We checked into the Courtyard by Marriott that is right at the airport. You literally can walk along a sidewalk from the train station in the airport terminal to the hotel. We opted to head back to the terminal to grab a bite at one of the restaurants there (because we had saved so much on the train ticket, we thought it would be good to balance out the wallet by paying airport prices for a meal...LOL).
The restaurant is called The Beehive and is named after the first commercial terminal built here in 1935, which had been built in a circular shape reputedly for more efficient use of space and to increase safety. The building is still there today, a listed building used for office space.
Gatwick had originally been built as an aerodrome in the late 1920s. I admit, I had no idea what an aerodrome is and how that is different than an airport, so had to look that up. Apparently, an airport can be an aerodrome, but an aerodrome is not necessarily an airport. Basically, planes land and take off on a runway, and that is an aerodrome. Add some hangars, control towers and terminal buildings and you have an airport. There...your word for the day.
Gatwick sits about 47 km south of Central London, and is the UK's second largest airport (after Heathrow). Until April 2017, it was the busiest single runway airport in the road (it lost that title to Mumbai). When it first opened for commercial business, 186,000 passengers passed through it in a year. Today, that number is 45.6 million. Still just one runway. From here, people fly to 228 destinations in 74 countries using 56 airlines (the busiest is the cheap airline EasyJet...or SleezyJet as it often humorously referred to here).
Gatwick was the world’s first airport to have a direct mainline train link with a dedicated railway station. It is extremely easy to hop of the plane, walk through the terminal and be standing on the train platform within minute. The Gatwick Express will have you into London in 30 minutes. In fact, by May of this year, a train will leave Gatwick for London on average every 3 minutes.
Yet when you are at the airport, it feels efficient and not too big compared to many. When we walk to the Courtyard hotel, we often are alone on the path, even though it follows a main roadway into the site. And you very quickly get the sense that you are not far from the countryside. As the image below shows...you aren't. (Gatwick even has its own Greenspace team who look after local wildlife and plantlife).
Plans are underway to build a second runway and another terminal by 2025. And the government is looking at building a high-speed rail line between Heathrow and Gatwick to create a "virtual hub" dubbed Heathwick. Passengers would move between the two airports in 15 minutes and would only have to pass through immigration or check-in once.
It never closes. It never stops growing.
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