The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Wokingham, Berkshire*

Wokingham, Berkshire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• safeways in woosehill, used to have quality staff including the worlds greatest ever trolley boy - james pickard, but has now lowered in quality by hiring ugly people including richard phillips and richard jones. the checkout supervisor jan ford is also incredibly ugly
• the lord raglan. this is the best pub i have ever drunk in. this place is a mecca to all larger drinkers!
• The White Horse Pub... I must concede to never looking at it on the way in (head down going for the bar) and by the time I exit, turning around to admire the edifice before me is not really the first thing on my mind.
• Safeway in woosehill is the ultimate in building, the staff are mainly cool apart from a couple of mingers (alison toop and emma clipstone)
• In addition to the awesome Petsmart, I'd campaign strongly for a twelve foot wall to be built between Wokingham and Bracknell just to ensure that they don't cross the dividing line if they take a wrong turning off the Coppid Beech roundabout.
• Now that the state of the art Wokingham Town Football Ground has been knocked down it has to the fabulous new Petsmart that screams good taste and is a fitting emblem to take this fine town of ours into the 21st century.
• police station which has a massive smooth concrete ledge

Demolish It Now Building

• Those horrible old council buildings opposite the new swimming pool.
• all of cirius close. this estate belongs in bracknell.
• the entire of cirius close. this estate is 100% pikey with many 14 year old mothers running around with their prams.
• the whole of wokingham and make sure u move quikly onto bracknell u ho's
• Tesco_ because my mates work there and it would be funny to watch them apply to safeway!!
• John Redwood's house, except his junkie kids.
• police station not the ledge
• Waitrose. The doctors surgery on Broad Street had been turned down for building on that plot as 'people going to the surgery would cause too much congestion'. So what they do is allow a Supermarket to be built and dedicate one of the lanes on Rectory Road to filter traffic into the car park. Now there's sense. Smells of corruption in the Town Planning committee to me..... Road
• Even if you wanted to flatten Shute End (Council Offices) you wouldn't do away with the staff...... the lucky buggers have their own nuclear bunker buried in the vaults!

The Best Things

• Nothing to do around wokingham, but that's OK because the flow of hard drugs into here makes it all worth while - you don't get much trouble out of Wokingham youths - they tend to love everyone. Officer! Check those pupils out!
• You go home for the weekend to see your mum and you bump into at least 10 people you used to hang round with.
• Not a lot really, other than Pizza Express and the mini Marks and Spencer.
• loads of pubs and easy women. good proximity to reading as well. simons lane is also a good part of wokingham. this is probably the nicest place a person could want to live in. the best schools include forest and holt.
• best things about wokingham is the public transport out of town
• It is Wokingham. It is HOME.
• The gnome:- A plastic Gnome shot through the head with a bb gun. The readily available source of drugs and a joke of a police force.
• Now the Showcase Cinema has been built, I have no reason whatsoever to go to Bracknell. Woo Hoo!!!!!
• Wokingham is a bit posh and the local paper keeps banging on about it being the most affluent Town in Europe. I suppose that's quite good. Reading is nearby and has loads of new clubs, pubs, bars and the brand spankingly new Oracle Shopping Centre! Also, we have a quality astroturf at Cantley. Everyone is welcome to take on the boys every Sunday afternoon...come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!
• steves curb
• If you ever get the chance and have several hours to spare, take aleisurely stroll around the Wokingham Town Football club souvenir shop. It features a massive selection of old programmes and is the size of an old airing cupboard. It is in what used to be the Skateboard Park entrance building.
• Good selection of pubs all within walking distance of each other. Plenty of curry houses. Still has some 'market-town' qualities about it.
• It is close to London
• The best thing about Wokingham is the memories. I had very happy school days at The Holt from 82 to 89 and often think back in a quiet moment here in Australia.
• Lots of pubs and nice men especially my boyfriend: I Love you Simon!!!!!
• Wokingham has one of the best choral societies in the area: ambitious, attracts excellent orchestras and soloists, not too expensive, and doesn't demand that you can sight-read with your eyes shut. Contact Debbie Hounsell on 0118 979 3406. Only downside is the lack of a decent venue for an audience of 500; Lower Earley leisure centre is wonderful if you don't mind the air conditioning and the smell of sweat, and aren't too fussy about the acoustics.
• The best thing about Wokingham is leaving it. It's a grotty narrow-minded Thames Valley nowhere town where I had the misfortune to live for nine years.
• Joel Park, a place when I was at school at Emmbrook we used to go to and chat up the girls at Holt School, then take them into the trees and get on down.
• You're right about the wankers and the pubs, but The Queen's Head? - For Pringle sweater wearers only. May I also add that Wokingham also has a burgeoning hockey club. The men's first team recently got promoted to the Southern premier division despite the consumption of shed loads of nasty Morlands.
• Lots of motorways allowing a sharp exit from a god awful place.
• Wokingham Town Football Club now in the 1st Division after being relegated last season. But the good news is they are near the top of Div 1 now.
• Ten pin bowling and Snooker at the Pheonix club.
• WANKERS? I don't think so. Some of us really enjoy living in Wokingham... Loads of pubs with a nice friendly buzzing crowd who go to pubs then go clubbing in London, to exclusive places.
• The best thing is there are loads of pubs, the worst thing is, they are full of wankers. Beer = Morlands, Courage, Fullers, Brakspears(yuk!!)
• The best thing Wokingham I think, is that you can be in a new Industrial Estate one minute and the next minute you are in a lovely old street with loads of character like Rose Street (where I used to live) with quaint (don't you just hate that word?) little low-ceilinged cottages and what have you.

