Hounslow West, TW4 and TW5: the calm side of the airport

The station, the heath and the road

Hounslow West sits two minutes from its own platforms and ten minutes on foot from Hounslow Central, which is the walk most people do without noticing they have done it. The national rail station at Hounslow is eighteen minutes away and worth knowing about only if the tube has stopped and you want Waterloo.

Hounslow Heath is the thing nobody expects. Two hundred acres of scrub and skylarks off the Staines Road, with the airport fence at one end and very little at the other, and it is a genuine piece of open country rather than a landscaped park. It is where the first proper survey of Britain was measured out, and it is also where half of TW4 walks its dogs at seven in the morning. On a summer evening it is the best twenty minutes available in this postcode.

Beds behind the hedge

A hotel sits on North Hyde Lane at TW5 0EP, set back behind a car park and a hedge, far enough off the flight path to be quiet and close enough that an arrival at Terminal 2 can be sitting down inside it within a quarter of an hour by road. The one at TW5 0BU is on the Great West Road and easier if you are driving in from the east. The Lampton Road hotel at TW3 1JG is ten minutes back towards the town centre and is the cheapest reliable option in the area.

We have no arrangement with any of them and would not claim one. They are listed because they are the addresses guests give us. Private flats and houses across TW4 work the same way, and most of the evenings arranged on this side of town are at a residential address rather than a hotel.

Fifteen minutes to a terminal, and when that stops being true

By road, Hounslow West to Terminal 2 or 3 is about a quarter of an hour at a sensible hour. That number holds from nine at night until the small hours and falls apart entirely between four and seven in the afternoon, when the Bath Road backs up and a fifteen minute run becomes forty. Anyone who has done it once already knows this. Anyone who has not should plan the evening to start after the queue rather than inside it.

Coming out from central London is a real journey and we say so plainly: the best part of an hour on the Piccadilly line, door to door. That is why bookings out here tend to run three hours or longer. A single hour in TW4 means most of the night spent on a train by somebody, which serves nobody.

Two companions who prefer this side

Bianka works the Heston end and is warm in a way that travels better than scenery does; she is away until the sixth of October and dates after that can be held now. Roxi crosses the heath most mornings and arrives at six with more energy than the evening strictly requires, which is generally an improvement.

From the neighbouring pages, Angelika and Samanta come over from the TW3 centre, Luna drives in from Cranford when the Bath Road is behaving, and Thea comes up from Feltham. The whole list is in On The Route.

Where this leads

Hounslow Central is two stops east and has the restaurants, the cinema and the rest of the beds. Feltham lies south west, twenty minutes by road, flatter and quieter again. Up past the Great West Road, Osterley trades the heath for a National Trust park and a much prettier walk. And the Heathrow terminals are four stops down the line, which is the real reason anyone books a room on this side of town.