The Dorking taxi number is 01372 727 727. Clocktower Cars is a licensed private hire operator covering Dorking, Westcott, Brockham, Betchworth, Mickleham, Westhumble and the Holmwoods twenty-four hours a day, dispatched from our Bookham office a few miles north of the town. Our Epsom head office is on 01372 747 747 if you would rather ring the main switchboard.
Whether you need a taxi in Dorking for the early train to Victoria, minicabs in Dorking for a Gatwick departure, cabs in Dorking after a concert at the Dorking Halls, or a wheelchair taxi in Dorking for a hospital appointment, it is the same office, the same drivers and the same cars. You can book online, call, or ask for a fixed quote before you commit to anything.
Dorking taxis, Dorking cabs, minicabs in Dorking — different words, the same thing, and the same office answers all of them. What follows is the practical detail: how the town’s three railway stations differ and why it matters when you book, how long Gatwick and Heathrow really take from here, how school runs, wheelchair bookings and pet-friendly cars work, and how to get up to Box Hill and back down again.
Three ways to book a Dorking taxi
1. Call — 01372 727 727 (Bookham, serving Dorking) or 01372 747 747 (head office). Answered around the clock.
2. Book online — get a quote and confirm in a couple of minutes, day or night.
3. App — book, track your car and save your regular Dorking addresses. Details on our contact page.
This is the single most useful thing we can tell you about taxis in Dorking, and it is the thing that goes wrong most often. Dorking has three railway stations, and a fourth sits just outside the town. They are on different lines, they go to different places, and they are not next door to one another. If you book a car to “Dorking station” without saying which one, there is a real chance of a car waiting in the wrong car park while your train pulls in half a mile away.
When you book cabs in Dorking for a train, give us the station name in full. Our controllers know all four, and the drivers know which entrance to sit at. Dorking station taxis are the single most common booking we take in this town, and naming the station is all it takes to get it right.
The biggest of the three, on Station Approach, and the one most people mean. It sits on the Mole Valley line and is served by Southern and South Western Railway. Off-peak that is roughly two trains an hour to London Victoria via Sutton and one an hour to London Waterloo via Wimbledon. The station is twenty-two miles down the line from Waterloo.
Here is the part that matters for a taxi: Dorking Main is about seven tenths of a mile from the High Street, on the north-eastern edge of town. On a dry evening with nothing to carry, that is a pleasant fifteen minutes. With a suitcase, a toddler, shopping, or a Surrey Hills downpour, it is the reason the short station run is the most-booked journey we do in Dorking.
Station Approach gets busy at the top of the hour when a London train empties. Tell us your train’s arrival time rather than the time you booked your ticket for, and we will hold the car nearby and bring it in when you are actually on the platform.
Deepdene is a short walk from Dorking Main and is on the North Downs Line, operated by Great Western Railway. Off-peak it runs two trains an hour in each direction between Reading, via Guildford, and Gatwick Airport, dropping to hourly in the evening. Interchange between Deepdene and Dorking Main is permitted on a through ticket.
We will say the honest thing here, because it builds more trust than pretending otherwise: if you are travelling light to Gatwick in the middle of the day, the train from Deepdene is a genuinely good option. It takes a little over half an hour. Where a taxi in Dorking wins is the 04:30 start before the trains run, the flight with three cases and a pushchair, the return at midnight when the last connection has gone, or the group of four for whom four tickets stop being the cheap option.
Also on the North Downs Line, west of the town centre off the A25. It is the smallest and least used of the three, which is exactly why it is worth naming when you book: a driver sent to “Dorking station” will not be sitting here.
One stop north of Dorking Main, about five hundred metres from the National Trust country park at Box Hill, and served by trains from London Victoria and Waterloo. Walkers, cyclists and visitors to Denbies use it constantly. It sits across the river from Dorking proper, so it is its own pickup point and its own fare — worth saying when you ring.
We can carry bikes, but not in every car and not without warning. Tell the controller how many bikes and whether they can be dismantled, and we will send something that fits rather than something that does not.
