>>24711056
It's become a horrible place, or maybe more truthfully its been a horrible place since at least the early 2000s. I grew up about 25 minutes away and visited for shopping, to see family that lived there, and eventually for work until I left for Uni. Not that the place I live now is not full of undesirables, and is actually worse in many senses, but I digress. The abbey ruins are indeed beautiful as are the Forbury Gardens (unfortunately the location of a terrorist attack just a few years ago) and the Maywand Lion war memorial pictured just cropped out of the photo with local band Slowdive. Just next to both the abbey and the gardens is the former prison: Reading Gaol, where Oscar Wilde famously served a sentence for 'Gross Indecency.' Reading is home to a lot of foreign shite, and left wing lunatics as documented by this YouTuber: https://youtu.be/WqSeoYMhUPc