Woking, according to the town's slogan and somewhat surprisingly for some, is "where modern science fiction took off" but it's also where, yesterday, the TADS 2020 walking season took off, and if the wait from the last of 2019's walks to the start of 2020's hadn't seemed so indeterminably long as previous years (London by Foot and Capital Ring walks keeping the more addicted of us step collectors out pounding the pavements and parks in the interim) it was still good to, finally, hook up with the mother of all those walking groups again. The gang was back in town.
All winter I'd been checking the route on various websites and, over the last fortnight, I'd regularly been logging on to see what the weather was due to be like in Woking. Sunshine, beer gardens, and ice creams would have been perfect but rain, wind, cold and, hunched shoulders would have been an inauspicious start.
As with most things in life the reality fell somewhere in the middle of my worst fears and my best hopes and I'm old enough now to know that that's okay. I had a great day despite spending the week bunged up with a lurgee that involved regular mild headaches, a watery eye, and the odd cough. I checked the NHS website and the symptoms didn't look like Covid-19 to me so I didn't self-isolate, I didn't put on a bloody face mask, and I didn't stockpile bogroll (ffs). I also decided not to talk about it on the walk if I could help it. I'm bored of coronavirus talk permanently on the news by now (I know I'll get more bored and it may well get more serious) and I didn't want to either add to it or appear a hypochondriac.
I met Pam in Clapham Junction (platform 9, always) on Saturday morning and we took the 1027 train to Woking where, joined by Shep, Adam, Teresa, and Kathy we all headed straight past a statue of Wetherspoons owner Tim Martin pumped full of steroids (actually Sean Henry's The Wanderer based, according to an ex-colleage of mine, Jim Morgan, on Bryn Terfel in Wagner's Siegfried), past "the spectularly grotty pub" that Shep, Tina, and I visited on the way back from last year's Gomshall-Dorking walk, and found a table in Poppins.
We'd all popped in Poppins but some were calling it breakfast and some were calling it lunch. I wondered if anyone had coined a handy portmanteau word that could cover both possibilities at the same time and then I ordered a cup of tea and some cheese on toast and soon realised the lens on my camera phone needed a cleaning.
A mix of veggie breakfasts and bubble'n'squeaks scored a range of scores (4/10 - 8/10) suggesting the Poppins experience was a mixed one. I felt one of the luckier ones and I think there was a general agreement that including a brunch (ah, that's the word) option before future walks would be a good idea. I've taken it on board.
Back at Woking station, we met with Tina and began the walk proper. An alley between Carluccio's and the Oxfam shop takes you to Crown Square where sculptor Michael Condron's martian tripod sculpture stands proudly and some of the paving slabs are inscribed with bacterial patterns providing a spoiler for those who have not yet read the book, watched the films, heard the radio play, watched the tv series, or listened to Jeff Wayne's funkier than you'd expect album.
The sculpture was unveiled in 1998 by none other than Carol Vordeman. Few people, genuinely, realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.
Kathy made a derogatory and highly sexual content about the pod element of the sculpture above and then we passed back under the station and turned left into Oriental Road. The road name, quite clearly, a clue to the next building of interest.
It's been a running joke between Pam and I for some years now that as we pass through Woking station on the train I point out the mosque to her and tell her it's the oldest purpose built mosque in the country. I thought it was long overdue that we got round to taking a closer look. We weren't to be disappointed.
The Shah Jahan Mosque, a Grade I listed building, was built in 1889 in the Persian-Saracenic style by the Hungarian (Pest, not Buda) born British Orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner who'd learnt Arabic and Turkish in Constantinople (and could, it's claimed, speak forty-eight other languages), been an interpreter in Crimea, and studied in Heidelberg and London. He's buried in the nearby Brookwood Cemetery.
Partly funded by Shah Jahan Begum of Bhopal in central India, an Urdu author, builder of dams and lakes as well as palaces and mosques, and a military moderniser. She died in 1901. Leitner employed the architect William Isaac Chambers in the construction of the mosque and the materials used were a combination of Bath and Bargate stone. Leitner had purchased the Royal Dramatic College in Woking and established an Oriental Institute (1884-1899) to promote the literature of the East. It awarded degrees from the University of the Punjab in Lahore.
The mosque was built for the Oriental Institute's student's needs but was also used by Queen Victoria's British Indian employees, Chapter IX of War of the Worlds describes the mosque being set on fire (the martians, presumably, being as indifferent to Islam as they are to all other human belief systems) but, after Leitner's death, the mosque faced a genuinely uncertain future.