Dorking is one of the best-placed towns in Surrey for an airport run, and the reason is simple geography: Gatwick is close enough to be a local journey, and Heathrow is a straightforward motorway run. Most towns we cover have to choose. Dorking does not really have to.
About 14.9 miles and roughly 28 minutes on the quickest route, dropping south through Henfold Lane and across to the airport. The alternative via the A217 is 15.6 miles and about 32 minutes. Either way, Gatwick from Dorking is a sub-half-hour journey outside the worst of the traffic — closer than most people in the town realise, and closer than the same journey from Epsom, Sutton or Kingston.
Because it is short, the margin for error is smaller, not larger. The A24 south of Dorking and the approach to the M23 both bottleneck at commuter times, and a twenty-eight minute journey can comfortably become fifty. We build that into the pickup time rather than leaving you to guess. More on the route itself on our Gatwick airport transfers page.
About 28.5 miles and roughly 38 minutes, north up the A24 to the M25 at Leatherhead and anticlockwise to the airport. There is a slightly shorter route through Ockham at 27.1 miles, but it takes about 44 minutes, so the motorway is the one we use unless the M25 is genuinely broken.
That stretch of the M25 between junctions 9 and 12 is one of the least predictable in the country. For an early flight it is usually clear; for anything departing between about seven and ten in the morning we will suggest leaving Dorking earlier than the map says. See our Heathrow airport transfers page, and we also run dedicated Dorking to Heathrow and Dorking minicab to Heathrow pages with the route in more detail.
All covered, all pre-booked, all quoted before you travel. Luton and Stansted are longer runs that cross London’s orbital traffic, so the departure time matters more than the distance. Southampton and Portsmouth for cruises are straightforward down the A3 or M3 and are a common booking from Dorking in the summer. Ask for a quote and we will give you the number and the sensible departure time together.
For arrivals we track the flight, so a delay does not cost you the car and a landing ahead of schedule does not leave you waiting. You can be met in the terminal with a name board, or picked up at the kerbside if you would rather keep it quick and cheaper. Our meet and greet page explains how each option works.
We do not publish a price list, and we would rather explain why than pretend a table on a web page is the truth. A Dorking taxi fare is set by four things, and only one of them is distance.
So the useful thing is a quote, not a guess. Ring 01372 727 727 or get a fixed price online and you will have a number before you commit. If you are comparing cheap taxis in Dorking, compare quotes for the actual journey rather than headline rates — that is where the difference usually is.
We run wheelchair-accessible vehicles and take assisted bookings across Dorking and the surrounding villages. A wheelchair taxi in Dorking needs to be booked ahead rather than hailed — there are a limited number of accessible vehicles on the road at any one time, and pre-booking is what guarantees one turns up.
The type of chair matters. A folding manual chair that the passenger transfers out of is a different booking from a large powered chair that travels occupied with the passenger strapped in. Tell us which, and tell us whether there are steps, a kerb or a gravel drive at either end. Our wheelchair-accessible minicab page covers the vehicles and the training in more detail.
Appointments at Dorking Community Hospital, East Surrey in Redhill, Epsom General, the Royal Surrey in Guildford and St George’s in Tooting are all regular runs from Dorking. The return leg is the one people forget: you rarely know exactly when you will be discharged. Book the outbound with a firm time and tell us roughly when to expect the call back, and we will work to that rather than holding a car on the clock.
For repeat appointments — dialysis, oncology, physiotherapy — we can set up a standing booking with the same driver wherever the rota allows. Most people would rather see a familiar face on a difficult morning.
Dorking has an unusual concentration of schools for a town of its size — fourteen work together through the Dorking Schools Partnership, from Dorking Nursery School up to the two secondaries, The Ashcombe School on Ashcombe Road and The Priory School. Add Powell Corderoy, St Paul’s, St Joseph’s, St Martin’s, St John’s, North Downs Primary, Surrey Hills All Saints and The Weald, and the town has a real school-run problem between half eight and nine.
We run term-time school taxis in Dorking on a standing booking: same pickup, same times, named regular driver wherever the rota allows. It matters more than it sounds. A child who sees the same driver every morning settles into the car; a different car and a different face each week does not work for anyone.
