Reading, England, sits on the western edge of London’s commuter belt, and most Americans have never heard of it. David, who leads walking tours through the ruins of a medieval abbey there, stops visitors at an ordinary flower bed in a public garden: it marks where the abbey’s front doors once stood. Henry I was buried inside that abbey in 1135, and he has never been found.
From the highway, or a train window heading into London, most visitors see only office parks. They miss the abbey ruins entirely, along with the Victorian gaol where Oscar Wilde served a two-year sentence for gross indecency and wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” under his cell number instead of his name.
Closer than most visitors realize
Reading is as fast as 23 minutes by train from London Paddington, close enough to skip a second London hotel bill and just catch a train in each morning instead. That proximity also puts it on the Great West Way, a touring route that runs from London to Bristol, taking in Bath along the way, and steers visitors toward towns they might otherwise skip. Reading is also the official starting point of St. James’ Way, the 68-mile English leg of the Camino de Santiago, retracing the route medieval pilgrims once walked toward the south coast before crossing to Spain.
A bathhouse that nearly disappeared
Thames Lido opened in 1902 as the Ladies’ Swimming Baths, closed in 1974 and sat empty for decades until a Grade II listing in August 2004 finally forced the issue. The operator behind Bristol’s Lido bought the site for a little over $1 and spent around $4.7 million restoring it, reopening in October 2017 with the original Edwardian woodwork intact.
Two saunas and a hot tub now sit alongside the heated pool, next to a Spanish and North African-influenced restaurant. The operator has reportedly told other towns eyeing their own lido revivals that swimming alone doesn’t pay the bills; the restaurant is what keeps a restoration like this standing.
The American-style beer Reading now bottles
Reading’s food and drink scene has its own twist, a few miles from the pool: a brewery whose flagship style is modeled on New England, not Berkshire. Double Barrelled Brewery started as a beer Mike and Lucy home-brewed for their own wedding, before the couple took a year off to travel and study hops, much of it in the United States.
They moved into their current Reading site in November 2018 and now produce roughly 1.3 million to 1.5 million pints a year, most of it hazy pale ales and IPAs built on American hop varieties like Citra, largely grown in the Pacific Northwest. The beer now sells in Tesco, Waitrose and other major British supermarket chains, roughly the equivalent of finding it at Kroger or Safeway: an ordinary supermarket shelf a long way from where those hops were grown.
Across the river, an independent streak
Across the River Thames in Caversham, Spill Bar was the first on the street to add communal outdoor tables, so visitors often end up sharing one with friendly locals. Nearby, Fourbears Books pairs readings with wine tastings at events it calls Wine With Words, and BKRY, a cake shop and baking academy, runs hands-on baking classes open to visitors, not just locals.
Caversham sits inside an area of outstanding natural beauty in the Chiltern Hills. It’s about 10 miles from Henley-on-Thames and the Henley Royal Regatta, an event that already draws American rowing fans across the Atlantic every summer.
Caroline, a Caversham local, runs Walk Works, a walking group with routes ranging from short town-center outings to longer treks into the surrounding countryside. Mary Rodriguez, a professor of community leadership at Ohio State University who spent months living in Caversham while working with University of Reading colleagues, found Walk Works on her first day in town and called it the favorite part of her stay.
The river visitors don’t expect
Reading’s replica of the Bayeux Tapestry has drawn a wave of international visitors and tour groups this year, part of a five-year push to get travelers already headed to London to add a stop. It rarely takes much convincing once they’re here. The reaction locals hear most from first-time visitors is surprise, usually right after they realize the town they’d dismissed as office blocks from a train window sits on the Thames at all.
For American visitors who’ve never set foot here, the harder job isn’t proving Reading exists. It’s picturing a single day that covers a king’s unsolved grave, a restored Edwardian bathhouse and a brewery built on American hops, all a short train ride from central London.
Mandy is a luxury travel, fine dining and bucket-list-adventure journalist with expert insight from 47 countries. She uncovers unforgettable experiences around the world and brings them to life through immersive storytelling that blends indulgence, culture and discovery, and shares them with a global audience as co-founder of Food Drink Life. Her articles appear on MSN and through the Associated Press wire in major U.S. outlets, including NBC, the Daily News, Boston Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times and many more.