Stinging nettles

Nettles like to grow in soil with a high nitrate content, and are likely to have grown here when in the past, toilets from the trains passing through Reading were emptied trackside as they left the station.

Look for two large gasometers ahead of you. These are close to the site of the former gasworks.

Gas came to Reading in 1818 (Reading Gas Light Company) but the gasworks was moved to Kennetside in 1888, the gas then being generated from coal brought to the town by barge along the Kennet and Avon Canal.

The gas in the modern gasometers comes from deep down under the North Sea via pipelines from East Anglia. This gas was generated from Carboniferous Coal Measures (which we will also encounter, but a long way under the ground, at Sonning).

It is trapped in Lower Permian Sandstones (280 million years old) capped by impermeable Upper Permian salt beds (250 million years old). Gas was first discovered in the North Sea in December 1965.

MANY THANKS TO PROFESSOR BRUCE SELLWOOD OF READING UNIVERSITY FOR ALL OF HIS HELP WITH THIS WALK