Discover History, Nature & Adventure: Reading Walks Festival 2025

24th March 2025

First time visitors to Reading are always surprised by what they find here. In fact, it often comes as a bit of a revelation to find 1000 years of history, lovely rivers and canals, fantastic museums, gorgeous Victorian and Georgian architecture and loads of countryside on the doorstep!

Abbey Quarter Walking Tour

Add into the mix some of the UK’s best transport links and a scalability that makes exploring easy and it should come as no surprise that Reading makes a great destination for a walks festival.

This year will be our third Reading Walks Festival. We started off in 2023 with an aim to tell some of Reading’s stories. These stories about our history and heritage, people, wildlife and the things we love about our town, are best told on foot, remaining at the heart of the festival. All our walks are guided by knowledgeable volunteers. Some are more like guided tours - with more talking and less walking, while others are longer with less talking/stopping points, and some are just good old socials. The walks range from one hour to two days so you can book a walk that suits your interests and abilities!

Reading, the Home of Photography

The 2025 programme is very diverse with the majority of the walks being new for this year. Look out for new walks focusing on the Kendrick Conservation Area or the wonderful trees of Redlands in East Reading, Reading’s literary connections in the town centre, leafy Caversham, or take a tour of Station Hill’s new public art works. Walk in George Orwell’s footsteps north of the river, learn about bats, wildflowers or Reading’s nature reserves or venture further afield to Silchester, Pangbourne, Shiplake or into South Oxfordshire to explore the lovely countryside around Reading.

Many of the walks were fully booked last year so we have also brought back some of last year’s favourites for people who weren’t able to enjoy them in 2024. They include a two-day pilgrimage walk along the St James’ Way, a chance to explore the University’s two Reading campuses, forest bathing at MERL, a green health walk in south Reading, finding out about Reading’s Napoleonic War Danish POWs, as well as following in the footsteps of Jane Austen during the author’s 250th anniversary year.

Reading in the Time of Jane Austen

This year, we are defying the definition of a walks festival by including two bike rides and a talk. National charity Sustrans are partnering with us to put on two short leisurely bike rides that use stretches of the National Cycle Network locally. The growing popularity of pilgrimages and longer walks can be seen in Reading with the hundreds of people starting their St James’ Way walk here. This year’s festival will have three pilgrimage walks but also a talk, given by volunteers at the Confraternity of St James, for people planning to walk the St James’ Way or the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

St James' Way Camino Pilgrimage (Starter)

A walks festival should be an event with a low carbon footprint. Our travel partner GWR will be bringing walkers here by train and indeed a good number of the walks start at Reading or other stations. Nearly every walk is reachable on a Reading Buses route – we have organised the starting/end points to be near bus stops, and last year over 70% of walkers used public transport to reach their walk. We aim to do even better this year.

Whether you are local or coming to Reading for the first time, we hope that Reading Walks Festival surprises you! We look forward to walking with you.