Leaving a bicycle at Heathrow airport (some tips)

[Bice]

I have just left my commuter bike at Heathrow for a week, and thought I would share this.

I had never done this before, but with the Tube / train strikes, and absolute importance of not taking hold luggage at this point (there were stacks of suitcases at T3), I thought I would just cycle there from SW London.

My flight to Denmark was from Terminal 3, which meant I could have left it around the "Heathrow Cycle Hub", a parking and maintenance centre for Heathrow's cycling workforce. It would have meant catching any number of local red buses to the Heathrow Central Bus Station under T2 as you cannot get to T2 or T3 by foot or bicycle. The buses are free of charge.

But I decided against parking there, and instead left my bike undercover at Hatton Cross Tube station, the first outside Heathrow, which is also served by numerous buses. This means one stop on the Tube to T2 and T3.

Here is a link to the cycle parking places at Heathrow.

https://www.heathrow.com/content/dam/he ... le-Map.pdf

I cycled there in early afternoon via Putney, Barnes, Kew, Brentford, along the Brentford canal to the A4. The A4 has cycle lanes in both directions, and sometimes it is more efficient to be on the north (wrong) side of the dual carriageway owing to roundabouts etc.

From Brentford canal it is only about 6 miles to Heathrow, or Hatton Cross.

I locked the bike with two locks, put a plastic bag over its ancient and unattractive Brooks saddle, and the bike was unmolested by the time I came back five days later at 11pm.

At this point at night it was possible to cycle down the A4 itself, which is much faster than the cycle path, which meanders a bit. In very little time - 30 mins max - I was off the A4 and back on the Brentford canal path heading for Kew Bridge.

Cycling to and fro to Heathrow worked out fine for me, and I travelled with two Ortlieb panniers which I took on BA as hand luggage. Denmark is great for bicycles and hire ones usually have racks, so I was sorted. Had I flown to Copenhagen I might have looked at hiring a bike at its airport and cycling in from its airport into the city as well.

[DaveReading]

Apropos the above, Heathrow promised a couple of years ago that they were going to reinstate cycle access to the central terminal area (T2 & T3) which was suspended due to works involving the small tunnels on either side of the main road ones.

AFAIK, there is still no sign of that happening.