Feature: 20 things I love about Reading (2024)

Eight years ago I wrote a piece listing my 20 favourite things about Reading. I felt a little grubby at the time, but in my defence this was back in the day, when listicles were mainly the province of Buzzfeed and hadn’t yet become the basis of so much of what we now call journalism,

Anyway, it took me by surprise, becoming by far the most popular thing I wrote all year: even my miserable experience at Cosmo didn’t attract quite as many readers. With hindsight, I can understand why – it’s nice to celebrate some of the brilliant things about this quirky place, the U.K.’s biggest town, that we call our home and so many of us have grown to love. I followed it up with a new version in 2019, which was equally popular, and now, five years on, here’s the third edition.

It’s a fascinating exercise to pull together a list like this every few years and a real indicator, on a personal level, of the shifting psychogeography of Reading. My view of the place has been changed by lots of things – I lived in the town centre in 2016, and in the Village in 2019. And now I live out by the university, and that changes your cat paths through town and the things you see and experience every day.

The pandemic, which happened not long after the second edition of this list, also had an effect, as it did on everything. I really appreciated living where I did during lockdown, and just how many green spaces were nearby. A couple of the places that are new on this list in 2024 are entirely down to how I came to experience Reading very differently during that period.

And, of course, the passage of time has other effects. Places close, or change to the extent that they’re no longer what they were. Or you outgrow them. The circle of life can change a place like Reading in a couple of years. In eight years it can alter it hugely, for better and for worse.

Dolce Vita, Tutti Frutti and the After Dark, that I used to love so very much, are gone. Pepe Sale is, too. The Harris Arcade is not the special place it was when the Grumpy Goat was there, and the Workhouse courtyard is now a guano-spattered graveyard: Greg Costello, like Elvis, has left the building.

So this list, like all such lists, can only really be a snapshot of your relationship with a place at any given time in your life. This is my fifty year old, remarried, content snapshot, and so it’s different from those other two versions. The next one, if I keep writing, will no doubt be different still.

And of course this won’t exactly match your list, which is as it should be. But try not to be annoyed that I didn’t find room for the river, or Reading Football Club (or even Reading City), Readipop, or Reading Pride, watching the half marathon, Thames Lido, or even that suburb north of the river.

Sorry-not-sorry about that. Because if this makes you appreciate those things, or others, even by being irked at me, or if it makes you construct your own list, or even if it makes you feel lucky to live in a town where so many lists can exist simultaneously – and simultaneously be true – then it’s done its job.

One last thing before I start. Food and drink feature in this list, of course, because I’m the one writing it. But if you want a more granular list of the very best food in Reading, you could start here.

1. The architecture

An ever-present on every iteration of this list, Reading’s architecture continues to amaze me and I’m always discovering something new. The obvious highlights are all well known like the Town Hall, Queen Victoria Street or our fetching branch of Waterstones. But you could look slightly further afield and see so many other beauties: Foxhill House, the Rising Sun Arts Centre, the Palmer Building, the site occupied by Honest Burgers. Or the McIlroy Building – still magnificent above ground level, even if the ground level houses the likes of Tesco, Creams and the British Heart Foundation. I still miss the Brutalist charms of the Metal Box Building, and I’ll miss the concrete car park above the Broad Street Mall, but I recognise I’m probably in the minority there.

But beyond those buildings there are also so many attractive streets that show that Reading’s architectural treasures weren’t completely wiped out by the IDR. This may also form a bingo card of Places I’d Love To Live, but in no particular order there’s Eldon Square, New Road, The Mount, the alms houses off Castle Street, the handsome houses of Jesse Terrace, Alexandra Road, Hamilton Road and Eastern Avenue. A few months ago I was walking back into town after acupuncture on the Bath Road and, heading down Baker Street, I saw a run of houses I’d never noticed before that looked like they’d been dropped there, incongruously, from Bath or Cheltenham, or from a Jane Austen novel.

These little treasures are scattered throughout the town – the cliché is to say you have to look up, but sometimes you have to look around, too.

2. Blue Collar Corner

Glen Dinning’s permanent site on Hosier Street was a very long time coming and, for quite some time, felt like it might never make it through the machinations and bureaucracy of Reading Council (just to spoil the suspense, Reading Borough Council doesn’t make this list, along with the undignified behaviour of some of its councillors, Jason Brock’s grinning mugshot, Reading BID and so many other things). But eventually in March 2022 the dream finally became a reality and Reading has never quite been the same since.

