Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, England. It functions as a dormitory town of the London commuter belt and is located 23 miles (37 km) south west of Charing Cross in central London. Woking town itself, excluding the district, has a population of 62,796,[1] and the administrative civil parish, which covers part of the urban area inclusive of Sheerwater and Knaphill, has a population of 30,403. Woking also plays a role in literature: it is the town in which the Martians landed in H. G. Wells science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It also features in Douglas Adams's The Meaning of Liff, as the word for when you go to the kitchen but forget why. More on Woking