Reading Walks Festival
Back in March I booked Ruth and me onto two walks that were part of the Reading Walks Festival. The festival was organized by “REDA” (Reading’s Economy & Destination Agency), an organization I can’t say I’d heard of but it seems to be a rebrand of the former 'Reading UK'. I note from the web link that one of its aims is to enable Reading "to reach its full potential as a world-class destination and achieve its 2050 City Vision". I like Reading well enough but the first part seems a bit of an unnecessarily lofty aim and as for the second, Reading's multiple failed bids for city status will be passing into legend at this rate. This YouTube video Why British cities make no sense mentions Reading more than once.
Walk 1: University Heritage Trail (Earley Gate)
We met at the Earley Gate entrance to the Whiteknights campus, me slightly agitated as the bus ride had been slower than expected and Ruth and I were the last to arrive, which meant we had to be the annoying people who rush up at the last minute when everyone else is there and waiting to go.
 |
| Mustering at the start. Ruth's and my back views either side of the 'hump' sign |
Things I learned on this walk:
- Temporary Office Building 1 has been demolished. Last year, apparently. There was a fence around it. A bit sad – even though I was a bit rude about Spur K at the end of this blog post in 2010; see also the end of this one. I only worked in the TOB for the last six months of my three-year stint at Progress South Central, after we were kicked out of the London Road campus to allow for its refurb. Apparently the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), currently on Shinfield Road, is going to move there, once a new building has been built to house it.
 |
| Site of TOB1 |
- TOB2, however, is still standing. We paused by it while the guide pointed out the entrance to a former air raid shelter, and gave us a bit of history. Apparently, the TOBs were originally meant as field hospitals for returners from the D-day landings. (Ruth and I both pondered why somewhere nearer the coast hadn’t made more sense.)
 |
| Former entrance to air raid shelter, near TOB2 |
 |
| TOB2 |
- Close to TOB2, we passed the site of a folly, apparently still visible on the 1890s OS map. We were shown a photo, taken maybe in the 1980s, which showed a small part of it still standing, but there's nothing there now.
- We heard quite a bit about the a former Marquess of Blandford, who acquired Whiteknights Park in the late eighteenth century and built himself a house. The two little lodges at the Earley Gate entrance stem from the same period as Blandford's house (and evidently currently have people living in them). After Blandford's departure, his house was demolished and the estate was split into six units. Park House (which used to house the Senior Common Room; don't know whether it still does) was built on its site. The drive to Blandford's house used to be carried over Whiteknights Lake by a stone bridge, wide enough for a carriage. William Martin’s stone bridge was demolished in the 1950s. Friends Bridge, which replaced it, was built in 1966.
 |
| Friends Bridge |
 |
| Looking across towards Park House |
- Walking over through the 'science' side of campus towards the Harris Garden, we passed Young’s Folly, apparently named after a member of the Buildings department as a joke, but I've forgotten the surrounding detail.
 |
| Young's Folly |
- We went briefly into the Harris Garden for a photo. This is a lovely place which Ruth and I had visited earlier this month, the first time I'd been there since I worked at the university. It used to be managed by the School of Plant Sciences before that closed. It's now managed by Reading's Estates department.
- We walked through The Wilderness, an area of woodland of, apparently, about 11 hectares (27 acres). There used to be a house of this name, one of the houses built in the Victorian era after Whiteknights Park was split into six units. It was demolished around 1950. (A frustration: it’s very difficult to find photographs online of the former big houses on Whiteknights that were demolished. Pictures were shown briefly at a tour of Foxhill Ruth and I did as part of Heritage Open Days last September, but I didn’t get a proper chance to look at them and a follow up email query has yielded nothing.)
- There's a walled garden, that used to be in the grounds of The Wilderness. It's currently used as a big compost heap.
- Returning to the starting point, the guides took us past the Region 6 War Room, which used to be tucked away behind TOB1 and is now "tucked away" behind a building site and hence rather more noticeable. Post-civil defence use, it was used by the university library for storage but was closed after there was a flood and some of the library archives went mouldy. Officially there's no public access, but it's been entered by urban explorers, see YouTube. This drone footage is quite good and also shows TOB1.
 |
| Group photo in the Harris Garden |
 |
| In the Wilderness |
 |
| One of the walls of the walled garden |
 |
| The War Room building right-hand side of pic |
The walk leads were a collection of friendly chaps, though there was a faint air of genial chaos. Several of the group leads were evidently leading similar-but-different walks over the course of the week. I was amused by one exchange conducted in the middle of the campus:
Assistant guide to lead guide: Are you going to talk about the cedars, Chris?