It’s easy to forget how lucky we are in Reading, or to think that our town is just like everywhere else. But Blue Collar Corner is a great example of how that’s just not true: you don’t get a purpose built, town centre showcase for great street food nearly anywhere else. You certainly don’t get one as high quality as Blue Collar Corner, with excellent local beer, a regularly changing roster of street food traders and some excellent events – WingJam and the British Street Food Awards not least.

When Euro 24 was on it felt like Blue Collar Corner really came into its own as a focal point in town, and sitting there pre-match with a pint and something excellent to eat I found myself reflecting on how much Glen’s long-held pipe dream had transformed the options in town – for places to eat, to drink al fresco and to celebrate. Of course, I was partly there because Gurt Wings was in town – like I said, Blue Collar runs excellent events, but Gurt Wings being in the house is an event in itself.

3. The Castle Tap

Possibly Reading’s most idiosyncratic pub, I really grew to love the Castle Tap in Covid. They put time and effort into their outside space (after, I think, some kind of Kickstarter appeal) and it was just a splendid place to sit and while away hours on a warm Saturday afternoon. For people like me, who still weren’t comfortable eating and drinking indoors, that was a real boon. So was their determination that you shouldn’t have to leave the pub just because you were feeling peckish: they encouraged you to order Deliveroo and eat it at your table, and even gave you the postcode for the entrance to the beer garden so your driver could quickly and easily drop you your food.

Back then they were on Untappd, so you always knew what they had on tap and in their compendious beer fridge. Although that has changed – being a verified venue doesn’t come cheap – it remains a great place to drink. It always has something interesting on keg, it regularly stocks top notch cider if that’s your bag and even their range of gins is spot on. But more importantly, as the epicentre of a lot of Reading’s diverse scenes it feels like something is always going on there.

On my last visit, fresh from dinner at Zia Lucia on a Saturday night, there was a band rocking out the front room, a joyous, raucous party in the back room and groups of people dotted across the tables outside, making the most of a gloriously random Reading evening. And when it comes to having a random Reading evening, few better places exist.

4. Clay’s Kitchen

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that Clay’s makes this list, as easily one of the most influential restaurants Reading has ever seen. They made my 2019 list, too. But what they’ve achieved in the last five years has, if anything, taken the restaurant to another level still – crowdfunding a move to a far bigger site over the river, creating a big buzzy space and receiving a glowing review in the Guardian, one of the only times a Reading restaurant has troubled the national press.

I do slightly miss their cosy little site on London Street, even if the orange walls and lack of natural light there made my food photos glow in a slightly post-apocalyptic Ready Brek-style, But it can’t be denied that the spot on Prospect Street is luxe, hugely well done and has given Clay’s the scope to experiment more with dishes, widen their menu, run events, get an excellent selection of Siren Craft beer in and become the all grown up best version of themselves they always wanted to be. And when Nandana is offering her peerless front of house service, however big the site is, it still feels as cosy and welcoming as the original London Street days.

5. C.U.P.

Still with two branches going strong in the centre of town, C.U.P. is Reading coffee’s great survivor, having outlasted Workhouse on King Street, Tamp Culture outside the Oracle and Anonymous Coffee on Chain Street.

These days, it’s unquestionably my first choice for coffee in town. Much has been made of how brilliant their mocha is, not least by me, but everything they do is excellent, including their little sesame petit fours which make an excellent accompaniment to the first coffee of the day – to any coffee, for that matter.

I know many people love the original branch next to Reading Minster, where people sit outside and chat long into those summer afternoons. But my favourite is the branch on Blagrave Street, which opens at 8 on weekdays. It’s where I grab a pre-commute coffee on the days I’m in the office but at weekends I love sitting up at the window and watching the world go by (it’s a particularly good vantage point when the half marathon is on, incidentally).

And of course, you can see the Town Hall, so at weekends you can also see the newlyweds emerging and being showered with confetti. And that always makes me think that earlier in the year that was me, which makes it an even sweeter spot. On my wedding day, after we’d set up the venue but before the getting dressed, the fetching of the flowers, the ceremony and celebration, my friend Jerry and I stopped for a mocha at C.U.P., the contemplative calm before the storm. It remains one of my favourite memories from the day.

6. Double-Barrelled Brewery

I know now Reading has Phantom, and Siren, and they are both perfectly nice places to drink craft beer. But my loyalties are with Double-Barrelled, who opened here first, back in 2018, and have been in the vanguard of Reading’s beer scene ever since.

