I’ve lived in Reading for over 35 years now and have seen the much maligned town (Her Maj has refused on several occasions to grant it city status) go from strength to strength. This has been helped in part but a much more cohesive offering around the cultural aspects of the town such as the Abbey Quarter.
This year a new initiative was launched called the Reading Walks Festival, five days of walks in and around the town, organised by REDA, Reading’s Economy & Destination Agency.
This sounded very much up our street and so we quickly booked up for a total of six events over three days. Judging by the feedback from people we have spoken to on the walks we have done it was a good job we booked so quickly as they filled up and had waiting lists. I should point out that some of the walks were free and some paid and most were led by volunteers.
Some of these walks had the feel of Heritage Open Days about them which is no bad thing and it will be interesting to see how much of an overlap there might be in future years.
Here are some highlights from the events that we attended.
Day One
Five Ways to Wellbeing – Nature Walk on London Road Campus
Perhaps given that first event was at 10 am on a Wednesday meant that it attracted people of a certain age (i.e. those that had the time on their hands to attend) but I was disappointed to see that I was the only man there. I was told by the organiser that “On paper this was supposed to be a manly walk”. It’s a pity that us men didn’t follow through then and actually turn up.
The walk started at MERL and went through the University of Reading’s London Road campus – somewhere that I hadn’t really explored before.
The wellness part of the walk was based on the NHS 5 Ways of Well-being and included lots of breathing exercises and “grounding” ourselves. At one point we had to find something of interest around us, go to it and then reflect for one minute. So it was that I found myself spending a minute staring at a tennis ball having been intrigued by what it was from a distance!
This walk did produce what was the funniest moment of the day when our guide said: “We won’t stop here. We’ll just have a quick feel”. I’m not sure that’s in the NHS 5 Ways of Well-being but it certainly should be!
The London street campus is much larger than it appears from the road and is full of interesting details that I hadn’t appreciated such as a couple of air raid shelters. It is not clear what the size of these are and whether they can accommodate all students and staff or just the staff.
There is also War Memorial where there is a plaque commemorating the fact that Wilfred Owen studied there in 1912.
Our Green Stories: Reading Museum to Reading Hydro
After lunch we joined our second walk which, had I read the instructions properly, I would have realised was not a straight walk to the Reading Hydro as I thought but also included a longer wildlife stroll too. The issue here was that the wildlife wasn’t really playing ball and therefore wasn’t much to see. The Hydro, however, was a much more interesting proposition.
Reading Hydro was set up seven years ago to harness the power of the River Thames and generate electricity that could be fed back into the grid. As it happened the Lido on the opposite bank was happy to receive the electricity and so a deal was struck to send it there rather than to the grid, more on this later.
Interestingly, the hydro is a community, not-for-profit, project with the initial investors (750 members of the public who raised £1.5M) getting their money back over a 25 year period with interest.
The site chosen is right next to the Reading weir and as nobody owned the land it has no rent – an attractive proposition. There are still costs of course including an extraction licence from Environment Agency even though water goes straight back in to the Thames with no loss.
The hydro has two Archimedes screws which can generate a maximum of 46kw. You would think that it would be easy to keep them turning but they need six cubic meters of water per second to run at full tilt but the Thames there has dropped as low as two cubic meters of water per second and as high as a frightening 300 cubic meters per second. It also needs a 1.5 metre drop in the water height but, of course, the higher the water gets the less the drop becomes.
As previously mentioned the Hydro and the Lido have a deal for the latter to take the electricity generated by the former. Initially this was going to be achieved by running a cable over the weir but that would have incurred costs from the Environment Agency so, instead, they decided to bury a cable directly under the Thames. If I heard this correctly and quite frankly I cannot believe that I did but the cable is laid 13m under the Thames.
To date the Hydro has generated 400 mwh of energy. A great achievement.
Evening Waterhouse Walk in Reading
The last walk of the day was a tour of buildings designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse whose most notable works include the Natural History Museum, Manchester Town Hall and, of course, the bus shelter at Yattendon! In Reading his buildings include the Town Hall, Reading School, the entrance to what is now MERL and the Rising Sun arts centre – the tour took all these sights in.
We met outside the Town Hall which I have always thought was a beautiful building outside but had only occasionally been inside. Tonight’s tour took us into the splendidly restored concert hall followed by what is now called the Waterhouse chamber which was, at one time, the council offices.
Our next stop was Reading School which was for over 700 years in the centre of town before it moved to its present site opening in 1871. In order for this move to take place it required an act of parliament, the Reading School Act 1867 no less, and the sum of over £19,000 (£2M+ in today’s money) to build
I have to say that we have a very personal connection with the school as our younger son went there and we were very moved standing in what they call Big School and the chapel knowing that at one point he too would have been there.
The final stop (for us) was The Museum for English Rural Life (MERL) but given as I wrote about it on my trip around there for Heritage Open Days last year I am not going to repeat it here. Read my review here 👇
And that was the end of an enjoyable first day. Here are a selection of pictures from the day:
Day Two
Shiplake to Reading
Where yesterday’s walks had been themed in one way or another today’s walk was just that – a walk – all 8.5 miles of it. This one was organised by Caroline and Liz from Walk Works who run regular groups walks in the area plus the same for businesses and they guided us along the way.
The starting point was Shiplake station and we had to catch a train from Reading to get there. On the second train it became obvious who else was going to be joining the walk and so we congregated together. It turns out that groups of people causes much curiosity in others and we were asked several times over the walk what we were doing – starting with on the train.
Given the recent rainfall it was very wet and slippery underfoot and in some places it was like walking on ice it was so slippery. However, it was a fairly easy walk as it was all along the tow path back to reading so was flat as a pancake.
