Hatton Cross escorts, a minute from the barriers

On an ordinary night the Piccadilly line finishes around half past midnight. On Friday and Saturday it keeps running through to Terminal 5, which changes what is possible at this end of the airport, though Terminal 4 still closes early every night of the week.

After the last train, the road takes over. A car from central London reaches the southern perimeter in around thirty five minutes when the motorway is empty. Lucy plans her journeys exactly that way, rail while the rail exists and road afterwards, and she would rather tell you a real arrival time than an optimistic one.

There is no hotel at the junction itself worth building an evening around. The buildings on the eastern perimeter road come and go under different names, and what the desk works to instead are the three that are genuinely close: TW6 3AF at Terminal 4, one stop and a covered walkway from the terminal; the central area hotel, two stops; and TW6 2GD at Terminal 5 on the far side.

In other words, you are almost certainly staying at a terminal and passing through Hatton Cross rather than staying in it. That is a perfectly good plan and the desk treats it as the normal case. Give the building name and the arrival is timed to the right door.

The postcode here runs TW6 on the airport side and TW14 as soon as you cross towards Feltham and Bedfont. That eastern road is often the easier journey, ten minutes with no tunnel and no airport traffic, and a fair number of guests out here are working at Bedfont Lakes rather than flying at all.

If that is you, give the desk the postcode with the address. The lanes around the lakes and the older streets in Bedfont confuse a driver at night, and a landmark saves everybody a phone call.

Early departures who refuse to start the day with a taxi from town. Terminal 4 arrivals who want the shortest possible journey between the baggage hall and a bed. Contractors on the Bedfont Lakes campus with a week of evenings and nothing planned for any of them.

None of them is here for the surroundings. The appeal is a short morning and an uninterrupted night, and an evening that stays put rather than going anywhere.

Lucy learned the southern perimeter through a run of bookings that turned into a working knowledge of it, and she is honest that there is nowhere out here to walk to. Samanta is the quiet one, content to let an evening be simple if you are flying early and to suggest the ride up the line into Hounslow if you are not.

Across at the terminal, Jasmin and Thea take the late Terminal 4 arrivals. Up the Piccadilly line, Cindy, Michelle and Sonya cover Hounslow, two stops away, which is where the restaurants are. Seven names is the working list for this corner of the map.

West is Terminal 4, one stop, and beyond it the rest of the airport. South west is Stanwell, a village with no station at all, about ten minutes by road. East is Hounslow, a real town with a high street that is still busy at ten. Pick the one that matches your morning rather than your mood.