Transport links are brilliant to Heathrow from anywhere in the south!!!
I think you mean you wish they were? 
I live within spitting distance of Canary Wharf. When I travel to Europe I check STN first, LGW second, LTN third, LCY fourth and LHR last.
Have done so for years, and if Cambridge was bigger I'd use it, and if one of the East Anglian military fields e.g. Mildenhall, Lakenheath was developed I'd probably use it. If Norwich had more route choice I'd use it too.
I might be tempted to venture out to Southend or Manston too so long as the parking wasn't a stoopid price like it is at overtrading BAA airports due to some clever continuing and ruthless exploitation of a monopoly situation - one even aided and abetted by machine gun toting Essex police at the drop off zones sometimes at Stansted 
As for getting to and from Heathrow, I know the roads and rail routes intimately but just thinkng about it makes me wince every time.
I lived in Datchet once - might be tempted to use LHR if I still did, but I moved because I couldn't hear myself think in the garden 