July 17, 2025 • 21 mins
Terry Dixon, founder of "Terry's Reading Walkabouts," started his walking tours in 2016. He has since raised over £26,000 for more than 30 local charities. Terry offers 22 different themed walks. In this episode, we discuss how Terry got started with his walks, how he promotes them, and how his project management background has helped him. We also discuss why Reading is such a wonderful town and the importance of history. Terry also highlights how he adapts to challenges, and why it’s important to look for opportunities.
HIGHLIGHTS
Adaptability and Opportunity Recognition: Terry highlights the importance of innovation and finding new opportunities even in adversity. This highlights the crucial business lesson of remaining agile and actively seeking out new possibilities, even when faced with significant obstacles.
Diversification of Offerings and Continuous Product Development: Terry constantly evolves his core product, creating two new walks a year and developing 22 different walking themes. This commitment to expanding his offerings and keeping content fresh ensures repeat engagement from his "band of wonderful followers" and appeals to a wider audience.
Prioritising Customer Experience: Terry emphasises that beyond fundraising, his primary goal is for people "to have a wonderful experience". This dedication to delivering a high-quality experience fosters a loyal "enthusiastic band of walkers" who often return, demonstrating how exceptional customer service can drive repeat business and cultivate strong community ties through word-of-mouth promotion.
TIMECODES
00:00 Introduction
00:27 Introduction to Terry
01:40 About Terry’s Reading Walkabouts
03:50 Reading is a wonderful place to live!
05:17 Terry’s Pride of Reading Award
06:45 Terry’s charities
08:29 How Terry chooses the charities he works with
09:45 Terry’s favourite walk!
11:30 How Terry promotes his walks
12:51 Why history is awesome!
13:22 How Terry promotes his walks continued
14:17 Challenges Terry has faced/ Look for the opportunities
14:22 How Terry’s Project Management experience has helped him
19:03 How to find out more about Terry’s walks
20:44 Terry’s final thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast.
I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Terry Dixon from Terry's Reading Walkabouts.
Terry, thank you so much for coming on.
How are you?
I'm okay, a little bit wet but that's because we did a wet walk about this morning.
So many fascinating things.
I'm actually quite glad you timed it very well with your weather app that by the time wegot to the end, that's when it started to rain and not before.
(00:24):
We would have been totally soaked, but we were lucky.
Now, to jump in, could you please give a bit of a background introduction to yourself?
Yes, I'm Reading born and bred up in Tilehurst, which is my kind of village.
I've always lived in Reading.
I've traveled a lot, gone on holidays all over the world.
I had a very diverse kind of education, trained as electronics engineer, morphed into aproject manager.
(00:48):
And a few things in my life have kind of shaped it.
And one of them was when I lost my dad to a stroke just before I was going to get marriedfirst time round.
And that shaped it in the sense that my dad was only 70.
And the traditional time to retire then was 65.
My dad didn't have much of his retirement.
And I said, well, stroke's running my family.
(01:11):
Don't know if that would happen to me, but I'm going to retire as soon as I can.
So I did.
I retired when I was 58.
My dad gave me wonderful hobbies, gardening, history, geography, sport, all these things,but they were generally solitary.
So when I did retire, I wanted something which would get me out.
(01:32):
meet people and also really understand my hometown of Reading, its heritage, its cultureand its history.
Well that leads us nicely onto Terry's Reading Walkabouts because it's not just walks, isit?
You do brilliant things for charities.
So do want to give people a bit of an overview to what they are and the vast number ofthem that you have?
(01:54):
Well, I started off with just an easy way.
I've got a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, got the T-shirt printed, spent some money gettingleaflets and business cards.
I all the design myself.
I luckily had those skills set for that and started with walks of one, two, three extrapeople.
(02:14):
This was back in 2016.
So nine years I've been doing it.
An amazing nine years.
I've raised over 26,000.
pound for over 30 local charities.
And as one of my friend reminds me is from a small ag corn does a big oak tree grow.
All your money, just to clarify, goes towards charity, doesn't it?
(02:36):
It does.
I'd say minimum of expenses.
I get a lot of sponsorship.
Fortunately, being a project manager before and I do a lot of networking.
been on a couple of your walks now and what I like is the fact that I've lived in Readingnearly 20 years now.
There are so many things that I've walked past all these years and thought I wonder whatthat is, but you could actually tell me.
So that's one of the benefits of coming on your walks.
(02:58):
Do you have that often from people?
Yeah, there's a couple of sayings really for the people doing my work regularly and I amlucky enough to have an enthusiastic band of walkers who sometimes they're on their walk
second time round because they forgot what I've told them five, six years ago or they justlike the company.
And, you know, one of the big signs is if you go with Terry, you'll never walk aroundReading without looking up.
(03:23):
So if you're walking down Broad Street, for example, forget about the garish shopfronts.
what was that building built for originally?
In some cases it's school or a cinema or a bank that's now become a wonderful restaurantand whatever.
So I could do a two hour walk up and down Broad Street quite easily and we would go, what,a few hundred yards in real terms.
(03:47):
And it's just because Reading's a wonderful, friendly town, unassuming town.
doesn't put its history and its heritage and its culture out there like some places do,mainly because we're not known as a tourist destination, which I think is a massive
mistake.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on that.
fact that they said some places are well known, like Bath, for example, that's very wellknown.
(04:11):
You go to Bath, you expect the culture and the history, but Reading has so much, it goesback so long.
I think it's kind of subconsciously.
If you go back to the kind of 1960s when there were massive change in industry, I in thetraditional industries of brick making, biscuit making, the brewery and certain seeds were
(04:32):
dying or closing down.
