Fulmer to Gatwick Taxi

Local Knowledge

Junction 16 to Junction 7: the long way round for Gatwick

Gatwick asks more of the road than Heathrow does, because Fulmer sits north-west of London and the airport is due south. The car leaves the village up Fulmer Road to the A40, runs along to Denham for M40 Junction 1, crosses at Junction 1A and joins the M25 at Junction 16. From there it is a long anticlockwise drive past the M4, the Heathrow turn, the M3 and the A3 before peeling off at Junction 7. The M23 then carries you to Junction 9, where a spur leads to the airport. If the M23 is shut, the A23 London to Brighton road runs beside it. A Fulmer passenger who wants to avoid the top of that box can go south first instead, out past Black Park onto the A412 and down to the M4, joining the M25 at Junction 15, which is the same carriageway picked up a little further along.

School holidays shape the Fulmer diary

Most Gatwick bookings from the village are family trips, and they bunch around school holidays. Term dates at Fulmer Infant School on Alderbourne Lane, and at the independent preps over in Gerrards Cross such as Maltman's Green, Gayhurst, St Mary's and Thorpe House, predict our Gatwick diary better than anything else, and the weekends either side of the October and February breaks fill first. Four passengers, four cases and a set of skis will not fit in a saloon, so numbers and bags are part of every booking.

Mid-morning flights and the M25 rush

Not every departure is at dawn, and a later one can be harder to time. For a 9.30am long-haul flight you want to be at the terminal around 6.30am, but the car would then be on the M25 just as weekday traffic builds, so we would collect nearer 4.30am than 5am. It is a better trade to have a coffee airside than to sit in a queue near Junction 12. Very late arrivals are the other pattern here, which is why the Fulmer 24-hour service exists, and our explainer on meet-and-greet shows how the arrivals pickup works.

Dropping off at Gatwick

Unlike Heathrow's spread of terminals, Gatwick's two are close together: the spur ends at the South Terminal roundabout and Airport Way continues to the North. A free shuttle links them in roughly two minutes. Stopping on either forecourt costs £10 for up to 10 minutes and £1 per minute after that, with half an hour the maximum, and must be paid by midnight the following day. It is included when we drive you.

Fulmer has no station of its own. Rail means Gerrards Cross to Marylebone and a connection across London, or the Elizabeth line from Iver to Farringdon for a Thameslink train south, with luggage at each change. If the trip carries on past the terminal, a ship at the Southampton cruise terminals or a drive to the West Country, longer runs beyond the airports are priced the same way.