Chris: No.
After the walk, we walked the short distance over to the Three Tuns for lunch.
In memory of TOB1, here are a couple of pics I took of it in June 2011, around the time I left Progress South Central and started work at the OU.
Walk 2: Exploring East Reading's Lakes
This one met outside the Three Tuns (the reason we’d decided to have lunch there) and was led by two members of Loddon Valley Ramblers. I had had a bit of a fail with this one as I had overlooked the length, assuming it was about three miles and was surprised to hear the walk lead announced it would be five and a half miles. I tried to adopt a breezy “won’t this be good for us” attitude, while Ruth glared at me.
We turned left up Church Road for a while, crossing over the railway and the A3290, and turned in to the right through Highwood Local Nature Reserve. Don’t think I’d ever been through here.
We passed through an area with a pond that I was told is known as the Water Garden. Shortly after that we emerged onto the shores of South Lake. We were led around a circuit of the lake and then through some roads to the footbridge that crosses back over the A3290 and the railway at Earley station.
 |
| South Lake |
 |
| Trains at Earley station |
We crossed over Wokingham Road and then walked southwards through roads for a while. Although I had thought of all this area broadly as ‘Earley’, one of the walk leads told us that the area we were in, the poshest bit of Earley, is properly known as Maiden Erlegh. There used to be a Maiden Erlegh House in this area. Here's a picture of it just before its demolition in 1960.
We reached Maiden Erlegh Lake, which is quite small, and did a more-or-less circuit of it. Shortly before we reached the lake, we came across this goose with a number of goslings; there was another gosling the other side of the hedge, seemingly having trouble working out that it needed to push its way through the hedge to join the rest of its family. Hopefully it figured it out.
 |
| Maiden Erlegh Lake |
We then walked along Beech Lane to where it joins Wilderness Road. This section was a bit tedious as it had got hot by this point. Thankfully we then crossed Wilderness Road and entered the shade of the Wilderness again, just by the walled garden that Ruth and I had passed on the morning walk. We walked past the Grotto and posed for a picture on this little bridge. I think it had replaced several other bridges on the same spot, but I've forgotten the detail.
The last part of the walk did a circuit of Whiteknights Lake, passing Foxhill House, the extravaganza that the architect Alfred Waterhouse built for himself in the 1860s.
 |
| Whiteknights Lake. Looking towards the Whiteknights Road end |
 |
| Foxhill House |
Before getting the bus back into town, we ducked into the Three Tuns again for a cold drink, and were joined by one of the other women who had been on the walk. She was evidently taking the upcoming week off work and was having a staycation doing quite a number of the walking festival walks. Sounded just my idea of a nice way to spend leave.
Our route:
Caversham Arts Trail
It’s fair enough for artists to want to talk about their work, I suppose – I just happen not to be all that interested in the creative process that led to the finished object, preferring to just go on whether I like the finished product. Additionally, for my part (and probably for a lot of others’ parts), a substantial ulterior motive in going round these sorts of events is to have a chance to have a bit of a gander at the exposed bits of people’s houses and gardens. In the case of the Caversham Arts Trail, most (though not all) of the host properties are in Caversham Heights, the poshest part of Caversham (and of Reading). I suppose I could imagine cutting to the chase as follows:
ARTIST: Are you interested in how I produced this work?
PUNTER: Not desperately, no.
ARTIST: Are you going to buy anything?
PUNTER: Realistically, no, probably not, but I shall “sweep browse” your wares while making a “Mmmmm” noise of vague admiration.
ARTIST: Are you actually just here to have a look at my house?
PUNTER: Well, yes, tbh.
The owners of the Woodford Close house have – to judge by the house’s ground floor living area – done a great job of respecting its origins, with a gorgeous parquet floor and a collection of appropriate Sixties-style furniture and display units.
Finally we called in at a studio behind the picture framers on Church Road. I was a bit done on art by this point so waited outside with the trug while Ruth had a browse.
 |
| The trug |
 |
| My purchases |
No comments:
Post a Comment