Days out: Reading

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first date (I know, aren't we soppy?!) the OH took a day off work and we headed off on the train to explore Reading. It's somewhere I've been to many times before, but mainly to change trains or meet up with someone, so I'd never really explored the centre before. 

First stop was John Lewis, to fill up on my free cup of tea and a cake (sign up for a free My John Lewis card and you get vouchers for a free hot drink and a cake each month).

Then we were off to explore. We spent the rest of the morning in the museum, which was quite full of school parties, but fairly well done and interesting. We didn't actually see most of it before we felt hungry and went in search of lunch!

We found Forbury Gardens not far from the museum. The lion commemorates the loss of soldiers from the Royal Berkshire Regiment in Afghanistan in, er, 1880 (some things never change).

The gardens lead to the ruins of the 12th century Abbey. The Abbey Gateway in the picture later became a school attended by Jane Austen.

Later we had a wander round the town centre. This impressive looking church wasn't open, so we didn't find out much more about it. It turned out that it was Reading Minster.

The newish shopping centre (amusing named "The Oracle", which was earlier the name of Reading's Workhouse...) is on both sides of the river, which was looking rather high when we visited.

At some point we'll go back. We've got the rest of the museum to see, and obviously more cake vouchers to use in John Lewis...