The Worst Things

• Not enough new women, get us more fresh women ;D
• Gorse Ride is not that a bad place, Norreys Avenue is ugly though. I mean, what ever made people build those horrible prefabs with the borwn tiled roofs that look like they've slipped down to the doors. But the prefabs at Gorse Ride South are much better - they're stronger, look better, and a much more decent, especially the bungalows - they're massiv.
• the graffiti problem is out of control. bracknell is a town where you'll expect alot of it but wokingham has tonnes more.
• near pikeyish bracknell. i know that bracknell is worse than wokingham,but wokingham has the worst graffiti problem in the south east.
• SIRIUS CLOSE IZ NOT 100% PIKEY, COZ IT'S ON A POSH ESTATE. U JUST WANNA MAKE UR TOWN SOUND BAD.IT'S ACTUALLY 100% POOF AND IT'S NOT ROUGH.EVRYONE IN THE AREA KNOWS THAT WOKINGHAM HAS A REPUTATION FOR BEING POSH AND THATS TRUE
• The 'i will never leave wokingham and i love working in factorys' bunch of muppets who will never venture further than reading. Also the amount of rudeboys that have suddenly appeared in wokingham. Tossers.
• The pykies when they are skagged up.
• Emmbrook shops. Two tool and plant hire places, a poncy hairdressers, AVADA, a Chinese and a newsagent. Bring back that video shop!
• Taxi drivers outside Eternity - "The town hall please" "I'm very sorry sir, where is that? Is it near Slough"!!!!!!!!!
• Gorse Ride, Norreys Avenue, Winnersh and Woosehill.
• People from the Holt and Forest saying it was great there, but don't you wonder about all male and all female schools, all the people (most of Wokingham) did..... Who's the best comp in wokingham, ahh St.Crispins !!!!!
• Drinking regularly in a pub for years - going away for a few weeks - returning and realising you don't know anyone in there...
• It is to close to Bracknell
• Wokingham is straight, white, middle-class, right wing, small minded, bigoted... need I say more? I lived here for the first 18 years of my life and am now lucky enough to be happily living in London. Unless you feel the 'qualities' listed above are good things I strongly suggest you avoid it. There. I feel much better now I've got that off my chest!
• The hoards of people who grew up there and have never left. Do they realise there is a world out there?
• placed in between bracknell and winnersh, both of which are pikey towns. woosehill also offers many pikeys. the worst schools include emmbrooke and st.crispins. these are only inhabited with pikeys unlike forest and holt!
• public transport out of town aint often enough
• Bracknell is dangerously close to Wokingham and they tend to visit a bit too often for our liking. Bracknell folk or pikeys as the Wokingham massive affectionately call them are easily spotted by their fake cockney accents, black puffer jackets and unmistakable musty smell.
• townie fucks who think there the dogs bolloks
• Watching Dave Bassett come back of the bench for Chelsea against Wokingham and scoring a Goal. I don't know if it was a coincidence but Vinny Jones was also there the day they announced the seasons sponsors as Wokingham Pet food supplies.
• Gatso's everywhere (CCTV can't be far behind). The Woolworths delivery lorry blocking Peach Street when offloading (and adding to the already horrendous congestion problem). Still too close to that M4 corridor blot called Bracknell. House prices are way too high (although let me sell my place before they all drop)
• The Squaddies and the drunk 15 year olds who dominate the pubs at weekends. Also the muppets who never leave W'ham and therefore remain very small minded and alienated from the real world. THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN THE RAGLAN.
• Council tax is very expensive to cater for people who move their kids to W'ham for the education The last train back from London is at 11:30
• Worst thing: John Redwood. Sums up the overall atmosphere of the town - very blue, very right wing, and very intolerant of difference..
• The traffic .... since the new Sainsbury's open in the Winnersh end of Wokingham (yes Winnersh is disappearing) the traffic is the pits man
• House Prices.
• Since I first saw Wokingham in the early 70s, the place has deteriorated badly. Then, it was a small market town with lots of character. Designated a development zone, the population has spiralled out of control. The countryside is now one huge 'mock-georgian' estate. When they built the M4 interchange, they didn't even put a bridge over it, cutting people off from the bit of nature left. The business rates became so high that only Estate Agents and Building Societies could afford them, forcing all the small businesses out. The town planners should be shot for what they did to this town.
• A new Waitrose is being built: it is about the size of Gatwick airport. The new store is being erected in the space that has been hollowed out behind the old library and stretches from Rose Street to Rectory Road, yes street front to street front. Who the hell got that past town planners? I have heard plans to pedestrianise Broad Street, probably to land delivery planes through the night!!!
• The worst thing about Wokingham is that its grown far too quickly in the last 15 years. Loads of nice areas are being built on, and the town centre is far too small for the town. Other problems this causes are traffic, and villages like Winnersh, Finchampstead, and Barkham being swallowed up.
• The traffic problem is still shit and getting worse, you ought to see the new lights at Shute End.
• The town centre is boring...
• The traffic!!! Really needs to slow down traffic through Peach Street, Denmark Street and Broad Street. Silly to have people shopping beside fast moving cars.

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Last updated: 2007-07-16