You could argue that the tap room aesthetic is a tried and tested, generic model. Find a big site on an unpretty industrial estate, pop your standard issue folding benches and tables outside and in, book the occasional street food trader and off you go. But to me that understates Double-Barrelled’s achievement, which is to create something quite lovely at the end of the Oxford Road.

It’s a really good option for a lazy Saturday (or Sunday) afternoon pint, and a great spot for hosting birthday parties or just impromptu gatherings. I was even there on New Year’s Eve for their 90s themed party, which was rather marvellous. I lived through the 90s the first time around: you had nowhere half as good as Double-Barrelled back then.

Add in the fact that by stocking at least three other venues on this list they improve the quality of beer across the town, and you have a local business to really be proud of. There’s no room for improvement, except that the tap room is lacking truly first-rate beer snackery (Deya stocks Torres truffle crisps, just saying).

7. Forbury Gardens

The Forbury Gardens is a priceless spot, so close to the centre of town: god bless the Victorians, who thought about this kind of thing. It plays host to some of Reading’s best events – the Blue Collar cheese festival, the quirkiness of our annual Bastille Day Celebrations, WaterFest (when it nearly always rains). But it’s also just a brilliant place just to loaf, to picnic, to read a book, or to have a wander. It’s quite something at the start of spring, when the trees are in blossom, and come summer it really comes into its own.

But I also think about what Forbury Gardens represents. In the summer of the pandemic it became a symbol of the town and the town’s unity after that horrendous attack that affected Reading so deeply, and there was something pure and true about that. All sorts of opportunists wanted to use what happened to stoke up division and hate – can you imagine Katie Hopkins talking about Reading for any other reason? – and Reading was having none of it.

And when an image did the rounds on social media earlier in the year suggesting that a far right demonstration was going to go through Forbury Gardens, many of us felt defiled, offended at the very thought. I think that’s because everybody has their own precious memories of the place. For me it’s where I first met my wife, when we wandered through it and chatted, briefly, under that bandstand. Six years later, it was where we, along with all our wedding guests, stood under the Maiwand Lion as our photographer snapped and snapped. I will always love it for that, even if for nothing else.

8. Geo Café

This is the point where I always have to put a disclaimer: owners Keti and Zezva are friends of mine and so you could easily discount my recommending this place as biased. But I don’t know: I reckon Keti and Zezva have created an environment where all of their regulars feel like friends, and that’s part of its magic. Besides, I think it would be hard objectively to deny that Geo Café is a truly special place.

Knockout pastries, made by Zezva in the little bakery upstairs. Some of Reading’s best, and best made, coffee, that never quite gets the credit it deserves. Moreish cakes, bought from a network of nearby bakers. Terrific produce, including local honey and some of the best butter you can get anywhere near Reading. Cracking bacon and eggs on toast, with a little smear of green ajika to add an acrid punch. Keti’s unimprovable Georgian wrap, with fabulous chicken thighs, red ajika and walnut sauce, one of the finest sandwiches Reading has ever seen.

And, out the back, Geo Cafe’s Orangery – sheltered in the rain, but magnificent in the sunshine, one of my favourite places to drink coffee, ruminate, waste time on my phone, pretend to read a paperback or do some gold standard people watching. Sometimes on hot days Keti wanders through, hosing down the floor to cool the place down, and you could be on the continent. You definitely don’t feel like you’re in Caversham.

And the best thing is that this has all almost happened by accident. When Keti and Zezva took over the spot previously occupied by Nomad Bakery I don’t think they intended to end up here, let alone to do so well that they opened a second branch in Henley. But somehow, even if not by design, through all the decisions they’ve made, good and bad, and despite (or because of) any mistakes along the way they have somehow, without realising, created the perfect café.

9. The Harris Garden

My discovery of 2020, the Harris Garden is one of my very favourite places in the whole of Reading. Only accessible from a single gate close to the edge of the campus, it is a fabulous, peaceful place full of botanical wonder, expertly looked after so there is always something new to see and to admire. You could be in the middle of nowhere, somehow insulated from the hum of traffic from Wilderness Road and Pepper Lane.

For an idea of how carefully and thoughtfully the place is tended, look at their website. But even walking round the place, as I’ve done many times, that comes across. You feel like you are in the middle of somewhere that sings with that care and love, and whether you’re horticulturally inclined or, like me, just happy to be there, it is among the loveliest experiences Reading has to offer. It is also true that in the summer of 2020 I had a few happily smudged sunny afternoons on a bench with my friend Jerry polishing off a bottle of red from plastic beakers, but that’s entirely beside the point.