Drivers carrying children are licensed and DBS-checked. Child seats and boosters are provided when requested at the time of booking — give us the child’s age and we bring the right one. Where a child travels unaccompanied, we agree in advance exactly who hands over and who receives at each end, and nobody improvises at the gate. Our school run service page sets out how the contracts work.
Plenty of Dorking families travel out for school — to Leatherhead, Guildford, Reigate or Cranleigh. Those are longer contracts and they need a fixed departure time that survives the A24 in the rain. Ask and we will quote the whole term rather than journey by journey.
Dorking is a dog town. It sits inside the Surrey Hills, it is surrounded by National Trust land, and a large share of the people who arrive at Box Hill & Westhumble on a Saturday have a dog with them. We take pets, but the booking has to say so — not every driver is comfortable with a large wet dog in the boot at the end of a shift, and pretending otherwise at the kerbside helps nobody.
Tell us the size of the dog and whether it travels in a crate or loose, and we will send a driver and a vehicle that suit. Assistance dogs travel as of right and need no special arrangement, though it still helps us to know. Full details on our pet-friendly taxis page.
A sick animal and no car is a horrible position to be in. Say what has happened when you call — we would rather send the right vehicle and a driver who knows what is coming than surprise someone.
Dorking is the administrative centre of Mole Valley — the district council is based at Pippbrook on the edge of the town — and it has a working business community that travels far more than a town of its size would suggest. We run corporate accounts for firms across Dorking and the Surrey Hills.
Staff book without handling money, journeys are itemised, and you get one monthly invoice with cost codes or departments against each trip. It removes the expense-claim paperwork, which is usually the real reason firms move across rather than the fare itself.
For clients arriving at Dorking Main from London, or for a run into the City or Canary Wharf, an executive car makes the difference between transport and hospitality. We also run a same-day courier service across Surrey for documents and samples that cannot wait for a carrier.
If a day involves four sites and a train to catch at the end of it, book the driver for the day rather than journey by journey. It is cheaper than four separate bookings and it removes the gap between meetings where no car is available.
This is the part of Dorking that other towns do not have. The Surrey Hills start at the end of the High Street, and three of the best-known places in them are within a short ride of the town centre. Half the taxi work we do in Dorking at weekends is people going up a hill or coming back down one.
Box Hill rises to 224 metres at Betchworth Clump, and the western side is owned and managed by the National Trust. The famous Zig Zag Road climbs 120 metres over two and a half kilometres, which is why it was chosen for the 2012 Olympic road races — the men rode nine laps of a 15.8 kilometre circuit taking in the climb, the women two ascents. The Salomons Memorial viewpoint sits at 172 metres and is the view most people come for, though it is not the actual summit.
The Zig Zag is narrow, popular with cyclists, and occasionally closed in ice or after a fall of trees. If the weather is bad, say where you actually want to end up — the National Trust car park at the top, the Burford Bridge side at the bottom, or Box Hill & Westhumble station — and we will pick the approach that works rather than the one the satnav suggests. Coming down at dusk after a walk, book the return before you set off; mobile signal on the hill is patchy and finding cabs in Dorking at five o’clock on a Sunday from a hilltop with one bar is not a plan.
Denbies sits on the North Downs on the edge of Dorking and is England’s largest vineyard: a 627-acre estate with 265 acres under vine, more than ten per cent of all the vines planted in the United Kingdom, and around 300,000 visitors a year.
It is also, for obvious reasons, one of the places where a taxi is not optional. Weddings, tastings, tours and Christmas parties all end with a group of people who should not be driving. Book the outbound and the return together, tell us the group size, and we will send one larger vehicle rather than three cars into the same car park at the same moment.
Leith Hill is the highest point in Surrey at 294 metres, about four miles south-west of Dorking, and belongs to the National Trust. Richard Hull built the Gothic tower on the summit in 1764–65 specifically to push the hill above 1,000 feet; at 19.5 metres tall, it did the job.