His son wanted to sell the land to property developers but Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, a Kashmiri lawyer, took him to court over it and it was ruled that as the land was consecrated it had the same rights as a church. It reopened in 1913 and was, until the mid-sixties, managed by the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam.
It became the UK centre of Islam and it's even believed that the name Pakistan ("land of the pure") was coined at the Shan Jahan Mosque. Famous visitors have included founder of Pakistan, Jinnah, Faisal of Saudi Arabia (reign 1964-1975), Haile Selassie, Aga Khan III (died 1957), and Turku Abdul Rahmn (Malaysian head of state:1955-1970).
While I read this information out, and tried even to turn parts of it into a little quiz, Teresa and one or two others struck up a brief conversation with the former imam's son and some early arrivals were turning up for a funeral planned later that afternoon. I admired the architecture (I loved the big green dome) and, though I'm not of a fan of any religion, I could see that this place was a place where people came together in kindness.
We headed back to Oriental Road and turned left on Maybury Hill past an unremarkable Asda and back under the railway lines. Two drunken lads wobbled in the street, we crossed the Basingstoke Canal (for the first time of the day), and we stopped to observe a truly remarkably decorated house before reaching the outskirts of Horsell Common and wandering through the pretty forested area to the Muslim Burial Ground.
It's the resting place of two dozen Muslim soldiers from WWI and WWII, it's Grade II listed, it had a bumblebee on its grounds (in Britain, in March), and it's a genuinely peaceful and contemplative spot. Even with a group of not always quiet walkers in attendance.
Nineteen of those who were buried here had died in Brighton's Royal Pavilion which had been converted into a military hospital during WWI. After vandalism in the sixties, the bodies were transferred to Brookwood and it's now a peace garden. Rather fantastically, local hero Paul Weller partly funded restoration work in the 1990s.
We crossed more of the forest on the Bedser Trail which was named for cricketer Alec Bedser who was born in Reading in 1918 and died in Woking in 2000. He played as a medium fast bowler for Surrey and England and was once the world record holder for taking test wickets. Muttiah Muralitharan now holds that distinction.
Soon enough, as you can see above, we reached Horsell Common. The sandpit is the place where the Martians first arrive in Wells' book and, also, in all science fiction. Even without that piece of, to me, fascinating fictional history, it's a peculiar spot. Pretty. But peculiar.
Why is there so much sand in the middle of Surrey? Nobody was certain but as a dog leaped and played in the water and the overcast skies allowed the sun to peek through intermittently the whole scene gave an impressive, slightly melancholy, visual air.
We could have stopped for longer, I could have (as planned) blasted out a bit of Jeff Wayne, but we didn't - and I didn't. We continued on across Horsell Common which, soon, started to get muddy. It wouldn't be the last, or the worst, mud of the day.
After stopping to admire a totem pole carved very impressively out of a tree, a path north took us into the sunlit uplands of McLaren Park. This was an area that I'd worried may be private but the footpath signposts and information boards assured us it was not and we walked across the wet grass looking left to picnic benches and puddles and right to the McLaren Technology Centre. A sleek modern building designed by Norman Foster (see also:- the Gherkin, Wembley Stadium, the Reichstag in Berlin, and the HSBC bank in Hong Kong). The five artificial lakes surrounding the centre (number boosted by uncountable puddles, it'd been very wet earlier this week) cool the building and send heat to wind tunnels for testing.
For the most part, it seems to work. They've not had an F1 World Champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008 but, before then, they won the title with drivers as famous as Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, and Mika Hakkinen. Current drivers Lando Norris and Carlo Sainz, perhaps, aren't quite in that league but I'd still not fancy my chances against them!
As we reached the northern end of McLaren Park we chanced upon a rusty corrugated iron container/building/thing that seemed to have somewhat overly tight security and we wondered if it was where McLaren locked up their unsuccessful drivers. Michael Gove is an MP not far from here so perhaps it's where they keep him imprisoned during a full moon.
We crossed the muddy River Bourne, a river of two halves. The one we crossed has flowed all the way from Bagshot (not that far really) while the other half starts its course in Windsor Great Park. They meet just the other side of Addlestone and the M25 and soon join the Thames near Weybridge and Shepperton Lock, only a few hundred metres before the Wey enters into the Thames. Very exciting tributary action on the Surrey/London border!
