Heathrow Terminal 4
The Crystal Maze's 'Industrial Zone' with added tourists
Crikey, and to think that this place is many people's first sight of the UK. Heathrow Terminal 4 is where most BA flights and a few other lucky, lucky airlines fly from. And it looks and smells like a giant robot digestive system, excreting long metal aeroplane-turds far across the globe. There's about as much natural light in here as the interior of a cereal box, and just as many nuts.
There are two stations here; the expensive Piccadilly line, which takes forever and is closed until September 2006 anyway, and the ridiculously expensive Heathrow Express, which takes slightly less time. Both are in the bowels of the building. It's extremely easy to find the Heathrow Express – the big yellow signs saying 'Trains to London' give it away – but not so easy to find the Piccadilly line station. Surely this can't be because Heathrow Express costs £15 a go to travel on?
The Heathrow Express station is very bright and shiny with marble floors; almost like Grand Central, but in hell. Lucky tourists who get on the Heathrow Express train to Paddington are treated to onboard TV featuring advertising and highly bizarre wildlife movies featuring squirrels, lions and moose.
Residents of Zone 6, #9 – Heathrow Terminal 4
No, they're not really residents. But here are just a selection of people seen exiting from the terminal Arrivals gate on the ground floor in the space of ten minutes.
The tube station is underground and is only one platform, as it's only one way. It smells like wet cement, as does most of Heathrow. It's painted dirt-grey, so that dirt won't show up on the walls. On the opposite wall is a massive poster chart of all the places the Piccadilly line goes, but the departure boards only say "Trains To London" because if they said "Arnos Grove" that would make tourists think it's a worthwhile destination.
From grey to bright yellow, as you go up the slope to the hexagonal ticket hall lit by lurid sodium bulbs. The ticket gates are often open, but for some reason there's a funny metal luggage grille that prevents any weirdly shaped luggage from getting into the airport; terrorists are therefore encouraged to detonate their bombs on the tube.
Past some sliding doors, sponsored by lastminute.com (although isn't it a little late to advertise holidays to people at the airport?), up a ramp with modern art on the walls that would have been modern in 1964, and you get to the lifts and escalators that take you up to the terminal building. A fun game you can play is to skilfully manipulate the lift buttons to keep the confused Korean family in the lift as long as you can.
Arrivals and departures have different versions of the same shops. The Arrivals hall has Starbucks, featuring rock-hard pastries, the Departures hall has Nero. One effective scam is to travel to Terminal 4 with a Nero loyalty card, order a coffee and they'll more than likely stamp the rest of the card so you get another free. Yum.
There's a lot of disgusting things in Terminal 4, but by far and away the most revolting is the smokers' pen, a yellowy-grey half-roofed plastic indoor ensemble which is the only place tobacco addicts can puff. For some reason, people won't or can't smoke outside. There isn't much in the way of pedestrian access for people to leave the airport complex, so it's no surprise that the first time people get to see the beautiful English sun is just outside Hatton Cross. What a welcome!
Statistics
Time to Zone 1 20mins on Heathrow Express (Paddington), 47mins on Piccadilly (Earls Court)
Last trains to Zone 1 Mon-Sun 2347 on Heathrow Express; Mon-Sat 0006, Sun 2337 on Piccadilly
What to do if you are stuck in Heathrow Terminal 4 after the last train to Zone 1
This is a surprisingly awkward place to be after you've missed the train. There aren't enough nooks, crannies or ledges to sleep under/in around here, though you could hang around the luggage carousel pretending to wait for your case.
Find a taxi to take you to Harlington Corner for about £650. You can get an N9 bus back to central London from there. It's not really feasible to walk from Terminal 4 to Terminal 3 bus station, but you can try. If you get arrested, good luck getting back to Zone 1 from Guantanamo Bay.
