TODAY'S WOKING/WEST BYFLEET AND AROUND
Woking
Woking was propelled towards the 21st century by the opening in 1992 of the £120m Peacocks shopping, arts and entertainment complex.
Located in the town centre, this exciting development undoubtedly enhances Woking's status as one of the most important towns in Surrey. It provides people from miles around with a fantastic range of shops, a 1,300-seat theatre/auditorium capable of staging top class shows and concerts, a smaller theatre, a multi-screen cinema, restaurant and one of the finest libraries in all Surrey.
Other leisure facilities in the town abound; they include the relatively new Pool in the Park for serious swimmers and the adjacent leisure pool with chutes, slides, flumes, wave machine. Both of these facilities are located in Woking Park next door to the Sports and Leisure Centre, serving the current population of 87,000 - though not all at the same time! There are a large number of golf courses in the borough and numerous others nearby, and about 1,300 acres of common land and public open space for horse riding or simply walking the dog. Waterways such as the Basingstoke Canal and Wey Navigation also provide pleasant places to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Woking's Homes
Woking offers a full range of homes, from studio apartments, to turn of the century terraced houses, to fine and fabulous residences such as those in The Hockering and in Pyrford. Typically, prices range from £60,000 to over £1,000,000 with a diverse selection of homes catering for most tastes. Tarrant, one of the most prolific and highly regarded builders of this century, constructed a number of Woking's homes.
Well-connected Woking
The key to Woking's success as a thriving business and residential area lies in its transport links as one of the best-connected places in Britain. Exceptional road and rail communications are increasingly relevant to those whose working lives are in London and elsewhere where it may be too expensive, too frantic or too inconvenient to live. In the morning rush hour there can be as many as 16 trains per hour leaving Woking for Waterloo with the journey taking from 28 minutes, whilst South West Trains. 100-mph Wessex Electric trains call at Woking hourly to serve Basingstoke, Winchester, Southampton and Poole.
The completion of the M25, only 10 minutes drive from Woking town centre, made it easier for drivers to reach the M3 (to central London and the South Coast) the M4 (to the West) and the rest of the motorway network. The busy A3, linking London and Portsmouth, passes just to the south east of the borough.
For air travellers, Heathrow airport is barely 30 minutes' drive away, and an express coach runs there half hourly from Woking station and vice versa. Gatwick is 35-40 minutes away.
Excitingly Woking might, possibly, become even better connected in the future if Railtrack is successful in its bid to create a new rail link "Airtrack" through to Heathrow. The proposal, if realised, could mean air travellers being able to check their bags in at Woking Station and collecting them on arriving at their flight destination. Also, the service will link onwards with Paddington Station via Heathrow. Current hopes are that by 2007 the proposed £100m project will be completed; if this transpires there will literally be no British town better placed for anyone who travels in this country or abroad.
Famous Woking
Reduced to a heap of fiery ruins, HG Wells' Woking, (Horsell Common) was the site of the Martians' landing. HG lived in a small semi-detached villa in Maybury Road. George Bernard Shaw also lived briefly in the Maybury area, around 1905-6, at a big house called Maybury Knowle. More recently, the Spice Girls, Britain's most famous 90's pop group, developed their art in a charitably run youth facility called Trinity Studios in Woking's Knaphill. Other local heroes include Eric Clapton - of nearby Ripley, and Paul Weller lived as a child in Stanley Road, Woking, now the title of one of his albums.
