A Drive Home, Or, Why Navigating From Terminal 4 Is Like Using A Compass At The North Pole

This evening I took my cousin Armaan to the airport to allow him to fly on to India for the next leg of his holiday. He was departing from Heathrow Terminal 4, an unusual choice (although I will concede not one of his own choosing) and one that is not quite as straightforward to get to - in fact, we managed to miss a quite well hidden sign on our way in and ended up doing an entire lap of the airport before we arrived at our destination.

This, however, was (a) forgiveable, (b) understandable considering the hidden nature of the sign and (c) nothing compared to my efforts on the way home.

For those unaware, this is the rough journey I should take home:


However, I decided to do things ... a little differently. I set off like this, following the signs to both the A30 to Staines and to M25:


Reaching the roundabout I had no choice but to go straight on, as far as I thought - I knew the roundabout but didn't usually come at it from that angle, but all was, as far as I thought, well. I opted not to go onto the M25 and took the "easier route" continuing on the A30 - it took me round a bit of a loop as I went under the M25:


At this point I missed the exit the first time round and so went for a second circumnavigation ofthe roundabout to add a bit of slapstick to the utter farce that my journey was rapidly becoming. I managed to leave the roundabout slightly better at the second attempt, still faithfully following the signs for the A30 to Staines, now going in the other direction:


Continuing to loyally follow the signs for the A30 to Staines, I persisted onwards with retracing my steps - a fact I was at this point completely oblivious to:


And not long after - fifteen minutes after I was here the first time - I returned to the Crooked Billet roundabout, this time from the direction I should have been, and managed to go back where I thought I was going the first time (and a review of the Streetview on Google Maps shows me that I could easily have turned here at my first visit):


Proceeding at a leisurely pace now once again comfortable with where I was, I rejoined the original route after a detour of a mere 20 minutes:


From here the journey was fairly routine - but to illustrate the utterly ridiculous journey I made, this was my route in full. Sadly, the zoom doesn't show up the ridiculous amount of time I spent driving in circles:


This is why people shouldn't fly from Terminal 4.