The map flatters the distance
Look at a map and the hotel row seems to sit almost on top of the airport. The terminals are just across the road, the runway is a field away, and a guest with an hour to spare and a light bag starts to wonder why anybody takes a taxi. The answer is the northern runway. It runs the full length of the Bath Road, between the hotels and everything you are trying to reach, and nobody on foot crosses it. There is a way under and there is a way round, and both are longer than they look.
The honest distances first. From the middle of the row, Terminals 2 and 3 are roughly half an hour on foot, and Terminal 5 is more than that. Hayes and Harlington station, which the map shows as a short hop north, is a twenty five minute walk from the Harlington Corner end. None of these walks is dangerous in daylight. None of them is pleasant either, and every one of them runs beside traffic that is not expecting a pedestrian.
Under the runway to Terminals 2 and 3
The road into the central area, where Terminals 2 and 3 stand, dives under the northern runway in a long tunnel, and there is a footway beside the traffic. People who work at the airport use it; guests with luggage mostly do not, and with reason. It is loud and long, the air is what you would expect of a road tunnel, and it delivers you into the central area by the bus station rather than at a check in desk, with the terminal still to find.
Walkers who try it usually report two things: that it was fine, and that next time they will take the bus. The local buses along the front of the row run into the central bus station between the two terminals, and the hotel shuttles call at most of the doors on the strip. Either will beat a walker by a comfortable margin, and neither asks you to drag a case up a kerb in the dark. If you are set on walking, ask at the hotel desk the night before whether the tunnel footway is open, because works can close it.
Along the front of the row
Walking between hotels on the row is another matter entirely, and on a dry evening it is worth doing. The pavement runs along the front of the big frontages, the approach lights come down over the trees, and ten minutes outside after a day in terminals does more for a travelling head than the minibar ever will. Guests meeting somebody for a drink at a neighbouring hotel often walk there and take a car back, which is the right way round.
Crossing is the only part that needs thought. The Bath Road is a wide, busy road through here and it was laid out for cars; cross at the signals rather than in the gaps between them, and do not expect a driver pulling out of a hotel forecourt to see you. Beyond the ends of the row the pavement gives way to verge and the hedges take over, and that is the place to turn round.
The one stretch where walking makes sense
It is the western end, where the row runs out at Longford. The village is four streets and a stream tucked behind the Bath Road, and from there Terminal 5 is about twenty minutes on foot, against the half hour or more that every other walk on the row costs. With a light bag, in daylight, for a lunchtime or afternoon flight, setting off from the Longford end is a sensible way to reach a terminal. You get twenty minutes of air before a long day sealed in a cabin, and you arrive calm rather than delivered.
Even there, walk only when three things line up: a bag you can carry rather than tow, a flight late enough that the whole walk is in daylight, and weather you would choose to be out in. Ask the hotel desk for the footpath route rather than improvising across junctions built for coaches and hire cars. If any of the three is missing, take the car, which covers the same ground in about five minutes and leaves you with dry shoes.
What decides it: the bag, the hour and the flight
Distance is the least of it. A large case on a pavement broken up by kerbs, drop kerbs and grass verges turns a twenty minute walk into a forty minute argument. A dark January morning turns a pleasant stroll into a walk along an unlit edge of a working airport. And a long haul check in, where the airline wants you at the desk well ahead of departure, leaves no room at all for a walk that turns out longer than you planned.
The flights that suit walking are the civilised ones: late morning, lunchtime, mid afternoon. The flights that do not are exactly the ones most guests on this road are catching, the early departures that are the reason for sleeping out here in the first place. For those, book the car the night before, or choose a hotel at the end of a covered walkway, where the question never arises and the alarm can be set a little later.
Walking out together
For a guest travelling on with company, the walk from the hotel is where the trip begins. On a companion on the flight booking she meets you at the hotel, never airside and never in an arrivals hall, and the two of you go through together from there, which is far less conspicuous than a meeting at a gate. If a walk is part of the plan she will have worn shoes for it and packed as lightly as you have, and the figure for the trip is written out in full before anything is agreed.
Laura runs seriously and can tell you which paths round the perimeter are worth the trouble and which are simply verge, so she is the name to ask if the plan involves any walking at all. Vanessa is calm, easy to sit beside for six hours, and often free at short notice when a trip comes together quickly. Samanta works the Terminal 5 side and takes more overnights than most, so the morning walk to a terminal door is familiar ground to her. All three are on the brunettes tag. Before choosing a hotel for the walk, the postcode guide shows which side of the fence each address really sits on, and the rates page carries every length.
Filed under: most of the names in this piece also sit under brunettes in the by tag.