Searches for taxis to Leith Hill come in steadily from Dorking, and they are almost always walkers who have gone up one side and want to come down the other. The lanes around Coldharbour and Abinger are single track in places and not somewhere to send a large vehicle blind — give us the car park or the pub name and we will get it right first time.
Point-to-point walks are the best use of a local taxi in Dorking and the one most people never think of: we drop you at one end of the North Downs Way or the Greensand Way and collect you at the other, so you never have to walk back to your car. Pre-book both ends, because the collection point is usually somewhere with no passing trade at all.
Dorking’s evening economy is concentrated in a small area — the High Street, West Street and South Street — and it empties quickly. When a show at the Dorking Halls comes out, several hundred people want to go home within the same fifteen minutes, and there is no rank that can absorb that.
The answer is dull but it works: book the return when you book the outbound. A 24 hour taxi in Dorking is genuinely available, but availability at half past ten on a Saturday and availability at half past ten on a Saturday at the exact moment a venue empties are different things. Pre-booked cars are held for you.
Denbies, the Surrey Hills hotels and the village halls around Dorking take a lot of weddings. For anything above four passengers, ask about eight-seaters and a staged plan — guests leave in waves, not all at once, and a schedule beats a scramble.
Distances and driving times below were checked on Google Maps on 25 September 2026 for a clear road. They are a planning guide, not a promise: the A24, the A25 and the M25 all behave differently at eight in the morning. When you book, we will give you a pickup time that accounts for the day and the hour.
| From Dorking to | Distance | Typical clear-road time | Usual route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gatwick Airport | 14.9 miles | about 28 minutes | Henfold Lane |
| Gatwick Airport (alternative) | 15.6 miles | about 32 minutes | A217 |
| Heathrow Airport | 28.5 miles | about 38 minutes | A24 and M25 |
| Leatherhead | 6.5 miles | about 14 minutes | A24 |
| Reigate | 6.9 miles | about 16 minutes | A25 |
| Epsom | 10.2 miles | about 23 minutes | A24 |
| Guildford | 12.8 miles | about 28 minutes | A25 |
The headline is worth stating plainly: Gatwick is half the distance of Heathrow from Dorking and about ten minutes closer. If your flight goes from either, Gatwick is the easier airport to reach from this town.
Dorking is a market town with a genuinely rural hinterland, and a great deal of the work is in the villages rather than the town itself. The table below is how those villages sit around the town — useful when you are describing where you are. We cover Dorking and the surrounding area; if you are right on the far edge of it, ring 01372 727 727 and we will tell you straight away whether we can get a car to you rather than take a booking we cannot keep.
| Direction from Dorking | Villages and areas |
|---|---|
| North, towards Leatherhead | Mickleham, Westhumble, Box Hill, Pixham, Ranmore Common |
| East, towards Reigate | Brockham, Betchworth, Buckland, Pixham Lane |
| West, towards Guildford | Westcott, Wotton, Abinger Hammer, Gomshall, Shere, Holmbury St Mary |
| South, down the A24 | North Holmwood, South Holmwood, Beare Green, Capel, Ockley |
| South-west, up into the hills | Coldharbour, Leith Hill, Forest Green, Ewhurst |
| South-east | Newdigate, Leigh, Charlwood |
Several of these have pages of their own: Mickleham, Headley, Wotton and Gomshall. For the larger towns around Dorking, see Leatherhead, Reigate, Bookham, Guildford, Ashtead, Banstead, Godalming and Epsom.
Postcodes around Dorking are large and vague, and a satnav will happily put a driver a mile from a farmhouse on the wrong side of a hedge. If your address is rural, give us a landmark, a gate colour or a what3words reference when you book. It is the difference between a car arriving and a car phoning you from a lane.
Coverage in the valleys south and west of Dorking is patchy. If we cannot reach you, the driver will wait rather than clear the job — but a second contact number saves everybody ten minutes.
There is no objective best taxi service in Dorking, and we are not going to claim to be it. What there is, when you are choosing a Dorking taxi company, is a short list of things actually worth comparing.
