Brentford escorts, TW8: the canal, the stadium and the Golden Mile

Match nights, and the hour after them

On a home fixture the streets around Lionel Road are solid from about six, the roads are worse than the pavements, and every table within a mile has somebody at it. It is genuinely good fun if that is what you came for. It is a hopeless setting for a quiet evening, and pretending otherwise would waste your money.

An hour after the final whistle the whole thing empties. By eleven the High Street is deserted, the canal is flat and black, and the lit windows of the new blocks run the length of the water. Several of the companions on this page will check the fixture list before agreeing a date, and Iris will do the same if you ask her to. A Tuesday in TW8 gives you the same walk with nobody else on it.

Four stations, four different journeys

Brentford station is three minutes from the High Street and runs South Western Railway trains into Waterloo in about half an hour. Kew Bridge, ten minutes east, is on the same line and is the stop for the stadium. Boston Manor is fourteen minutes north and puts you on the Piccadilly line. Gunnersbury, twenty minutes on foot, gives you the District line and the Overground, and the walk down through the park and along the High Street is a decent piece of the evening in itself.

Four choices means Brentford is easier to reach than anywhere else in these postcodes, and it also means the last train is rarely the problem. If the evening runs past it, a car back into town takes half an hour at that hour.

The water, and the two odd museums

Brentford Lock is where the canal steps down to the river and it turns unexpectedly handsome after dark: brick, water, lock gates and lit windows, with a handful of places to eat along it. The towpath between there and Watermans is lit most of the way and takes ten minutes at a slow pace. Further west it goes dark and the road is the better idea.

Two things here are worth an hour before dinner. Watermans, on the High Street three minutes from the station, is an arts centre with a small cinema showing the sort of film that never reaches a multiplex, a gallery and a bar facing the water. The Musical Museum, also on the High Street, holds a hall of instruments that play themselves, up to and including a cinema organ that rises out of the floor. Neither is what anybody expects of TW8, which is exactly why they are on this page.

Rooms on the water and rooms on the road

The hotel at TW8 8GA sits on Commerce Road right by the water and is the obvious choice if the canal is the reason you came. TW8 0BB is on the High Street at the stadium end, which is either convenient or a warning depending on the fixture. TW8 0GP stands on the Great West Road with the Golden Mile frontages, better for arriving by car.

None of them is connected to us in any way and none has been approached. They are simply where guests stay. Riverside flats along the water are just as common a booking, and the newer blocks have concierges who have seen everything and remark on none of it.

Who knows this stretch

Danielle plans around the football rather than against it and is at her best from about nine, once the crowd has gone and the Lock has emptied. Patricia takes a seven o'clock screening at Watermans and then walks the canal to dinner, and she warms up over the course of an evening rather than all at once. Tina found the Musical Museum by accident and has never stopped talking about it; she is early to everything and apologises every time.

Cindy comes downstream from Isleworth and Laura across from Osterley when the evening starts late. Everybody else is in On The Route, and the hours and figures are on the rates page.

Ten minutes in each direction

Upstream, the village at Isleworth is quieter and older and ends at the water in the same way. Osterley is north of the Great West Road with a park and a tube station. Hounslow Central is fifteen minutes west for the shops and the late food. Across the river by road, Twickenham is twenty minutes and comes with its own stadium problem on the wrong weekend.