Self-guided audio tour starting at Reading railway station and visiting 14 stops across the town's industrial heritage.
Biscuit Town is a self-guided audio tour of Reading that you can start whenever suits you, with the whole walk taking around two hours. It kicks off at Reading Railway Station and takes you through 14 stops across the town, so it's one of those things you can fit into a morning or a long afternoon without having to work around a fixed timetable.
The tour follows the everyday labour that made Reading the industrial capital of Berkshire, and it does so by focusing on the people whose names rarely made it into the history books. You'll hear about the biscuit tin painters at the great biscuit factory on King's Road, the brewery draymen on Bridge Street, and the night-shift seed-packet sorters at the Market Place. It also brings in the abbey corn millers, gaol turnkeys, canal lock-keepers and railway navvies — the kind of roles that kept the town running but usually stayed in the background.
Along the way, the route takes you past the Town Hall, Market Place, The Forbury, the Oracle, County Lock, Reading Abbey, Reading Gaol and Kings Road Gardens, before following the river and canal edges at Kings Meadow and finishing at Thames Lido. It's a fair stretch of the town to cover, so you'll see a good chunk of the centre and the riverside in one go. The tour sums itself up with the line: 'Reading made things the world wanted and the world rarely thought about who made them.'
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It's available anytime, and the audio costs between £3.99 and £4.99. Since it's self-guided, you can take it at your own pace, stop for a coffee when you fancy it, and work your way through the 14 stops on your own schedule.