There were some interesting things along the way including a railway bridge that was so low that even Helen had to duck down to get underneath it. There was also a stretch where the public footpath went through the back gardens of some very posh looking houses. Given that these were big and expensive houses the gardens were long and you were quite away from the house. Even so a number had seating areas towards the bottom of the garden and it must be odd to be sat out there and have a load of hikers stroll through.
Half way round in Sonning, at about the five mile mark, we stopped for lunch having pre-ordered sandwiches from a cafe there. The roll that I had fantastic but that could simply be because by that point I was ravenous!
The last section we had done before and so wasn’t new and as interesting but is still a pleasant walk. I have to say we were glad to sit down on the bus back home and just as glad that the predicted rain held off (just about).
Here are a selection of pictures from the day including Sonning, Shiplake and the old Dreadnaught pub:
Day Three
Today on this our last day of the Reading Walks Fesitval, Helen and I did separate walks with her doing a walk around Coley while I did the following walk around some of the public art in Reading town centre.
From Bosses to Banksy: an introduction to Public Art in the town centre
What quickly became clear on this walk is how much public art there is that I have walked past so many times without considering at all. It was good, therefore, to be taken round with an expert from the museum who could provide some background and context.
We started outside the Town Hall with the statue of Queen Victoria placed there for her platinum jubilee year. Designed by local sculpturer George Simonds there has always been a local myth that the statue was placed looking away from town towards the station to make a quick getaway as she didn’t like Reading.
Forbury Gardens
Next stop was another Simonds work – the Maiwand Lion in Forbury Gardens. This is a monument to Berkshire regiment’s campaign in the second Anglo-Afghanistan war. Again there is a myth around this statue which says that Simonds committed suicide after realising that the lion’s feet were in the wrong orientation. If this were true he waited a long time to do it – 40 years in fact.
Something that I hadn’t heard before was that it originally sat on a terracotta plinth with the names of the fallen inscribed into it. This would have reflected well with the other buildings in town built from local brick. However, this base had to be replaced in 1910 as the terracotta was in poor state of repair and names could no longer be read.
There are two other works in the Forbury Gardens worthy of mention. The first is a piece in Portland stone by Eric Stanford called Requiem which is a memorial to the Reading men who joined the Spanish civil war. The other is a cross which marks the position of the where the west door of the abbey would have been. What is notable about this is that it is a very long way away from what remains of the abbey today revealing just how large the building was.
We then made a brief stop on Forbury road to look at a very recent piece of work between two modern office buildings there. These granite columns sit as a gateway to the entrance and was a reminder of how funding of public works of art has changed over the years. The Victorian works were funded by public subscription with the more modern pieces being funded by the builders that had erected the adjacent offices. Personally, I have no problem how they get there as long as they do as I feel they add to the surroundings.
Abbey and the Prison
As we moved from the Forbury to the Abbey I was struck but just how well the local council, in conjunction with other organisations, have done in placing signage around the town highlighting places of interest. They should be commended for this as it really does bring the story to life.
The next stop does something similar for the story of Oscar Wilde’s stay in Reading although in his case he was not a willing visitor. Between the wall of the prison and the banks of the River Kennet is the Chesnut Walk (otherwise known as the Oscar Wilde Walk). Calling it the Chesnut Walk is somewhat ironic given that all the trees were recently cut down, although they have been replaced with some spindly looking sapplings.
Added in 2000 was a number of pieces by artist Bruce Williams to create the Oscar Wilde part of the walk including a modern take on Victorian love seats and a set of gates designed to look always open incorporating the following poem written by Paul Muldoon and commission by Reading Borough Council.
As I roved out between a gaol and a river in spate in June as like as January I happened on a gate which, though it lay wide open, would make me hesitate. I was so long a prisoner that, though I now am free, the thought that I serve some sentence is so ingrained in me that I still wait for a warder to come and turn the key.
Paul Muldoon, 2000
We were shown an image of what was planned but never implement – a set of mosaics to mimic Victorian carpets laid into the tarmac. It looked amazing but apparently wasn’t done in the end because of the fear that the roots from the trees would probably end up lifting the tiles. A great shame but understandable.
Just around the corner is what must be the very latest addition to public works in Reading – Create Escape by Banksy added March 1st 2020. The fate of the prison is still very much in the hands of the Department of Justice and if there is any justice they will sell it to the Council for public use rather than to developers. Banksy has generously offer money towards its purchase should that come to pass.
The Forbury
The walk back to our starting point took us past four further works starting with an untitled piece by a Danish sculpturer whose name I didn’t catch. When we arrived there were three youths sat on the work, vapping. A group of 20 older people quickly frightened off two of them but one gamely stuck around as he “wanted to know all about the work”!
It is believed that the work was bought rather than commissioned in 2004 when the adjacent building was built. It replaced a robbed figure sculpture by Elizabeth Frink which now sits in a nearby garden. We were told that this piece closely resembles the executioner in a piece at Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum and on checking it really does.
The final two were war memorials but very different. The first, The Berkshire Yeomanry and Trooper Potts Memorial, depicts Potts rescuing his friend by strapping him to his shovel and dragging him out of danger. It is a very striking piece. The second is the war memorial and is very traditional. It is where remembrance takes place in Reading each year. This too has a memorial to Trooper Potts as an engraving in one of the stones around the base.
All in all it was a fascinating trip around just some of the works visible in Reading. There are apparently many more and hopefully some public spirited individual will map them all.
Walked Out
I think that the first Reading Walks Festival can be considered a great success judging by the numbers that were on the walks that we did. There was some grumbling I overheard on the last walk that there were too many events packed into too short a time but I much preferred the short, sharp approach personally. I would imagine that the focus of attention would disapate over a much longer period.
I don’t know whether they will run the event again next year but I really hope that they do.