Read All About It …

If you’re wondering what living in Caversham is like then the answer will depend, in part, on you, your expectations and what you want or need from a place. It’s been voted as one of the country’s best places to live by the Sunday Times (in 2020), but what does that vote mean in reality?

For me, having lived in the place for decades, I’d say living in Caversham is ‘fine’ – no more, no less. I don’t think it’s exceptional in any particular way. It’s not perfect – nowhere is. But you could be justifiably called naive if you think it’s grim.

Located on the north edge of Reading, in Berkshire but right on the edge of Oxfordshire, Caversham is well placed for a lot of things … unless those things involve you driving over the River Thames at rush hour. With just two bridges (‘Reading’ and ‘Caversham’), unless you detour around via Sonning, Henley or Pangbourne it can be a real crawl at times.

(As for a third bridge … it can’t be a sane idea, whatever the rush hour aggro. The money spent over the years on feasibility studies and the like seems a poor use of what will surely have been public money. Another bridge will only promote more traffic – that’s the well-documented nature of having more roads. And in our climate-change-stricken era, more traffic can’t be a positive thing.)

Other than crossing the River Thames at busy times, Caversham’s not bad from a travel perspective. For driving east or west, the M4 is on the south edge of Reading. Motoring aside, Reading is on the mainline railway and only 30 minutes or so from London. And for most if not all of Caversham, the railway station is a reasonable walk away – or a bus trip if it’s pouring with rain.

Heading north, the easy (albeit road) access to South Oxfordshire is another major asset, not least because South Oxon (i.e. between Caversham and Oxford) isn’t that busy (by south of England standards). What’s more, both the Cotswolds and the Chilterns are relatively short drives away – good scenic stuff abounds.

Driving south from Caversham isn’t quite so easy in that you have to get through or around Reading first. But once you’ve done that generally slow section, Hampshire’s easy to get to. And don’t forget coastal Hampshire. For example, on a good day Hayling Island is only about an hour-and-a-half’s drive away.

And if you are thinking about life on foot, there are a lot of good walks to be had from your house in Caversham, wherever your house is precisely.

Travel aside, as a suburb Caversham is pretty well equipped with shops, schools, parks, access to the river and river side. There’s a decent range of sports-related options. Even the local library is still open, sometimes. There are good pubs and restaurants … and silly property prices.

The two local doctors’ surgeries (Emmer Green and Balmore Park) can be busy but where in the country aren’t they, and they seem generally well rated. In Reading there’s the Royal Berks Hospital (RBH), and the hospitals in Oxford and London, with their various specialisms, are not too far away.

Overall, the fact of the Thames has helped Caversham maintain more of an identity than might otherwise have been the case. But while Caversham and Emmer Green were both once villages in their own right we can’t roll back the clock – north Reading is a suburb now.