Escorts in Eton, from the iron bridge to the last lit tower

Eton High Street runs north from the river as a single line of old frontages, and after ten it reads more like a lane than a shopping street. Most doors along it are shut and dark, a pub or a dining room still has its windows lit, and the pavement lamps do the rest. There is no after-hours quarter here and no late bar strip: Eton keeps town hours, and the pleasure of it is the quiet that follows.

Look up at the far end. The college chapel, begun under Henry VI in the 1440s, is a long Perpendicular Gothic roofline, and once the street lights thin out it shows as a black cut-out against whatever glow the sky still holds.

Both stations stand on the Windsor side: Central, six minutes' walk away, runs a short branch to Slough, and Riverside, nine minutes, sends its trains to Waterloo. The Slough branch leaves over Brunel's bowstring bridge of 1849, wrought iron and still carrying trains, the oldest bridge of its kind in regular railway service, and a long brick viaduct carries it over the water meadows. From the river path after dark its lit carriages glide across the arches like a string of windows with no building behind them.

The last departures move whenever the timetable does, so check them on the evening itself rather than relying on memory.

Whichever way the evening goes, the road bridge is the pinch point between the two towns. It is an iron crossing of 1824 on granite piers, and it has carried no motor traffic since 1970, so after midnight it holds footsteps, a cyclist or two and the Thames pulling hard between the piers after rain. Stand in the middle and both towns lie within an easy stroll. If the room is on the Windsor bank, the last stretch is across it; if it is on the Eton bank, it is back up the High Street under the lamps.

Eton sits well outside central London, which is why her fare both ways and any minimum are written down for you on WhatsApp before anything is agreed; the rates carry the full ladder.