Dorking work is dispatched from our Bookham office, a few miles north, by controllers who know the difference between Dorking Main and Dorking West, know that the Zig Zag closes, and know which lanes will not take an eight-seater. That is not something an algorithm in another city can be told.
Clocktower Cars is a licensed private hire operator. Every car is a licensed private hire vehicle, every driver is a licensed private hire driver, and every journey is pre-booked through the office — which is what private hire licensing requires and what makes the journey insured. If something goes wrong, there is an office to ring and a record of the booking. That is worth more than it sounds at eleven at night.
You can have the price before the car is booked, on the phone or online. No meter running in a traffic queue on the A24, and no surge on a wet Friday.
Our branches run from Epsom and Sutton in the north down through Bookham, Reigate and Godalming to Guildford. A booking in Dorking and a booking in Leatherhead go through the same system, which matters when a school contract, a corporate account or an airport run crosses town boundaries. The full list is on our branch locator and find us pages.
Card in the car, card online, or on account. Say which when you book so the driver is set up for it.
01372 727 727 reaches the Bookham office that dispatches Dorking, twenty-four hours a day. 01372 747 747 is our Epsom head office and will also get you a car in Dorking. Both are answered by a person.
Yes. The office is staffed around the clock and cars run through the night. The honest caveat is that a pre-booked car at three in the morning is guaranteed and an on-demand one is not — there are fewer drivers on at that hour. If you know you need an early airport run or a late pickup, book it.
In everyday speech, nothing — people in Dorking use all three words for the same thing, and so do we on this page. In licensing terms there is a real distinction. A hackney carriage can be hailed in the street or taken from a rank. A private hire vehicle, which is what a minicab is, must be booked in advance through a licensed operator. Clocktower Cars is a private hire operator, so every journey is pre-booked through the office. That is why we cannot be flagged down, and it is also why every journey has a record and an insurance position behind it.
About 28 minutes for the 14.9 miles on a clear road. Allow more at commuter times, and considerably more if the M23 is closed. For a flight we will normally suggest leaving Dorking with a comfortable margin rather than cutting it to the map time.
About 38 minutes for 28.5 miles, up the A24 to the M25 at Leatherhead. The M25 between junctions 9 and 12 is the variable, so morning departures need more time than the map allows.
Dorking Main for London Victoria and London Waterloo. Dorking Deepdene for Gatwick Airport, Guildford and Reading on the North Downs Line. Dorking West is the small third station west of the centre. Box Hill & Westhumble is a separate station one stop north, on the other side of the river from the town. Say the full name when you book — it is the most common cause of a car and a passenger ending up in different car parks.
Yes, with notice. Wheelchair-accessible vehicles are a limited part of any fleet, so pre-booking is what guarantees one. Tell us whether the chair folds and the passenger transfers, or whether it travels occupied, and tell us about steps or gravel at either end.
Yes, when the booking says so. Tell us the size and whether the dog is crated or loose. Assistance dogs travel as of right. Given how much of Dorking’s weekend traffic is walkers coming off Box Hill, this comes up a lot.
It depends on the route, the time, the vehicle and any waiting — which is why we quote rather than publish a table that would be wrong for most journeys. Call or get a quote online and you will have a fixed price before you commit.
For an ordinary local run, an hour or two is plenty. For an airport transfer, a school contract, a wheelchair-accessible vehicle or an eight-seater, book as far ahead as you can. For anything leaving Denbies or the Dorking Halls at the end of an event, book the return at the same time as the outbound.
We cover Dorking and the surrounding area, including Mickleham, Westhumble, Brockham, Betchworth, Westcott, Wotton, Gomshall and the Holmwoods. For very remote addresses, ring first and we will tell you honestly whether we can get a car there.
Call 01372 727 727
Twenty-four hours a day, answered by our Bookham office. Head office: 01372 747 747.
Taxi booking in Dorking takes about a minute online and rather less on the phone. Taxis in Dorking, minicabs in Dorking, cabs in Dorking, airport transfers in Dorking and school runs — one local office, licensed drivers, and a price agreed before you travel.
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