Getting to Twickenham by Train: Matchday Travel
Which station to use, how long the walk takes, and how the post-match queues work — getting to Twickenham by train, from Waterloo and across the UK.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grounds & Tickets19 min read
- Nearest station
- Twickenham
- Walk from station
- About 15 minutes
- Capacity
- 82,000
- Nearest Underground
- Richmond, District line
Eighty-two thousand people leave Twickenham Stadium within about twenty minutes of the final whistle, and a large share of them walk down the same road towards the same suburban railway station. Every sensible decision about the journey follows from that. The Rugby Football Union's home ground sits in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, in south-west London, a little under a mile from Twickenham station on South Western Railway's routes out of London Waterloo. There is no Underground station. No tram, no dedicated shuttle rail link, nothing built for the purpose. England's national stadium depends on a commuter railway laid down for people going to work, and it copes because the railway, the borough and the RFU have spent more than a century learning how to move a crowd through a Victorian suburb.
What follows is the practical version: which station to use and when, what the walk is actually like, how the post-match queueing system works and how long it takes, and the alternatives that regulars quietly use while everybody else stands on London Road.
Twickenham station, and why almost everyone ends up there
Twickenham is a junction, which is the whole reason it can absorb an international crowd. Four separate flows of South Western Railway services pass through it: the route from Waterloo to Reading via Richmond, the Windsor & Eton Riverside services, the Shepperton branch, and the Hounslow loop that runs out through Chiswick and Isleworth and comes back through Whitton. On an ordinary Tuesday that gives Twickenham a service frequency out of proportion to the size of the town. On a matchday it gives the operator four different directions in which to send a full train.
The station is in Travelcard Zone 5, and contactless and Oyster pay-as-you-go are valid, which matters more than it sounds. It means a visitor who has arrived at Heathrow or King's Cross does not need a paper ticket, a booking or a plan; they can tap in at Waterloo and tap out at Twickenham. It also means the ticket gates at Twickenham are the bottleneck rather than the ticket office, and the gatelines are usually opened out or staffed open after a match to keep the flow moving.
The station itself was rebuilt as part of a redevelopment of the site, and the current building has lifts to the platforms and a much larger concourse than the one it replaced. That rebuild is the single biggest improvement to Twickenham matchday travel in decades, and it is still not enough on its own for an 82,000 crowd, because the constraint is not the concourse. It is the number of trains that can physically be run through the junction in an hour.
- 82000Stadium capacity
- 1909First match played at the ground
- 5Travelcard zone
Fixed characteristics of the ground and its nearest station, not figures from any particular fixture.
From London Waterloo: the line, the journey and the matchday uplift
Waterloo is the default. It is the busiest station in Britain by entries and exits, it is on the Jubilee, Northern, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines, and it is where the whole South Western network begins. From the concourse to Twickenham is a little under half an hour on most services, slightly less on the fastest Reading-line trains that skip the smaller stops.
For an international, the operator adds services and lengthens trains. That is a commercial decision made in advance with the RFU, not something improvised on the day, and it is why the published timetable for a Six Nations Saturday is not the one you will find in a normal weekend planner. Check the day's actual departures rather than the pattern you remember.
Two habits are worth forming. The first is to travel out earlier than feels necessary, because the trains fill from Waterloo, so a train two hours before kick-off gives you a seat and a train forty minutes before kick-off gives you an armpit. The second is to note which platform group at Waterloo your service leaves from, because the Windsor lines use the far side of the station and the walk from the Jubilee line escalators to the high-numbered platforms is longer than people expect when they are already late.
Arriving from outside London changes the calculation. From Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle, the sensible route is into Euston or King's Cross and across to Waterloo, and the cross-London leg is the part people underestimate. From the west, Reading is the useful interchange: South Western Railway runs direct from Reading through Twickenham, so a Great Western service from Bristol, Swindon or Cardiff can hand you straight onto the Twickenham line without touching central London at all. Supporters from the West Country and south Wales who have worked this out never go via Waterloo again.
Tickets, caps and the fare you should not pay
Because Twickenham sits inside the Travelcard zones, the fare mechanics differ from a normal long-distance rail journey and the difference costs people money. A traveller arriving on an advance ticket into a London terminal has, in effect, two journeys: the long one on a reserved fare, and a short local one that is best handled on contactless, because the pay-as-you-go daily cap will limit what the local hops cost no matter how many of them you make. Buying a separate paper single from Waterloo to Twickenham at a ticket machine, then another one back, is the expensive way to do a journey the cap would have covered.