10. John Lewis

Five of the things on this list have been on every version I’ve written of this list, and there’s a reason for that. They are in the permanent collection, things that have made Reading great for a very long time and will hopefully continue to do so for years to come. So I’m trying to think what I can say about Reading institution John Lewis that I haven’t said before, or others have said even more clumsily. I like to say it’s the closest thing Reading has to a cathedral, and I still think that’s true.

The town had something close to an existential crisis when, in the aftermath of Covid, there were rumours that Reading might lose its branch of John Lewis – as places both bigger (Birmingham) and smaller than us (Newbury) did. Saying goodbye to Woolworths or Clas Ohlson is one thing, and I know people mourned the passing of Wilko, but John Lewis is a different level to that. If it closed, Reading would despair: the only other shop I can think of that would provoke similar feelings is our remaining branch of Waterstones.

So instead, I’ll say one other thing about John Lewis: when I moved house, in the summer, we bought a new bed. Two six foot adults sharing a cosy double bed for six years is not a recipe for nighttime bliss and comfort, so we decided to finally upgrade using some of the money we got as a wedding present. And there was never really any question: we would buy it in John Lewis. We went in, we looked at beds, we lay on mattresses and then we got proper, superb, personal service from someone a good thirty years younger than me.

It was a reminder that retail, done well, is special. I know that a lot of what I buy from John Lewis is probably stuff like ironing board covers and towels, gadgets from the lower ground floor. But they are there for the important stuff, and have been for all of my adult life. I hope that’s always the case.

11. Kungfu Kitchen

One of only two Reading restaurants to feature in the national press in living memory, Kungfu Kitchen is very much the Stones to Clay’s Kitchen’s Beatles. A lot of that is down to the exceptional food but a lot is also down to the formidable duo, Jo and Steve, who run the place. When people describe someone as a “force of nature” they are talking about someone like Jo, who takes no nonsense, tells you what she thinks – whether you’ve asked or not – and often also tells you what to do, what to eat, what you want. It’s part dinner, part dinner theatre, and I love it.

But if you’re reading this, the chances are you already know all of that. Their new home, a few doors down from the old one, is very snazzy, with overhead lights giving a pattern of koi carp swimming on the floor, Double-Barrelled on tap and random water features that Jo will switch on next to your table. This may send you scurrying to the loo: Jo is very proud of the loos. And once they finish converting the first floor of their new home to a karaoke suite, well, I dread to think.

I go to Kungfu Kitchen with my dad, who is pushing eighty and is devoted both to the salt and pepper squid and tofu and, to be honest, to Jo. Jo always refers to my dad as ‘Daddy’, saying things like What would Daddy like? and What shall I bring Daddy?. I half want to explain to Jo that there’s only one context in which it’s appropriate for her to call my dad Daddy, and to tell her that this context is also very much not appropriate. But truth be told I’m enjoying it too much. And, from the twinkle in my dad’s eye when we eat there, he definitely is.

12. The Nag’s Head

There is simply no better pub in Reading. There are few better pubs in the U.K., I suspect. It’s cosy and buzzy, it’s brilliantly run, it has superb beer and excellent snacks, the inside is a great place to booze in the winter and the beer garden is the perfect spot in the summer. We are so lucky to have the Nag’s, and it’s only when you go elsewhere that you fully appreciate that. I’m off to Oxford this weekend for the day, and it has some very good pubs. But it has nowhere quite like the Nag’s. Nearly nowhere does.

13. The number 17 bus

Few things in Reading are truly iconic, a word that is bandied around far too much by people who don’t know what it means, the kind of people who misuse words like literally and unique. The Maiwand Lion, definitely. Jackson’s Corner, back in the day, probably. Reading Elvis? Absolutely nailed on. The Purple Turtle? Perhaps. But for me, the 17 bus route is genuinely worthy of the epithet. I’ve said before that, more than the Thames, it is Reading’s great tributary and I stand by that – from the Water Tower to the Three Tuns, it runs west to east, and vice versa, and is the closest thing Reading has to Lisbon’s legendary Tram 28 (especially if you’re lucky enough, on a summer’s day, to hop on Fernanda, Reading Buses’ open top number 17).

