Company for a Kings Cross arrival, arranged along the water

The first hour, spent on the water

Word on the Water is a bookbarge moored on the towpath below Granary Square, with a stove going inside, a cat asleep in the window most afternoons and somebody playing on the roof through the summer. It is five minutes from the platforms and it is the pleasantest place in the postcode to wait for anybody. Kings Place sits a little further up York Way, an office block with two concert halls underneath it and a terrace at water level, and its programme runs from chamber music to jazz inside the same week.

West of the canal, Camley Street Natural Park is two acres of woodland and pond squeezed between the water and the railway, which is an absurd thing to find this close to a mainline terminus and is free to walk into. The brick behind the station has been scrubbed and relit into something that photographs better than it deserves, and it is worth knowing which of the buildings is genuinely old and which one only looks it.

Rooms, and how far each one really is

N1C 4TB is the curved Victorian building wedged between the two stations, and it is the shortest walk of any room here, about a minute. NW1 2AR sits above the neighbouring terminus and is the grandest of them by a distance. WC1H 8EG faces both across the Euston Road, three or four minutes on foot and in a different postcode. NW1 2AJ is six minutes west along the same road.

Companions visit all of them, along with the serviced apartments around the goods yard and private flats on the Pentonville side in WC1X. We hold no arrangement with any hotel, here or anywhere; a guest receiving a visitor is ordinary business at any hour, and reception has no part in it.

If you are staying somewhere and meeting elsewhere, say so in the same message. Four minutes of walking in the wrong direction is the difference between arriving settled and arriving out of breath, and the desk would rather fix that beforehand.

Six lines under one roof

King's Cross St Pancras is a minute from the hotels that face it and carries the Circle, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines along with National Rail services north. Whichever direction a companion is coming from, one of those six will bring her. Euston is ten minutes west on foot, or a single stop. Euston Square, twelve minutes, is the quieter option for anything on the Circle.

That density is why this is the simplest address on the site for a late change of plan. Trains run late, the Victoria and Northern lines run through the night at weekends, and buses along the Euston Road and York Way run every night of the week. A car at eleven takes ten minutes into the middle of town and a good deal more at six, when the Euston Road is doing what it does.

An evening shaped by a timetable

Arrivals are the specialism here. Send the train and the hotel in the same message and the start is set from there; if the train runs late, one line moves the hour rather than losing the evening. An hour at £250 works for an arrival and a drink. Ninety minutes at £400 is the more comfortable version of the same thing and the one the desk usually suggests. Three hours at £700 takes in a concert, a table and the long way back along the towpath.

Name a meeting point rather than leaving it vague. The towpath below the square, the terrace at the concert hall or a particular hotel bar all work; the middle of a concourse at half past seven does not. The booking page sets out what happens between your first message and her arriving.

Anchored in N1C

Liana and Samanta both work this postcode and both prefer the quiet end of it. Liana waits away from the departure boards, asks about the journey and means the question, and holds a start time rather than lose an evening to a quarter of an hour. Samanta meets people on the towpath beside the bookbarge, finds you something on the shelves within four minutes and is usually right about it.

Two minutes east under the same roof, Nancy and Sonya cover the St Pancras side. Ten minutes west, Luna and Stacy work the Euston Road. Between the six of them the district is covered at almost any hour, and the rest of the list reaches it in under half an hour.

A short walk from here

Two minutes east, the Gothic terminus and the hotels above it are effectively the same building with a different roof. Ten minutes west, Euston has the west coast trains and a street of small kitchens behind it. North up the towpath, Camden Town is a forty minute walk along the water or eight minutes on the Northern line. North east and uphill, Angel is ten minutes by bus up Pentonville Road and belongs to a slower, later evening.