Hayes, UB3 and UB4: the record works, the theatre and a fast train home

Twenty minutes, and why that matters

Hayes and Harlington station sits five minutes from the middle of Botwell, and the Elizabeth line reaches Paddington in about twenty minutes and Bond Street in roughly the same. That is closer, in time, than a great deal of south London, and the trains are newer than anything else on this site.

It runs late as well, well past midnight, which means an evening in UB3 can carry on considerably longer than the postcode suggests to people who have never tried it. It also means a companion can be here at short notice rather than after an hour of planning, which is not true of the rest of these pages.

The Old Vinyl Factory on Blyth Road

The EMI works on Blyth Road pressed records for the whole country, and a good part of the site has been restored: original brick, new lighting, places to eat, and a small cinema at the end of the yard. It is five minutes from the station and it is the best evening in UB3 by a comfortable distance.

It is not Soho and it is not trying to be. What it is, is a set of genuinely handsome industrial buildings with something on in them, in a town where nobody expects to find either. Dinner in the yard and a late screening afterwards is the shape most guests settle on, and the train home is still running when it finishes.

A proper theatre on Grange Road

The Beck Theatre is a six hundred seat touring house ten minutes from the station, and its programme is honest about what it is: comedy, tribute nights, pantomime at Christmas and the occasional play that could have been in the West End. The bar fills properly at the interval and is half the entertainment.

An evening that starts with a show is easier than one that starts with dinner, because you have something to talk about before you have run out of things to say. Afterwards it is somewhere in Botwell for a late plate, or ten minutes by car to the Bath Road.

Rooms at both ends of the town

One hotel sits up by junction 4 of the M4 and is the easiest if you are driving. At the southern edge, three more fall inside Hayes addresses: the long bar on the Bath Road, the bar set well back from its door, and the glass roofed garden with palm trees in the middle of it.

That southern cluster is ten minutes by car from the town centre and a good deal closer to the runway than to Blyth Road, so it is worth being clear which Hayes you mean when you give an address. None of these hotels has any tie to us. Flats and houses across UB3 and UB4 make up a fair share of the evenings arranged here.

The two anchored in UB3

Michelle will tell you which building at the old works was the pressing plant and which was the offices, and she is right, because she asked. She likes an eight o'clock start, dinner first and a late film if the programme is worth it. Nancy makes an evening of the theatre: the bar at half past six, an opinion withheld until the interval on principle, and a proper dinner afterwards.

Luna and Milena both work the Bath Road end from the Cranford side. Every portrait is in On The Route, and common questions are answered on the FAQ.

What is next to Hayes

Cranford is south east along the Bath Road, an old village with a church and a park behind the hotels. The airport terminals are ten minutes south by road or a few minutes on the Elizabeth line. Harlington sits immediately below the station and West Drayton is the next stop west, both of which are ordinary and near. Further east, Hounslow West is the nearest Piccadilly line station and about twenty minutes by car.