The other trap is the return leg. Off-peak restrictions apply on the way out of London in the afternoon and evening on some fares, and a ticket bought for the outward journey does not necessarily entitle you to travel back at the time an evening kick-off finishes. Check the restriction code on the ticket rather than assuming, particularly if you are connecting onto a long-distance service where the advance fare is time-specific and worthless if you miss it.
Group travel is worth a look for anything above about three people making the same journey, and clubs organising a party will usually find the group booking desk of the relevant operator cheaper than individual walk-up fares. That is a phone call rather than a website transaction, which is presumably why so few people make it.
The walk up Whitton Road, step by step
Out of the station, the crowd turns and goes up Whitton Road, and that is essentially the whole route. It is signed, it is stewarded on event days, and on a busy afternoon you could get there without reading a single sign simply by following the replica shirts. Three-quarters of a mile, a gentle rise, and the stadium's upper tiers appear above the rooftops about two-thirds of the way along.
Fifteen minutes at a walking pace on an ordinary day. On a matchday it is nearer twenty-five, because the pavement is at capacity and you move at the speed of the group in front. In the final half-hour before kick-off, when the pubs empty at once, it can be slower still.
The other approaches on foot
Not everyone should use Whitton Road. If you are coming from the town centre or the riverside, Rugby Road and Craneford Way bring you to the eastern side of the ground and are noticeably quieter, which is worth knowing if you are meeting people rather than following the crowd. From the A316 side, the pedestrian routes are less pleasant, because that road is a dual carriageway and the crossings are formal, but they exist and they are the shortest line in from the coach parks.
There is one genuinely useful piece of local knowledge here. The stadium is a ring, and the gate printed on your ticket may be on the far side of it from where you arrive. Walking the outside of the ground at ten to three, against the flow, adds ten minutes to a journey you thought was over. Look at the gate number before you leave the station, not when you reach the perimeter.
The stations locals use instead
The regulars stopped using Twickenham station on the way out a long time ago, and some of them have stopped using it on the way in.
| Station | Approximate walk to the ground | Line it sits on | Why you would use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twickenham | 15 minutes | Waterloo–Reading, Windsor, Shepperton, Hounslow loop | Closest, best served, busiest by a distance |
| St Margarets | 20 minutes | Waterloo–Reading via Richmond | Almost as close, a fraction of the crowd |
| Whitton | 20–25 minutes | Hounslow loop | Quiet after full time, one stop from Twickenham |
| Strawberry Hill | 25–30 minutes | Shepperton branch | Useful if you are staying in Teddington or Hampton |
| Richmond | 45–50 minutes | SWR, District line, Overground | Long walk, but Tube and Overground connections |
| Feltham | 40–45 minutes | Waterloo–Reading via Hounslow | Handy for Heathrow-side hotels |
St Margarets is the pick. It is only a few minutes further on foot than Twickenham, it sits on the Waterloo–Reading line so the trains go where you want them to go, and the crowd at it after a match is a fraction of what is queueing half a mile away. The trade-off is that it is a much smaller station with shorter platforms, so not every service calls and the trains that do call fill faster.
Whitton is the classic escape route westwards. One stop, a slightly duller walk along Whitton Road in the opposite direction from the crowd, and the Hounslow loop takes you back to Waterloo the long way round. It takes longer on paper and it is frequently quicker in practice.
Richmond deserves a mention for a different reason. Nobody sensible walks fifty minutes to Richmond in the rain, but if the evening plan involves eating somewhere or meeting people who were not at the game, the walk along the river is a pleasant way to spend the time you would otherwise lose standing still, and Richmond has the Tube, the Overground and the mainline all in one building.
What happens at Twickenham station after full time
This is the part that catches out first-timers, so it is worth describing exactly.
The station cannot take the crowd at the rate the crowd arrives, so the crowd is held outside it. Stewards and British Transport Police manage a queue that forms along the station approach and back up the surrounding roads, and people are released into the station in batches as platforms clear. The system is one-directional: once you are in the queue you are in it, and cutting back out to try a different plan means walking against several thousand people. It is orderly, it is well practised, and it is slow.
An hour between final whistle and boarding a train is a reasonable budget for a club fixture. For a sold-out international, ninety minutes is normal, and it can run longer if a service is cancelled and the platform load has to be re-planned. Nobody is stranded, and the last services are held for the event, but the difference between accepting that and fighting it is the difference between a fine evening and a miserable one.
- Final whistleThe stadium empties through its perimeter gates over roughly twenty minutes.
- On Whitton RoadPedestrian flow is made one-way towards the station and the road is closed to traffic.
- The holding queueStewards form a managed queue on the approach roads rather than letting the concourse fill.
- Batch releaseGroups are let through the gateline as platforms clear, keeping the platform load within its safe limit.
