Holidays!

Reading will be fine for a hotel for the night, and some decent pubs and curry houses to choose from.

Windsor would be a good choice too. Maidenhead has recently started to show promise in this area, with some good watering holes and food places springing up - I think the Elizabeth Line and being on the London Underground map has encouraged this sort of thing. Wokingham is decent too.

Are you a traditional real ale type man, or are you into new fangled craft stuff? What sort of curry do you like? Trad English curry house menu, or something a bit more authentic and/or modern? I can give extensive recommendations in the Thames Valley for both types of pubs and curry joints.

Also check out the obvious booking sites. So booking.com, hotels.com (part of Expedia?) but also Trivago. But I often find the accommodation direct is cheaper.

If you're happy with Travelodge, I'd go for the Central Windsor one. You have to park in the public multi-storey next door, but you get a discount rate from the hotel. That'll have you pint-in-hand by 10pm if you leave the airport perimeter by at the time you state. Go much further west and you'll risk missing closing time. Lots of pubs and bars in central Windsor.

Ok, accommodation booked, kind of near St Tropez, early June, couple of weeks, yippee.
Digs cheap, tunnel stupidly expensive, hey ho, don’t care.
😎

It depends what you want from the hotel. When I'm travelling in the UK I'll use Premier Inn, usually close to main routes, fixed price evening meal and breakfast can be added for a reasonable charge. Saves having to go looking for food after an 8+ hour drive.

Staying in a Travelodge in Edinburgh for the next two nights. Family get together. It is just somewhere to sleep and have breakfast. Rooms have the basics, don't need any more and for £60/head/night including breakfast don't feel like I'm getting robbed.

I like Premier Inn as well.  Good rooms, clean, comfortable and usually very conveniently located.   Some, like the one in Warwick they are full of tradesmen which makes the car park full and the restaurant noisy, so I stay elsewhere, others are small and quiet like the one by the helicopter manufacturer in Yeovil.  

Fair enough, I think I’d probably do the same and suffer the consequences for a short trip like that.
Most of the time I prefer to avoid air travel now though, having spent a lifetime being required to do it on a regular basis, I fail to see any pleasure in the process anymore. Far rather drive even if it takes longer.
Long haul exceptions apply of course.