Denham to Luton Taxi

Clockwise to the M1: how the Luton run leaves Denham

Luton is the mirror image of our Heathrow route. Rather than turning left onto the M25, you turn right. From the Denham Roundabout at M40 Junction 1 the motorway carries you a single stop to 1A, where it hands over to the M25 at Junction 16, and from there the direction is clockwise: Junction 17 at Maple Cross, Junction 18 for Chorleywood, Junction 20 for the A41, then Junction 21, which is the M1. North up the M1 to Junction 10, then the spur to Junction 10a and the A1081 New Airport Way, the dual carriageway that covers the last two miles or so to the terminal. One detail at the far end is worth having in advance: at the roundabout before the tunnel on the airport approach, Luton tells drivers to ignore the sat-nav and follow the signs for the drop-off zone, and that is the point that catches out first-time visitors. Denham has a useful side door onto all of this too. The A412 north through Maple Cross reaches the M25 at Junction 17 under its own steam, so if the interchange at 16 is blocked we simply join further along. Should the M1 be the trouble instead, the A1081 comes up through Harpenden and St Albans.

Luton is the budget airport for this corner of Buckinghamshire, so the mix of passengers changes again. Short European breaks, students flying back to university cities, families away for half-term and people visiting relatives, most of them on departures that leave uncomfortably early. That is why the majority of Luton bookings out of UB9 are night collections, from Higher Denham, New Denham, Denham Garden Village and the streets around the shops at Denham Green, made at an hour when the village roads are deserted but the M25 corner at the M1 is not reliably so. Booking ahead counts for more on this run than on any other, because the car has to be at the door before the roads have woken up. Whatever time we set off, the figure quoted holds, on the same fixed-fare basis we apply to every journey. For everything nearer home, the station drop-offs, the school runs and the trips into Uxbridge, our local Denham cars work in exactly the same way.

Can I get to Luton Airport by train from Denham?

You can, but not quickly. Denham station is on the Chiltern line to London Marylebone. There is no rail link between Marylebone and St Pancras, so you cross London by Underground or taxi, then catch the East Midlands Railway Luton Airport Express, which takes about 22 minutes to Luton Airport Parkway. The Luton DART then runs from the Parkway to the terminal.

The DART is the easy part: it runs 24 hours a day, every four minutes at peak and every 15 minutes at the quietest times, and the ride is a few minutes. The trouble is everything before it. Once you add two trains, a trip across London and luggage, it takes much longer than the 45–65 minute drive, and all of it has to happen before a flight that may leave at six.

That gap is why almost all of our Luton work from Denham is booked for the middle of the night. If you fly for work every month or so, a business account saves paying for each trip separately, and every car on the fleet is available at the same fixed-fare terms.