The other side of the Bourne we reached what looked, initially, to be an obstacle. A sign (not pictured) warned 'no entry' but we weren't sure if that referred to straight on (where we wanted to go), turning left, or everything. Pam was particularly cautious, much to Adam's intense glee. We convinced ourselves it was okay to continue forward (why have a path that leads to a dead end?), and gingerly did so.
Another sign warned "LOW FLYING AIRCRAFT. DO NOT STOP FOR THE NEXT 90 YARDS". It wasn't a lie. Fairoaks Airport opened as a private airport in 1931 and became RAF Fairoaks during WWII, pilots were trained to fly Havilland Tiger Moths here. Since then it's operated as a flying school and survived a 2016 plan to close it and build Fairoaks Garden Village (1,500 'housing units') in its place.
Surrey people are very good, I like to think, at stiff letters to local newspapers. Our own survival was more the question now as we headed over the approach to the runway. Pam still seemed more concerned that we were breaking rules than with the danger of being decapitated by a trainee pilot but we all got across safe and looked round to watch a couple of planes lands. The second of which I would not have wanted to be underneath. It was low!
From there we traversed another muddy path and turned left into Chertsey/Chobham Road. This was a dull stretch and, at times, there was no pavement or even much of a verge. After nearly 2k, it was a relief to reach the edge of Ottershaw and head through the woods to Sir George Gilbert Scott's Christ Church.
We'd arranged to meet Darren, Cheryl, and Tommy in a pub and, aware that - due to mud, we were running late I upped the pace a bit too much for which I apologise. Even running late, Christ Church was worth a brief look. Designed by Scott and built in 1863-4, it's not (obviously) as well known as other buildings that carry his name like the Albert Memorial, the Midland Grand Hotel, or London's St Pancras station but it's still a fairly impressive, and hefty, red brick affair that seems almost too big for a modest place like Ottershaw.
Across the road from Christ Church there was another wood with a series of paths that zig-zagged somewhat haphazardly downhill and we followed these until we bumped into Darren walking Luca in the woods. Luca's their new (to me at least, first time I've met him) whippet and, at first, I was very cautious. As a kid in Tadley I had a huge lump bitten out of the arse of my jeans (and my actual arse) by a whippet while riding my bike down Sandy Lane.
Not Luca's fault, admittedly but he's a lively pup so I left those with better dog skills to play with him and lead the way into The Castle where Cheryl and Tommy were waiting for us (although, to be fair, Tommy was far more interested in playing football on a handheld game, announcing proudly that Salah had just scored - he's moved on since his Dobble days).
After over 10k it was good to rest and good to have a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord. It was a perfectly pleasant, quite quiet, pub and most of the others managed to squeeze a second pint in before we left. Most of us for the rest of the walk but Kathy and Shep for the bus stop. Kathy wanted to be home by 7pm (!) and Shep had a family function to attend. Something he apologised profusely for but I'm certain a Moretti or two at the Italian would have eased his unnecessarily troubled conscience!
We'd lost two but we'd picked up three. Cheryl, Tommy, and Luca joined us while Darren (who's been enduring a nasty, and lengthy, bout of gout) drove ahead to meet us at the next pub.
We headed down Brox Lane for 1.5k. As a private road I'd not been able to research it using Google Street View but I'd seen there was a footpath sign so I felt we'd be ok and, certainly, we were. There were a few muddy puddles but, for the most part, no traffic whatsoever and soon Luca was off the lead. The first half saw the road flanked by lovely posh houses and the second half by a caravan park that was also quite nice and it didn't seem long before we reached Woodham Park Road.
We followed that briefly and then took a very thin, walk in single file, footpath through the fields to New Haw. This was the muddiest, potentially most impassable, part of the walk. It saw Cheryl carrying Luca, people hanging on to the side of fences, and some of the male walkers adapting some very peculiar positions in mostly futile attempts to straddle the puddles.
The path emptied out into some textbook suburbia and Tommy leavened his obvious ennui at such an environment by trying to poke a stick up Adam's bum while I thought about The Members 'Sound of the Suburbs'. We followed a road under the M25 and on to the White Hart in New Haw, a pub that Darren had already arrived at and had texted forward to warn did not allow dogs!
As you can see above, Luca wasn't happy about that and even a retro Courage sign wasn't enough to change his mind. It was a bit chilly but they allowed dogs in the garden so we sat out there watching a couple of ducks swim by. Tommy played on the slide, the rest of us supped up, and, unbeknownst to her at the time, Teresa lost her phone. Later on she rang them, they found it in the garden, and she's since retrieved it.
