Motoring to Reading

One of things I had really wanted to do on this trip was to visit the place I was born. I hadn't been back there since I was five. I only had sketchy recollections to rely on and now that both of my parents are dead, no one to ask.

Fortunately a lot of the driving route was on motorways so we made better speed. Reading, as you CBC radio listeners will know, is the distance reference point from which CBC says things in England are measured e.g. Watford is (_) miles from Reading. It is the first stop outside of metropolitan London. I have no idea how this tradition got started. Unfortunately for drivers new to the city it is very difficult to find your way around. There are many one way streets and on a Saturday afternoon it is very busy with shoppers. We did eventually find the hotel and later the parking lot where we could just leave the car and see the town on foot.



Town Hall - many buildings in this area use brick.

By happy coincidence again Laurie had booked a room in the Ibis hotel which was just down the street from the place I lived. The Ibis is ultra modern, pod-like rooms with two surfboard shaped planks fitted together like Lego with a boogey-board shaped top. The bathroom was a cylinder-shaped pod in the corner. It was quite a jarring contrast to the fussy Victorian style of the last hotel.

St. Laurence church

We went for a walk - just down the street was the Town Hall and St. Laurence church where I was christened and whose church bells I remember hearing on Sunday mornings from a very early age. We happened into a business where they were very helpful with solving the address numbering problem. (There isn't any logic to it.) The older chap there remembered a tailoring shop across the road. That location was similar to my recollection of a door that opened from the street to a steep set of stairs to the third floor where we lived.




Building with yellow doors was my dad's business

Forbury Gardens with ruins of Abbey behind

Canal boats