Not only does it connect up both ends of Reading but it connects up restaurants, pubs and cafés. You could go from Hala Lebanese to the Retreat, from House Of Flavours to the Nag’s, from DeNata to Double-Barrelled without ever straying more than a minute from a bus stop. I recently did a section of the 17 bus route as a pub crawl with Reading CAMRA, from the Retreat to the Alehouse, and it was brilliant fun – and a reminder that there are an awful lot of pubs on that bus route (I might pass on the Wishing Well, mind you).

Martijn Gilbert, the former CEO of Reading Buses, once told me that if the number 17 hadn’t already existed it would never have been invented. It made simply no sense, he said, to have a single bus route that length, on a loop: it you’d been starting from scratch you’d have had one route from the Three Tuns to town, and another from the Broad Street Mall to Tilehurst. And yet it already existed, and it would be a brave CEO who fucked with it now. Tutts Clump Cider – run by Tim Wale, a Reading Buses driver who will only get behind the wheel of a 17 – named a cider after it. Double-Barrelled named a beer after it. But Is It Art sells merchandise describing it as the backbone of Reading. Quite right too.

14. The Oxford Road

If I was making a list of the things I like least about Reading, I think it would include people who slag off the Oxford Road. I always think there’s a certain lazy bigotry about some people on social media who have it in for one of Reading’s great thoroughfares, I suspect partly because of the presence of the mosque. And I don’t want to damn the Oxford Road with faint praise or patronise them with the word “vibrant”, so often a middle-class euphemism for scruffy.

So instead I will say that the Oxford Road is the real crucible of culinary imagination in Reading, and invariably where interesting things begin. It was the original home of Workhouse Coffee, and in time it has played host to the likes of I Love Paella, Bhoj, Oishi, Tuscany and countless more: Momo 2 Go and Kobeda Palace still grace it with their presence. Near the top you used to be a short walk from the Nag’s and from the sadly departed Buon Appetito, at the bottom you have Double Barrelled.

For a while I was worried that its glory days might be behind it, but a recent visit to DeNata restored my faith, and it has a clutch of restaurants and cafés I still need to explore. West Reading folk are rightly proud of their hood even if, unlike Caversham residents, they don’t feel the need to tell you they live there within five minutes of meeting you.

(Only kidding, Caversham residents. You know I love you really.)

15. Park House

I could have put Reading University campus in this list, quite easily – it’s a brilliant open space and Whiteknights Lake is a great spot for an amble – but instead I’ve selected the two jewels in its crown, the Harris Garden and this spot, Park House.

It is almost the perfect watering hole. In winter it has wood panelling and comfy sofas, a clubbable and conspiratorial feel. In summer, it has plenty of open space and big sturdy tables and is a sun trap for hours. And whatever the weather, it has a superb range of craft beer – mostly keg, nearly all from a plethora of local breweries – at prices that are either ridiculous, or subsidised, or both. The food’s not bad either. This summer I discovered that if I took the number 21 bus home from work and simply stayed on it for a handful more stops, I would find myself dangerously close to Park House. It was a very fortunate discovery.

16. Progress Theatre

One of Reading’s true gems, I don’t go to Progress anywhere near often enough and every time I do I wonder why I’ve left it so long. It has a varied programme of events, stages some interesting plays, supports youth theatre and local writers. I was at one of their stand-up comedy nights one Friday before Christmas and had an absolutely marvellous evening, despite attending on my own and sitting at the back like a sad sack.

A lot of people only know Progress Theatre because of their annual open air productions in the Abbey Ruins – and don’t get me wrong, they’re a highlight of the Reading year – but I do think people who haven’t made it to the Mount to experience the cosy loveliness of one of their other productions are really missing out. When I moved house in the summer I found myself a lot nearer to Progress: I plan to take full advantage of that.

17. Reading Library

I’m not the biggest fan of change, and I’m not the biggest fan of our council. So it won’t surprise you to hear that I’m very sad that the council is looking to move Reading Library from its current location to the council buildings on Bridge Street, a decision which I’m sure is partly led by the availability of funding and partly led by an awareness of how much the Kings Road site could fetch on the market. The new library will have fewer books in it, because apparently that’s what progress looks like.

But partly I’m also sad about it because I have a real soft spot for the current site in all its dated glory. A Saturday morning wander round the library, picking up things I’ve reserved or just idly browsing, is a very happy way to while away an hour, and Reading Library’s staff are always really excellent. I’ve found myself far more attached to the concept of libraries, as I’ve got older, and whenever I bimble round Reading Library I feel very lucky that the town has access to it. I will probably feel the same about the new site, eventually, once I stop grizzling – even if it won’t have the Holybrook running under it.

