TW6, and the arithmetic of a few free hours

TW6 carries three railway stations and each one sits about five minutes on foot from the terminal it serves. Heathrow Terminal 5 and Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 both take the Piccadilly line, the Elizabeth line and the Heathrow Express. Heathrow Terminal 4 has the Piccadilly line and the Elizabeth line only, and its station stops earlier than the rest of the airport, with nothing at all running through the small hours.

The transfer between terminals is free and quick, roughly four minutes on the train, which matters if you land at one end of the airport and sleep at the other. Give the desk the building rather than the terminal and the arrival time comes back matched to the door you will be standing behind.

TW6 2GD is joined to Terminal 5 by a covered walkway, which in February is worth more than any lobby chandelier. One hotel stands in the central area beside the shared station. Up on the northern perimeter, TW6 2AQ faces the runway, and a much larger one sits further along the same road, big enough that nobody in the lobby looks up from a phone.

The one worth reading twice wears Terminal 5 on its sign and stands at Colnbrook, SL3 0FF, beyond the airport boundary on the western Bath Road. None of these hotels has any arrangement with this desk and none of them is a partner of anything. She walks in as your guest, which is the most ordinary thing that happens in those lobbies all night.

By road from the centre, count three quarters of an hour when the M4 flows and up to an hour and a quarter when it does not. Friday between five and seven is the worst of it. After eleven the motorway empties out and the drive shortens accordingly.

Several of the women take the airport from Paddington instead, where the fast train reaches the central terminals in about a quarter of an hour and Terminal 5 a few minutes after that. The Elizabeth line is slower and runs without a change from Bond Street or Farringdon. Whichever route she chooses, the desk quotes one arrival time and messages you the moment she sets off.

If you are still in the air when you book, send the flight number rather than a clock time. It is far more accurate than any guess made from seat 34A, and it lets her leave town while you are still taxiing.

Long haul arrivals too wired to sleep and too tired to face the road into town. Engineers and project managers six weeks into a contract at Stockley Park. Passengers rolled onto tomorrow morning's flight and handed a room they never intended to see. People flying at dawn who took the airport hotel precisely to avoid a four o'clock taxi from the city.

The thread running through all of it is a fixed window and no appetite for spending any of it on the A4. What this page sells is the removal of a journey, and after that, company that does not need the evening explained to it twice.

Nancy has been meeting flights here for years and can tell you which hotels are genuinely attached to a terminal and which are merely named after one. Rosa is the one for a short stop, where the room is plain and the only luxury is the clock. Tina is unbothered by a schedule that has already moved twice before you land.

Beyond those three, Laura comes down on the fast train from Paddington, Milena covers the central pair, Angelika works the Terminal 5 end and Jasmin takes the late arrivals at Terminal 4. Open a profile for photographs and her own notes, or describe the evening you want and let the desk put two names in front of you.

The terminal pages go further than this one can. Read about the three hotels all named Terminal 5, the central pair that share a station, and the southern terminal, which behaves quite differently once the last train has gone. For the hotel row on the northern perimeter, turn to the Bath Road. If you genuinely do not know which building you are in, start from the airport hotel index and work backwards from the postcode on your confirmation.