The poem everyone brings with them
In 1937 John Betjeman published a short poem called Slough, in which he invited friendly bombs to fall on the town. He was writing about the factories and the trading estate that had spread across the fields west of the town in the years between the wars, and about a way of life he thought they stood for. Betjeman went on to become Poet Laureate and one of the best loved voices of English places, and the poem went on to become the first thing half the country thinks of when the town's name comes up.
Some sixty years later a television comedy set its fictional paper merchant in an office in Slough, and the town's reputation for grey office blocks and ring roads was fixed for another generation. Both are funny. Neither is much use to somebody arriving at Slough station with a free evening, a hotel room and a reasonable curiosity about where they are. This guide sets the joke aside and describes what is actually here.
More history than it gets credit for
Slough's history is bound up with the railway. In June 1842 Queen Victoria made her first ever train journey from Slough to Paddington, because Slough was then the station for Windsor Castle, and the branch line to Windsor did not open until 1849. The present station building, with its steep French roofs, dates from the 1880s and is still one of the handsomest on the line. Three years after the Queen's journey the town was the scene of another first, when a man who had poisoned a woman at Salt Hill fled to Paddington by train and was caught because his description had gone ahead of him by electric telegraph, the first time the new wires had been used to catch a murderer.
Earlier still, the astronomer William Herschel lived in Slough for the last three decades of his life and built his great forty foot telescope in the garden of his house on the Windsor Road. He is buried at St Laurence's, the old Norman church at Upton on the southern side of town. And in 1932 the first Mars bars were made here, which means the town has been feeding the rest of the country for rather longer than it has been mocked by it.
The station is the town's best asset
Whatever else is said about it, Slough is quick to reach and quick to leave. The fast trains reach Paddington in under twenty minutes and the Elizabeth line runs straight through into central London and out the other side. The branch shuttle reaches Windsor and Eton Central in six minutes, and Heathrow is a single change away at Hayes and Harlington, set out in the guide to reaching Heathrow without a car.
For a visitor that makes Slough a better base than its reputation allows. A hotel here puts the castle, the Thames, the airport and the West End all within an easy journey, usually for less effort than the equivalent trip from a hotel in Windsor itself, and a companion coming out from London can reach the town centre in a little over half an hour.
Parks, and the green edge nobody mentions
The poem imagined a town with no green in it. The town that exists has rather a lot. Herschel Park, on the southern side towards Upton, is a Victorian park with lakes and woodland walks that has been carefully restored. Salt Hill Park sits on the Bath Road on the western side of the centre. Further out, Langley Park and Black Park are large country parks, the first with long avenues of trees and the second with a lake and pine woods, and Burnham Beeches, one of the finest ancient woodlands in England, is twelve minutes north west of the station.
South of the town the Jubilee River, a wide channel dug to carry flood water past Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton, has become a long, quiet walking route with reed beds, footbridges and a surprising amount of birdlife. None of this appears in the jokes, and all of it is within a short drive of the hotels.
A working centre, and what it is good for
The centre of Slough is a working town rather than a pretty one. By day it is offices, shops and the bus station, and The Curve on William Street, a curving glass building beside the bus station, holds the library and a small theatre space with something on most weeks. By six the office workers have gone home and the hotels have filled with people who arrived that afternoon.
It is also one of the most diverse towns in Britain, and it eats accordingly. The South Asian cooking along the Farnham Road and around the centre is better than anything the town's reputation would lead you to expect, and an evening spent following a local recommendation there is a better introduction to Slough than any number of lines of verse. For anything grander, Windsor is two miles south.
Using Slough and Windsor together
The sensible way to see this corner of Berkshire is as one place with two halves: Slough for the station, the hotels and the practical side of the stay, Windsor for the castle, the river and the evening. Six minutes on the shuttle or fifteen by car joins them. Guests who treat Slough as a base rather than an apology generally find the week easier than they expected.
That is also the setting where the girlfriend evening makes most sense: an evening arranged so that nothing about it feels transacted, with a walk in one of those parks if the light allows, dinner somewhere a local would choose and conversation that nobody is timing. An hour opens at £250, though three hours at £700 is the length that suits it best out here. She receives the fee in person on arrival, the figure Etta has confirmed in writing.
Who will defend the town
Molly has a soft spot for unfashionable towns and the places nobody writes about, likes live music in small rooms, and will argue Slough's case to anyone who starts on it. Bianka is the counterweight, based over the river in Windsor and the easiest company on a High Street that closes early, which makes her the right choice for the Windsor half of the stay. Rosa comes up from Datchet, is entirely at ease in an old pub and likes nothing better than a fire and a long evening.
All three are on the curvaceous list, and Rosa is among the petite as well. Everyone free this week is on who is on.
Cross filed: most of the names on this marker also sit on the brunettes list under by look.