- On the platformYou board the next train regardless of its stopping pattern and make connections further down the line.
- The alternativeWalking to St Margarets or Whitton bypasses the queue entirely and usually gets you home sooner.
The sequence the crowd is managed through on event days. Timings vary with the size of the crowd and the service pattern.
The single best decision available to you is made before the game rather than after it: agree with whoever you are with that you are walking to St Margarets, and then actually do it, instead of drifting into the queue because everyone else has.
Underground and Overground connections into south-west London
There is no Tube to Twickenham, and no amount of searching will produce one. The nearest Underground stations are Richmond on the District line and the Hounslow group on the Piccadilly line, and neither is within a comfortable walk of the ground.
Richmond is the more useful of the two. It is a genuine interchange, with the District line, London Overground services running east across the capital, and South Western Railway trains that stop at St Margarets and Twickenham. A supporter staying in north or east London can come across on the Overground, change at Richmond for one stop, and skip Waterloo altogether. After the match it works in reverse, and Richmond's platforms are large enough to absorb people arriving in waves.
Hounslow's Piccadilly line stations are the Heathrow answer. If you are flying in for a fixture and staying near the airport, the Piccadilly line to Hounslow East and a bus or taxi across is often simpler than the rail route via Feltham, particularly late at night when the Piccadilly line is still running frequently and the suburban rail service has thinned out.
For anyone based centrally, the honest answer is that the Tube gets you to Waterloo and the Tube's job ends there. The rest is South Western Railway's problem, and it solves it competently. Fares are integrated, contactless works across both networks, and the daily cap applies to the whole journey.
Buses, coaches and the club coach network
London buses serve Twickenham well, and on a matchday they are a mixed proposition. Routes run along Richmond Road and through the town centre, and the A316 Chertsey Road passes directly alongside the stadium. What changes on event days is that roads close, stops are suspended and services divert, sometimes at short notice, so a bus that appears on a journey planner in the morning may not be running past the ground in the afternoon. Route numbers and stopping patterns also change between seasons. Check Transport for London's live information on the day rather than trusting a printed plan or an old memory.
Where buses genuinely earn their place is the leg between the stadium and a station you have chosen to walk away to, and for getting across to Richmond or Kingston in the evening once the rail crowd has thinned.
Supporters' coaches are a different world entirely, and a much bigger one than most Londoners realise. A large share of the crowd at an England international travels on coaches organised by rugby clubs, county unions, travel operators and hospitality packages, from Cornwall to Cumbria, leaving before dawn and getting home after midnight. They set down and pick up at designated coach parks around the ground, allocated in advance, and the coach park you arrived at is the one you must return to. For anybody outside the South East, a club coach is frequently cheaper than the train, and it removes the post-match queueing problem completely, at the cost of leaving when the coach leaves whether you have finished your evening or not.
If you are travelling on one, take a photograph of the coach park signage and the registration plate when you arrive. Several hundred coaches, most of them white, most of them with a club scarf in the windscreen, and a crowd that has been in the pub since eleven. Every season somebody spends forty minutes walking a row of identical vehicles.
National coach operators also run scheduled services into London that make sense for a fixture, particularly for an early evening kick-off with an overnight stay, and they arrive at Victoria rather than at the ground, so the last leg is still a rail journey. The saving is real and the journey time is roughly double. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how much of the day you were planning to spend in Twickenham anyway.
Driving in, and why the car is the worst of the options
Start with the constraint. The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames operates controlled parking zones through the streets around the stadium, enforced on event days, and the roads closest to the ground are closed to through traffic for several hours around kick-off. Residential parking around Twickenham on an international Saturday is not difficult so much as unavailable, and the enforcement is real rather than nominal.
Stadium parking exists and is mostly spoken for. The West Car Park is the famous one, home to the pre-match picnic tradition that is genuinely part of the culture of the ground: car boots open, folding tables, a bottle of something, three hours before kick-off. It is not general parking, and access is tied to permits, memberships and hospitality arrangements booked well in advance.
For a driver, the workable pattern is to drive to a station some way out and take the train in. Park at a station on the Reading line, on the Shepperton branch or out towards Feltham, and let the railway do the last part. Park-and-ride arrangements are sometimes provided for the largest fixtures and publicised in advance with the ticket information; where they exist, they are pre-booked rather than turn-up-and-hope.
The rugby-specific detail worth flagging: a very large number of people at Twickenham have had a drink, and the pre-match car park culture makes the temptation to drive home worse rather than better. Nominate a driver in advance or take the train.
Cycling and walking in from the towns nearby
Twickenham sits in one of the more walkable corners of outer London, and for anyone staying locally the bicycle and the pavement beat the railway comfortably.
