Travellers’ tales: The HG Wells cycling fan club
Where: South-East England
Who: Phil Beed
When: November 2025
Cheaper Sunday room rates at Premier Inn were the incentive to extend our regular Portsmouth CTC club ride. We could go further afield and add some cultural exploration.
From Portsmouth we headed through Iping village, where the Invisible Man sought refuge. Then to Hindhead and past the Devil’s Punch Bowl. We descended on the old A3, which is now a cycle track going over the road tunnel.
With the Hog’s Back behind us, we picked up the Basingstoke Canal towpath to Woking. In the town centre we passed under a seven-metre Martian tripod sculpture; Woking is where The War of the Worlds begins.
There were also a statue of HG Wells and a monument of the alien cylinder. The pub we visited for lunch had a Time Machine clock on the ceiling, as well as a dummy of the Invisible Man in clothes and bandages.
We passed through Putney, where The War of the Worlds narrator meets the Artilleryman; it’s also a location in Wells’s cycling novel, Wheels of Chance Phil Beed, Portsmouth CTC ride leader
The Wey Navigation took us into London, where we had a 20km ride on quiet back streets, riverside paths and through two royal parks to reach our hotel in Wandsworth. We passed through Putney, where The War of the Worlds narrator meets the Artilleryman; it’s also a location in Wells’s cycling novel, Wheels of Chance.
The following morning we retraced our steps. Getting out of London was easier than expected on a Monday morning. In daylight this time, we saw deer in Richmond Park and riverside sights we had missed in the dark of the previous evening.
The canal towpaths were quieter on a weekday and we made good progress back to Woking. There we took a short detour to Horsell Common and the site of the Martian landing in the Sandpits.
The area is largely unchanged since 1895, and you could see why Wells picked this spot. Our gathering of cyclists was not unlike the curious spectators in the story. We arrived home after dark, having had two days of riding and culture.
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