday becomes a slow and expensive mistake. Taxis are scarce and slow.

Then the pubs and restaurants. Every pub within walking distance of the ground is full from late morning, the bars along London Road spill onto the pavements, and the tables on Church Street and in Whitton are booked weeks ahead by supporters. The hotels closest to the stadium, including the one built into it and the budget hotel on Chertsey Road, fill up the night before. None of this is unpleasant if you are there for the rugby. All of it is unhelpful if you are not.

Which weekends to steer round

Once the fixtures are out, mark every England home date. On the match day itself, leave TW1 and TW2 to the crowd entirely and plan the evening at the other end of the borough: Brentford, Osterley and the centre of Hounslow carry on much as normal, and only the trains passing through give the game away.

The Friday before a home match is busier than usual but perfectly workable. Visiting supporters arrive, the pubs near the station are lively and the stadium hotels are full, but a table away from London Road is usually available and the trains behave. The Saturday itself is the only genuinely lost evening in the area, and even that only matters within a couple of miles of the ground.

If you have your heart set on dinner by the river, the guide to Church Street in Twickenham explains why that lane in particular is one to avoid on a match day and one to seek out almost any other week of the year.

The Sunday after: quietly the best evening of the month

Here is the part most people get wrong. The evening to book is not the Saturday of the match and not the Friday before it. It is the Sunday after. By Sunday afternoon the crowd has gone home, the hotels are emptying out, the pubs are recovering in a slightly sheepish way and the restaurants have tables again. The whole of Twickenham has the air of a house the morning after a very large party: a little tired, a little quiet and entirely pleasant.

A Sunday plan that works: a late afternoon walk while the light holds, along the river at Twickenham or through Crane Park with its old shot tower on the Whitton side, then an early dinner, then a drink by the water. The trains are running normally again, if a little less often than on a weekday, and nobody is queuing for anything.

If the England home match itself falls on a Sunday, which does happen, move everything a day. The Monday after a Sunday fixture has exactly the same morning after feeling, with the added advantage that almost nobody thinks of booking it.

Who reads the fixture list for you

Stacy is anchored in Whitton, knows to the minute how long the Chertsey Road takes on a match day, and checks the fixtures before agreeing to any date at all. Rosa, based by the river in Twickenham, likes afternoons that turn into evenings and Sundays in particular, which makes her close to perfect for the day after a home game. Jasmin, also in Whitton, prefers an early start and will happily walk Crane Park first.

For a longer walk before dinner, the toned page is the place to look: it gathers the athletic women on the list, among them Nora from Isleworth, who walks everywhere she reasonably can and regards a couple of miles along the river as a warm up.

Booking around the fixtures

The booking that suits the Sunday after is dinner on the high street. £500 buys two hours, time enough for a drink and a proper meal. Four hours, at £900, leaves room for the walk, the dinner and a nightcap by the river with no watch in sight. Tell Iris the date you have in mind and she will check it against the stadium calendar before she confirms anything.

You give her the fee in person when you meet; the table and the bill are yours, as they would be with anybody else. The only real rule of the season is the one already given: know the fixtures, avoid the Saturday, and take the Sunday.