It was an okay pub, a kind of sports fans place really, but the garden, on a sunny day, would have been lovely. It wasn't a sunny day but never mind. The word 'haw' is an old word for lock-gate and it seems that the new haw was installed in what became New Haw as long ago as 1653. The lock-keeper's cottage which we'd soon pass featured in HG Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon.
It was dark now so our views of, first, the Wey Navigation, and then, the Basingstoke Canal weren't as great as they might have been but, hey, it's March. Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, and Luca had headed home and there were just five of us left as we passed again under the M25, an area I'd viewed from the train probably hundreds of times. It almost felt weird to actually be there. You'd probably not want to find yourself alone there too late at night!
The Basingstoke Canal, which links Basingstoke to the Thames via said Wey Navigation, was completed in 1778, closed in 1931, and restored in 1991. Its principal engineer, John Smeaton, was also big on harbours and bridges and earned himself the title 'the father of civil engineering' while his assistant, one Benjamin Henry Latrobe, later moved to the US and helped design both the Capitol Building and the White House. The canal was built to stimulate the agricultural development of Hampshire, during WWI the Royal Engineers took it over to ferry supplies to Woolwich, and, in 1983, 77 year old Alfred Burtoo reported an alien sighting on the canal. He believed the humanoid aliens rejected him as a captive for being too old. Woking, where modern science fiction took off!
We finally reached West Byfleet and The Station pub. Being a station pub I'd expected, and warned, that it'd probably be shit and it was an almighty surprise that it was absolutely lovely. Large, friendly, and clean with a good range of drinks. It was the sort of place you could come with a large group for a rowdy night or sit on your own reading a paper and neither would look out of place.
Tina's husband Neil met us there and we soon headed over to Kayal for South Indian food where we had another pleasant surprise. Despite having passed through West Byfleet on the train possibly over five hundred times I'd never once had a look round, and barely even thought of it.
A small high street had a Chinese, a Thai, and another Indian but Kayal definitely seemed the main attraction. An old Indian car outside and old Indian motorbike inside impressed Neil and myself and the food impressed everyone. Except me. Not because it was bad. It was anything but. My lurgee was really kicking in and my right eye was watering quite badly. I wasn't totally able to enjoy myself but to see five great friends tucking in to delicious food, laughing, and chatting made me very happy. I felt altruistic and it felt good and if, for me, the most impressive thing about my dosa was the sheer size of it that's no poor reflecion on Kayal, its staff, or its surprisingly reasonable prices. There was no Bangla but Tina managed to score an interesting looking mango & lime cider and most of the rest of us downed a brace of Cobras.
I wished I could have enjoyed the food more and I wished I had more energy than I did. By the end of the day I'd completed 32,298 steps (my record, so far, for 2020) and that might not be what the doctor would order for someone with the lurgee (six pints might also be deemed foolish in the circumstances) but it would take a lot more for me to miss the first TADS walk of the year, or any TADS walk for that matter, than a sore head, achy bones, and a watery eye.
We had one more drink back in The Station and Pam and I got the train together to Clapham Junction before heading our separate ways. I was home, in my pajamas, and in bed, before midnight. I was totally knackered but I had no regrets whatsoever. By most accounts, it'd been another great day for TADS and I was very happy with the walk I'd administered
In The War of the Worlds, Wells' Martians care little for Earth or those who live here. He makes obvious comparisons with the selfishness of many humans and the way they plunder and destroy their own planet. If I'd spent a few more days at home sitting and watching television and believing the very worst about people I'd have probably come to a conclusion, not unlike Wells, that should coronavirus or something similar wipe all human life off the planet it'd probably be no better than we deserve. A day out with friends was just the reminder I needed that the vast majority of humans really are way way better than that. The countryside, literature, and stories we tell each other about religion are all interesting enough but if we're not there to read them or see it then there's little point.
The train home, for once, was devoid of train booze (rest, instead, was the priority) so I'll sign off with a few more quotes from Wells and from that book:-
"I did not know it but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days".
"The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts".
"For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence".
"Then - a familiar note. I heard a train running towards Woking".
Thanks to Pam, Tina, and Shep for photos used in this blog and thanks to them, Adam, Teresa, Kathy, Neil, Darren, Cheryl, Tommy, and Luca for helping to write another page in the ever evolving history of TADS. Next month we're in Oxfordshire for a vaguely Paul Nash themed walk on and around the Wittenham Clumps.
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