The Kennet & Thames: A Walking Guide to Reading's Two Rivers

Why Reading's riverside trails deserve a weekend

Reading occupies one of the Thames Valley's most strategic points, where the River Kennet flows into the Thames after winding through Berkshire from Marlborough. The Kennet & Avon Canal, completed in 1810, finally linked the town by water to Bristol and Bath, eighty-seven miles west, and for a century the wharves behind what is now the Oracle shipped coal, timber and Huntley & Palmers biscuits out to the world. That industrial past is exactly what makes the walking good today: two managed navigations, flat well-surfaced towpaths, and a confluence you can reach from Reading station on foot in under ten minutes.

The appeal for a weekend is the contrast. The Thames is broad, green and busy with rowing eights, cruisers and swans; the Kennet is narrow, hedged and quiet, threading behind supermarkets and under the railway before it opens into meadow. You can walk one river out and the other back and never repeat a view. Nothing here is strenuous — the total drop across Reading's town-centre locks is only a few metres — so the limiting factor is daylight and mud, not fitness. Budget two half-days: a morning on the Kennet, an afternoon on the Thames, with lunch at a canalside pub in between.

Walking the Kennet: County Lock to Kennet Mouth

Start in the town centre at County Lock, wedged between the Oracle's restaurant terrace and the old Simonds brewery buildings on Bridge Street. The lock is tight and the weir beside it runs fast after rain, so keep children back from the edge. Head east along the towpath and within five minutes the shopping centre falls away: you pass restored Victorian ironwork, moored narrowboats with woodsmoke curling off their chimneys, and the back of the old Huntley & Palmers factory site, once the largest biscuit works on earth and now business units. It is roughly a mile and a quarter from here to the mouth.

The walk ends at Kennet Mouth, where the canal slips under the Great Western main line and empties into the Thames. The landmark is the Horseshoe Bridge, a wrought-iron towpath footbridge from the 1890s that curves over the Kennet so boat horses could cross without unhitching. Stand on it and you have Brunel's railway roaring overhead, the Thames ahead and the Kennet behind — the whole reason Reading exists in one spot. Blake's Lock, five minutes back upstream, is the only lock on the Kennet still managed by the Thames authority rather than the canal trust, a quirk worth knowing if you ever hire a boat here.

Allow ninety minutes there and back at a strolling pace, or turn west from County Lock instead, toward Fobney and Southcote, if you want open water meadows and far fewer people. That westward stretch passes Fobney Lock and the water-treatment meadows and reaches near-open countryside within two miles, and it is the quieter choice on a summer Saturday when the eastern towpath fills with cyclists. Whichever way you go, the Kennet is the walk to do first: it is shorter, sheltered from the wind, and it explains the town before you meet the grander river.

The Thames Path east: Caversham to Sonning Lock

Cross Caversham Bridge, turn right, and you join the Thames Path National Trail heading east — the classic Reading river walk. The first stretch runs along Christchurch Meadows, past the promenade where the pleasure boats moor, then King's Meadow and the Thames Lido, a 1902 former ladies' bathing pool reopened in 2017 with a heated outdoor pool and a restaurant (day passes from around £30; book ahead in summer). Keep going and you reach Reading Bridge, the Thames & Kennet Marina, and open river running out toward Sonning, about three miles from the town centre.

Sonning Lock is the turnaround point and one of the prettiest on the whole Thames: brick lock cottage, hanging baskets, and the twelfth-century village a short walk inland with the Bull Inn and the Great House on the water. It is roughly six miles round trip from Reading station, flat the entire way, and easily a morning with a pub lunch built in. If you would rather not double back, buses run from Sonning into central Reading in about twenty minutes, turning the outing into a linear one-way. This is the stretch to save for the best weather you get.

The honest caveat is water level. The path between King's Meadow and the Tesco river footbridge floods after sustained rain, and the inland diversion along the roads is genuinely unpleasant. Check the Environment Agency's river-levels page for the Reading gauge before you set out; much above normal and the low meadow sections go under. From roughly November to March, assume mud and carry boots; from May to September the same towpath is the finest free thing in Reading, dry underfoot and busy with crews from Reading Rowing Club and the schools.

Islands, meadows and the Caversham loop

Reading's rivers hide three islands worth clocking. Fry's Island, also called De Bohun Island, sits mid-Thames between the two Caversham bridges and is inhabited — a bowls club, a boatyard and a handful of homes reached only by a small chain ferry. You cannot walk onto it, but the view from Caversham Bridge is one of the town's oddest sights. Upstream past Caversham Lock lies View Island, a small wooded nature reserve you can actually cross, with boardwalks, sculpture and kingfishers if you are lucky. It adds twenty minutes and is the best short detour on the north bank.

For a compact circuit that samples both rivers without a car, do the Caversham loop: from Reading station walk to Blake's Lock and the Kennet Mouth, cross the Horseshoe Bridge, pick up the Thames Path and follow it west past Christchurch Meadows to Caversham Bridge, then recross into town. It runs about three and a half miles, takes under two hours with stops, and packs in the confluence, two islands, the meadows and both bridges. It is the single best introduction to why Reading grew where it did, and it never leaves surfaced path.

Where to eat and drink along the water

The rivers are lined with proper pubs, which is half the point. On the Kennet, the Fisherman's Cottage at Kennet Side and the Cunning Man out toward Burghfield are both canalside and both older than the shopping centre by two centuries; the Cunning Man does a Sunday roast around £18 with a beer garden running down to the water. In the town centre the Oracle's riverside terrace is all chains — competent, London-priced — so walk past it to the independents if the meal is the point of the day.

On the Thames, the Thames Lido restaurant does the best riverside lunch in Reading proper, small-plates style beside the heated pool. Push out to Sonning and the Bull Inn pours pints in a fifteenth-century courtyard opposite the church, while the French Horn across the river is the special-occasion option with river views and prices to match. For a picnic instead, Christchurch Meadows and King's Meadow both have open grass right at the water; buy your supplies in town and you have the cheapest, and often the best, riverside lunch going.

Planning your two-river weekend

Base yourself near the station and you can reach both rivers on foot in under ten minutes, which is the whole trick of Reading — no car needed and no transfers. A realistic weekend runs the Kennet on Saturday morning, a canalside lunch, the Thames out to Sonning on Saturday afternoon, and the Caversham loop with View Island on Sunday before the train home. Total walking across two days is comfortably under fifteen miles, all of it flat. Reading is thirty minutes from London Paddington, so you can be walking by mid-morning even coming from the capital.

Two practical notes decide the trip. First, season: May, June and September give dry towpaths, long light and full boat traffic; winter gives mud, floods and short days, so bring waterproof boots and check river levels. Second, direction: walk the enclosed Kennet when it is windy and save the exposed Thames meadows for calm, bright weather, because the difference in comfort is large. Get those two right and Reading's twelve miles of towpath deliver medieval ruins, Victorian engineering and open river within a single easy weekend, nearly all of it free.