After a little sojourn in Luton Wetherspoons, which is obviously where all the best trips start from, I had a walk to the airport hotel. Some travellers prefer private transfers, but they risk missing several miles of dual carriageway and an abandoned vehicle factory.
This is what was the Arndale Shopping Centre, then renamed the Mall Luton, then Luton Point and since earlier this year, it’s now Frasers Plus which is effectively Sports Direct. This is perhaps one of the nicer areas in Luton, but the shopping centre’s construction in the 1970s destroyed a lot of heritage and has messed up the town’s street lines.
I made a quick stop at Lidl in the Frasers Plus shopping centre because I urgently needed fruit suspended in sugar. I’m not sure I have ever craved fruit so intensely that I felt compelled to rush into Lidl for it, but there we are, life is an exploration.
This is the entrance to Kimpton Road, formerly known as Gallows Road, and I’ve never thought enough about that former bridge crossing there. The mainline railway (formerly known as the Midland Railway) is just behind it, but this separate line was once the Luton & Dunstable branch of the Great Northern Railway. This line ran to Dunstable and beyond, but it was closed down in 1965 which as usual was a sub-optimal decision as Dunstable really could have done with a railway line. That bus in the photo is relevant to this story.
I was standing where the ‘smithy’ is on the map.
That’s where the bus was heading, the former line is now the Luton to Dunstable Busway which opened in 2013 and is apparently the second longest in the world. It’s 13.4 kilometres (8.3 miles) and the guided track is 7.7 kilometres (4.8 miles) of that. I like railways, but there was a good reason not to rebuild this one as the expense was high and it would be difficult to connect it into the main rail network, which is always an optimal aim. It means Dunstable doesn’t have a railway station, but at least they have a guided busway station and that will have to suffice.
The war memorial outside the former Vauxhall Motors works. The factory was bombed in 1940, killing 39 workers and injuring over 40 others, and this memorial was redesigned here when the former buildings were demolished and converted to housing in 2022. Vauxhall car production came to an end in 2002 and those buildings were the ones taken down, with only commercial vehicles made here after that. Although more of that in a moment.
Some of the names from the Great War and I might well come back to this at some point….
For anyone who would like to see the memorial, it’s located opposite Luton Airport Parkway railway station. This is the station I complain about quite regularly, so my loyal readers may already feel they know it personally.
I mentioned that cars were made in Luton until 2002, but commercial vehicle production also came to an end in 2025. The final vehicle made here was a Vauxhall Vivaro completed on 28 March 2025, marking the end of 120 years of production on the site. There is now extensive security to stop the site from being taken over, this was one of the main entrances.
And this was another entrance and I remember the workers piling into these buildings when I was off walking to the airport, it all feels a little sad now.
There is at least still a Vauxhall dealership here.
And this little plaque was put up recently to mark just how many people used to work at the site.
After a little more walking and crossing busy roads I was nearly at the Ibis hotel and this is the Ibis Budget that has been closed for years.
And safely at the Ibis hotel ready for my early morning flight.
I accept that a trip supposedly involving the Balkans has so far featured Luton Wetherspoons, Lidl, a guided busway, an abandoned Vauxhall factory and two Luton hotels. It is perhaps not the most conventional introduction to the delights of the wider Balkans region, but international travel involves a certain amount of administrative build-up.
I am now writing this from Belgrade, though, so we are very nearly at the point where the Balkans finally enter this Balkans trip. The anticipation is almost unbearable. Although, after Luton’s second-longest-in-the-world guided busway, Belgrade has a great deal to live up to.