Life's about experiences. These are mine.
Reading has many things going for it but one of the greatest successes must be Reading Buses. This year they are celebrating their 125th anniversary and all of that time they have remained publicly owned. They have even managed to see off Margaret Thatcher’s attempt at privatisation (sorry, I mean, Bus Deregulation) which is no …
The second of my two Heritage Open Days this year and this one was closer to home. Reading Minster My first stop was the Reading Minster on St Mary’s Butts an interesting chequered building that I had never been into before. I was drawn in by the promise of “historic parish records alongside Norman foundations, …
Continue reading “Reading Minster & Brock Keep, Heritage Open Days 2026”
Another one to add to my “I never knew that existed in Reading” list. This morning, we visited Green Park, where there was a free photography exhibition being held run by The Photographic Angle. No, I’d never heard of them either but this is what they say about themselves: The Photographic Angle (TPA) stages photographic …
Continue reading “The Photographic Angle, Creativity, Reading”
It never ceases to amaze me how, after over 35 years living in Reading, I am discovering new things about it. In this case, I wasn’t certain that I wanted to highlight this publicly, as it’s a perfect spot, and I don’t want others to find it! To the Dump The Fobney Island Wetland Nature …
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It’s the time of year once again for the Reading Walks Festival. This year we are booked on to four walks which was the most that interested us and that we could make. There is some repitition from previous years and walks that we had already done which limited our choices. Two Rivers (and a …
Continue reading “Reading Walks Festival, 2026 – Walking the Historic Holybrook”
I seem to have developed an unnatural fascination with the work of Alfred Waterhouse, famed architect of the Natural History Museum in London and, as it turns out, many fine buildings in Reading too. For my Reading Guide project I’d visited some of the buildings for the Interesting Architecture page and also created a summary …
A while back I decided to walk all of the Inner Distribution Road (IDR), Reading’s least glamorous route. As a follow-up I decided to tackle the iconic number 17 bus route. Running just under seven miles from the water tower in Tilehurst to The Three Tuns, in, er, where is it exactly? (Earley, apparently, on …
The underpass to Katesgrove, specifically the stretch beneath the IDR near County Lock, has had a series of murals installed in it, and I was keen to see it. What apparently used to be a somewhat grim, graffiti-prone passage has been turned into the Time Travel Tunnel, unveiled earlier this month (February 1, 2026). A …
Continue reading “Time Travel Tunnel (Katesgrove Murals), Reading”
Something new for Heritage Open Days this year and arguably, something without any heritage— a trip up the newly opened ONE Station Hill building in Reading. Having done all the other things on offer and seeing that this offered the opportunity to look out onto the roof of Reading, we were keen to go. Missed …
Continue reading “ONE Station Hill, Heritage Open Days 2025”
When I was on the university campus the other day, visiting the new World Reimagined globes that had been installed, I made a slight detour to visit one of the ugliest buildings around— the Region 6 War Room. I didn’t know that this even existed until I stumbled across this video which highlighted it and …
Continue reading “Region 6 War Room, Reading University, Reading”