The Thames towpath is the reason. It runs through Richmond, Twickenham, Teddington and Kingston, largely traffic-free and pleasant in a way that no London bus route manages, and from Richmond it is a flat half-hour ride to the ground. Teddington and Hampton are similar distances. Kingston is further out but perfectly rideable for anyone who cycles regularly, and it is a much better place to spend the evening after a match than a station queue.
Cycle parking is provided on event days around the perimeter. Provision is finite and it fills, so arrive early enough to use it rather than locking to street furniture, which stewards will move you on from.
Walking in from Richmond takes about three-quarters of an hour along the river and through St Margarets, and it is one of the genuinely good pre-match walks in English sport. Richmond Bridge, the towpath, then up through the back streets with the noise of the ground gradually becoming audible somewhere ahead. Do it once and the train stops looking mandatory.
Step-free routes, assistance and drop-off points
Twickenham station's rebuild included lifts to the platforms, which changed the station from awkward to usable for wheelchair users and for anyone pushing a buggy. That is the practical baseline: step-free from street to platform at the nearest station, and a walking route to the ground that is level pavement rather than steps.
Assistance on the railway is booked through the national Passenger Assist system, and the notice period has been reduced over the years. It is now a matter of a couple of hours rather than the day before, though the specific requirement should be checked with the operator, because the industry has changed it more than once and the guarantee attached to a booking made at short notice is not identical to one made well ahead. Booking early is still better on a matchday, when station staff are managing a crowd as well as individual assistance requests.
The stadium operates accessible parking and a drop-off arrangement close to the ground, allocated on application rather than on the day, and there is a dedicated accessibility contact at the RFU for booking wheelchair and companion spaces. Those spaces are limited and go early for internationals, so they need to be arranged when tickets are, not afterwards. Our guide to buying Twickenham tickets covers where accessible tickets sit in the wider sale process, and the England rugby ticket ballot page explains the allocation route most supporters go through.
For the return leg, the managed queue is not a good environment for anyone who cannot stand for long periods, and stewards will direct you to an assisted route if you ask. Ask at the gate on the way out, rather than after you have joined the queue and lost the ability to move sideways.
Engineering works, strikes and the contingency plan
South Western Railway does a great deal of weekend engineering, and the routes into Twickenham are not exempt. A Saturday international can coincide with a blockade somewhere on the network, and when it does, the answer is usually a rail replacement bus on part of the route, a diversion via a different branch, or both. This is published in advance. It is also the single most common reason for people missing a kick-off.
The rule is simple and people ignore it every season: check your specific journey in the week of the match, then check it again the night before. National Rail's journey planner reflects engineering work. Your memory of the timetable does not.
Industrial action is the harder case. When it happens, service levels are reduced and the last trains move earlier, sometimes substantially, and an evening kick-off can become unreachable by rail from outside London. Two contingencies are worth having in your pocket. The first is a route through Richmond, because the District line and the Overground are separate networks with separate disputes and are often running when the national rail network is not. The second is knowing whether your journey home has a realistic road alternative, which for supporters travelling from outside the South East usually means the club coach.
One more thing that has caught people out. If a fixture kicks off late in the evening and your onward connection is the last train out of Waterloo, the queue at Twickenham can eat the entire margin. Work backwards from the connection rather than forwards from the whistle, and if it is tight, leave a few minutes early and walk to St Margarets.
Arriving early: the walk three hours out
The best argument for an early train has nothing to do with logistics.
Twickenham on the morning of an international is one of the more distinctive scenes in English sport. A suburban high street of ordinary shops and ordinary houses gradually filling with people in white shirts and old club ties, the pubs putting out barriers by eleven, the smell of frying onions from the vans on Whitton Road, and a slow tide moving in one direction that becomes a genuine crowd by about one o'clock. It builds over hours. Arrive forty minutes before kick-off and you miss all of it, then spend those forty minutes in a queue.
The town's pubs are the centre of it, and they are busy from mid-morning on a big day; our page on the best pubs near Twickenham on a matchday covers which ones absorb the crowd and which fill by noon. The West Car Park picnic culture starts earlier still. Inside the ground, gates open well before kick-off and there is a good deal to look at in the concourses, which is worth knowing when the pubs are full and the weather is not.
A reasonable plan for a first visit: a train that gets you into Twickenham three hours before kick-off, an hour in the town, the walk up Whitton Road with time in hand, and a decision already made about which station you are leaving from. If you want the fuller picture of the ground itself, the stands, the gates and what to expect in your seat, the Twickenham Stadium guide covers it, and rugby matchday etiquette in England is worth five minutes before a first visit. The rest of our English rugby coverage sits in the rugby section and the wider England guides hub.