Reading Audio Tour: Biscuit Town

Explore Reading at your own pace

Reading made things the world wanted and the world rarely thought about who made them. This tour walks the working heart of the town - the stretch of King's Road and the Kennet where five thousand hands mixed dough, painted tins and stoked ovens at the world's largest biscuit factory, where draymen rolled barrels from the Bridge Street brewery into the Oracle's footprint, where seed-packet sorters worked through the night at the Market Place to meet the next morning's post, where a navvy named Henry West was killed by a gust of wind on a station roof six days before the trains began to run, and where the last abbot of Reading Abbey was hanged at his own gatehouse for high treason. Heritage Open Days' theme is Everyday Histories - the working women dismissed without reason in the winter of industrial unrest, the tin-printing apprentice who made the biscuit tin a national institution, the canal lock-keeper on the Kennet, the brewery worker who became a soldier without changing his employer. This is a walk through the places where Reading's name was built, mostly by people whose names were not put on anything.

Photo: Marco Zuppone, Unsplash

Tour details

• Duration: 1 hour 50 minutes, entirely at your own pace
• Distance: around 5.5 km (3.4 miles)
• Stops: 13 landmarks, including Reading railway station, Kings Meadow and Thames Lido, Napier Road, Reading, Reading Abbey
• Audio: up to 33 minutes of narration
• Starts at: Reading railway station

Map data by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

How it works

• Book here and a redemption code arrives by email within minutes.
• Download the free AudaTours app on your phone and enter the code.
• Download the tour once and the whole thing works offline.
• Walk to the first stop and press play. The audio for each landmark starts automatically as you approach it, so your phone can stay in your pocket.

There is no fixed date and no start time. The date you pick at checkout does not matter, and the tour stays on your phone permanently, so you can use it whenever you next visit and walk it again as often as you like.

What is included

• Professionally narrated audio that plays automatically at each stop
• An interactive map showing the walking route between landmarks
• Full offline access once downloaded, so you need no data or signal
• Freedom to start, pause and resume whenever you like
• Lifetime access - your code never expires

Where you will stop

• Reading railway station
• Kings Meadow and Thames Lido, Napier Road, Reading
• Reading Abbey
• Forbury Gardens
• Reading Town Hall
• Reading Museum, The Forbury, Reading
• Reading Market Place
• The Oracle Shopping Centre, Reading
• County Lock, Kennet and Avon Canal, Reading
• Hop Leaf Inn, Southampton Street, Reading
• London Street, Reading
• Kings Road Gardens, Reading
• Eldon Square, Reading

Image: AudaTours

What is AudaTours?

AudaTours turns a walk through a city into a story. Our guides bring landmarks to life with the history, the scandals and the detail you would never get from a plaque.

• Immersive: real stories about the places in front of you, not a dry commentary
• Offline: download once and use it with no data, anywhere
• At your own pace: start, pause and resume whenever you want
• Accurate: every story is built from verified historical sources and checked before release

Good to know

• This is a self-guided audio tour on your own phone. There is no in-person guide.
• It does not include entry to any building or site along the route.
• The landmarks on the tour are not affiliated with AudaTours.
• You need a smartphone with Android 7.0 or later, or iOS 16 or later.
• Bring headphones and start with a charged phone.

Who it suits

Solo travellers, couples, families and small groups who would rather explore on their own schedule than follow a guide and a fixed departure time. It suits a first visit, and it suits anyone who has already seen the famous sights and wants to know what actually happened in them.

Image credits

Photos: Sander Crombach, Marco Zuppone, Kafai Liu (Unsplash).