18. Reading Museum

Reading Museum has been in every iteration of this list, to the point where I’ve probably run out of things to say about it. Yes, we’re lucky to have a full size replica of the Bayeux Tapestry. And yes, I adore the devotion the place has to biscuits – all that information about Huntley & Palmers, and the display cabinet full of intricate, decorative biscuit tins. And of course, Waterhouse’s building is Victorian red and grey brick perfection. But more than that, it really captures the spirit of the place and manages to do it without being dry or dusty. That it does so in such a fabulous building is the icing on the cake.

I also have a particular fondness for Reading Museum because I walked through it on my wedding day, on the way to its serene and tasteful ceremony room. But I do acknowledge that that’s just me.

19. The Reading subreddit

In my first ever version of this list, I included the Reading Forum, which used to be a brilliant outlet to chat shit about Reading and enjoy all sorts of asides and rabbit holes, usually from people who had lived here for donkey’s years. But it fell into disuse, and got taken over by a series of trolls who just wanted to post about how much they hated Reading. They talked about a grubby crime-riddled dystopia that didn’t remotely resemble the town I love: in truth, I think they just didn’t like Reading’s diversity. Or the mosque. Over time it changed from the Reading Forum to the “makes for ugly reading forum”, and I sacked it off.

As the latest adopter of all time, I joined Reddit’s Reading subreddit earlier in the year and it reminds me of how the internet used to be, when people weren’t such arseholes (see also: Threads). Yes, you see the same topics come up again and again: where in Reading you should live, where’s good to go out and so on, but the tone is always upbeat and positive. Nice stuff gets upvoted, bad stuff gets downvoted and the mods handle the rare offender. It’s Twitter 2009 all over again (they also put up with me posting links to my Reading reviews without running me out of Dodge, which is a relief).

A recent example was quite wonderful, I thought. It’s Reading Pride this weekend and someone posted saying that it was their first one in Reading but that they didn’t know whether to go on their own and thought they’d feel awkward. People descended on the post with offers of help, moral support or even just saying that the poster could hang out with them and their friends. Blimey, I thought. This is very different from the comments section on the Chronicle website.

20. “Via del Duca”

Call it Via del Duca, call it – as someone did recently – Very Little Italy, but whatever you call it the little stretch made up of Madoo and Mama’s Way is one of my very favourite gastronomic microclimates in town. The two businesses have an almost symbiotic relationship – similar but not the same, with the dividing line that Madoo sells coffee but not booze and Mama’s Way sells booze but not coffee.

But both of them feel like a happy slice of Italy plonked down, almost at random, opposite the likes of Rymans and the Oxfam Music Shop. Madoo is great for toasted sandwiches and salads, for grabbing a quick lunch, listening to Italian spoken all around you, European music on the radio, and feeling transported (you also can’t beat their cannoli). Mama’s Way is perfect in the evenings for sitting up at that window ledge with a glass of wine and an array of meats and cheeses before making inroads into a pinsa. They do a mean spritz, too, and I hear their barrel aged negroni is worth trying.

Just as importantly, for people who complain that Reading doesn’t have a good delicatessen any more, Mama’s Way is a positive cornucopia, an Italo TARDIS which contains more goodies on the inside than it looks like it could ever house from the outside. Their pork and fennel sausages are a particular weakness of mine, although the sadist that decided to put five of them in a packet has a lot to answer for.

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7 thoughts on “Feature: 20 things I love about Reading (2024)

  1. Whilst I don’t mourn the loss of Buon Appetito, I can’t say I had had single good experience their despite giving it several chances, a good article. Big fan of Oxford Road and The Castle Tap, which had become a terrific community hub. Glad you’ve discovered The Harris Garden. I haven’t been for 20 years, but yes, a student in the ‘80s one of my best friends did Botany. It was regular haunt for a bit of tranquility for both of us.

  2. Peggysue Giles's avatar Peggysue Giles

    Enjoyed reading your feature on Reading as I was born here. I love walking through Oscar Wilde’s remembrance gates and then onto the beautiful Forbury Garden. I too love the purple No.17!

  3. Never been to Reading. Most of us nowadays avoid city visits as they have become clones of each other. Your expose’ sheds a different light, maybe it’s time for a visit. 🤔

    For all those bloggers outside the UK it’s pronounced Red’ing not Reading as in Reading a book. 📖

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