Royal Docks and ExCeL escorts, E16, for the hour the exhibition halls close

When a major trade fair or congress is on, the dockside hotels fill with people from the same industry, which is exactly why many of them prefer an evening away from colleagues. Speakers on the last night of a conference. Exhibitors who have packed down the stand. Organisers at the end of a week of sixteen-hour days. Between shows the docks are calmer: residents of the new blocks along the water, and the occasional guest who simply likes a room with a view of the runway lights.

Big shows fill these hotels months ahead. If you are staying further out, on the estate or at Stratford, give us that hotel instead; the evening can still begin at the dock and end at your own door.

Aloft London ExCeL stands at the eastern end of the conference centre, with the nearest rooms to the halls. Novotel London ExCeL sits at the western gateway near Custom House, and the Crowne Plaza London Docklands is a little further west on the same waterside, its rooms looking over the dock towards the cable car.

For each of them you give us hotel and room number, and she meets you in the lobby or comes up at the agreed minute. They are listed because ExCeL guests sleep there; we have no ties to any of them.

Custom House serves the western end of ExCeL on both the DLR and the Elizabeth line, two minutes' walk from the doors. One Elizabeth line stop brings you from Canary Wharf, and Bond Street is about twenty minutes away. For the eastern halls, Prince Regent is a four-minute walk, and Royal Victoria sits six minutes from the middle of the dock.

The Royal Docks lie in Zone 3, and that is the one difference from E14. Travel is no longer inside the fee; instead Philippa quotes the cab fare for both legs, one figure, before anything is fixed, and it is settled alongside the fee. Nothing is added afterwards. The ladder itself does not move: an hour at £250, two at £500, the dinner date at £900, every step listed on rates.

17:55. The hall announcement says the show is closing. You write to Philippa from the stand: Aloft, tonight, a dinner date. 18:10. The companion, the £900 fee and the round-trip fare come back in writing. 19:30. She meets you in the lobby, changed out of the working day before you have managed it. 19:45. Dinner across the dock, with cable car cabins crossing the dark. 23:30. The evening closes at the agreed time.

The Royal Docks were once the largest enclosed docks in the world, dug for the liners and cargo ships of the Victorian and Edwardian port. The water is still there, three great basins of it, and almost everything around it has changed. The IFS Cloud Cable Car crosses the Thames from the dock to the Greenwich Peninsula; London's City Hall now occupies the Crystal on the quay; and at the eastern end, aircraft from London City Airport lift off from the strip of land between the Royal Albert and King George V docks.

On a clear evening the walk along the north quay, the dock on one side and the halls on the other, is one of the calmest in east London.

Vanessa comes down the Elizabeth line from Paddington and knows the rhythm of an ExCeL week. Laura, also from Paddington, likes to begin with the cable car at sunset. Roxi makes the longer trip from Pimlico and would happily put you on a wakeboard if you let her. For the rest of the roster, see Tonight.

Flights leave a few minutes east, covered on the London City Airport page. The Canary Wharf estate is one Elizabeth line stop west, Stratford is up the DLR to the north, and Greenwich is one cable car ride across the river.