Reading became the centre of the Silicon Valley for not just the UK, but for Europe.
So unemployment was very, very low.
We were a buoyant place to live and work.
And somehow, maybe because we were surrounded by Winchester and Bath and Oxford andWindsor, we thought we couldn't compete with them.
(04:55):
So why bother competing with them?
Let's compete on jobs.
And if I can say a small little win since I started talking to councillors, why hasn'tReading got a tourist information centre?
Why isn't Reading showing its wonderful history?
And I've led by example by now developing 22 different walking themes.
(05:16):
you have a wide range of walks, which are amazing.
Just to add there that you actually won the Pride of Reading Award, you, a couple of yearsago, which I think is a testament to the great work that you've been doing for charities
and highlighting areas in reading.
Yeah, was a...
been nominated a few times before and I don't kind of take any of these things forgranted, but 2023, the beginning of Reading Walking Festival and everything else, which I
(05:44):
had to contribute to, I just kind of got nominated and I didn't really understand how thenomination thing...
Unfortunately, we were going to be away at the award ceremony, so I couldn't be there andI didn't realize I'd actually won it until somebody kind of contacted me on the day.
But then the First Friday Club wonderfully got the ceremony, said my wife could be thereas well, and I got the presentation delivered then afterwards.
(06:09):
And just to see how I'd made other people happy and recognize their own town, it was justa humbling experience.
didn't know you'd had a separate ceremony at the first Friday club.
That is so lovely.
We've done a few because when I've handed the money over to the different charities, it'sa good opportunity for the charities to get a bit of a shout out.
(06:30):
And as you can see, I'm wearing the Ways and Means Trust T-shirt at the moment.
So I'm a bit of a walking billboard for whatever charity I support that year.
And I, besides raising them some money, I like to raise their profile.
Well, let's highlight that next then.
So you have two charities that you support every year, doesn't it?
And they change every year.
So who are the charities that you're supporting this year?
(06:52):
end up with four as has happened recently because I'm also a member of Reading CivicSociety and any talks I do at the moment that's going to a new scheme in Reading Civic
Society for new blue plaques.
We are sadly short of plaques in Reading for the wonderful people and places and eventsthat have happened in Reading and I've been banging on about this for a while.
(07:16):
It takes time to set up a new scheme.
Reading Civic Society have got a new website which lists the ones we've got and plaques.
And we're looking forward to getting new ones and they're not cheap.
You know, it's between £500 and maybe over £1000 per plaque to do it.
When planning permission, everything's taken into account.
And I also, over the remembrance period, I do a military charity.
(07:40):
I've strong links myself for working for the MOD and
My family, my father and my uncle's been in the RAF, so I do a military charity.
This year it's going to be Models for Heroes, which is a bit of a spring-off from Healthfor Heroes.
But my two main charities are Camp Mohawk, which raise money for providing activities forchildren with disabilities who couldn't cope with the average kind of a venture park, for
(08:07):
one reason or another, and the Ways and Means Trust.
in Caversham which provide work for adults with disability which unfortunately over thelast few years find robots are replacing the work they used to do.
So it's becoming harder for them to find the work and we're trying to promote them in apositive way.
(08:28):
How do you choose the charities you work with every year?
I mean, eventually you're going to get around all of them, but how do you choose them inthat?
Yeah, and it's amazing.
mean, people suggest ones to me.
I do have to have a criteria to meet.
For example, I couldn't support just one school without supporting all the other 40 or 50or 60 there might be in Reading.
(08:50):
And I generally steer away from animal charities for the same reason.
You know, I'd be which different animal would you stop at?
So and I tried to make them local to Reading or at least Berkshire wide and smaller.
local charities which would struggle or are struggling because it's a very difficultclimate out there for some charities and some charities because they deal with children or
(09:15):
other criteria which is easy for people to understand and support get easy funding.
Other charities which deal with things which are harder to support like PACT which isParents and Children Together which my wife volunteers for.
They always find it harder to get the funding because they deal with adoption and otherthings like that.
(09:39):
And people don't see that as much as a necessity for a charity than they do othercharities.
So as you said before, you have 22 books that you do.
Which is your favourite?
That's a hard one in some respect.
I have to do two new walks a year because my band of wonderful followers have done themall if I'm not careful.
(10:02):
Overall, it's my reading proud photographic heritage.
Wherever I do a walk, it's very unusual for me not to come up with a wow at the end of it.
Somewhere along the line, I found something I wasn't expecting, didn't know this and it'sjust blown my mind one way or another.
And on that wall, there's two or three things.
(10:23):
I'm not going to give them out what they are because I make people swear to secrecy.
They're not going to know where I'm taking them or what I'm going to do and what the endthings are.
But there are there's a big claim to how reading how in the Second World War in there andI can prove it and things like this.
So it's easy.
You can.
There's an iconic building in reading.
You look at everybody knows it by one name.
(10:45):
They don't know what it did originally.
And that is more of a wow than they know it from its second name.
So it's just, it's just bits like that.
There's not one of my walks I don't ever enjoy doing.
They change, they evolve, they change with the people come along, the questions I get.
(11:05):
People make suggestions, like my crime and punishment one has a new crime in it that Iknew nothing about until an ex-policeman came along and told me about it.
So they evolve.
I went on the photographic one and yes, we won't say but there are a couple of things onthere that yes, you really do need to go on and see for yourself.
So if you're listening, please book on to one of Terry's talks, especially thephotographic one.
(11:29):
Now, how do you promote them?
Yeah, well, it was because I worked for the M.O.D.
I wasn't familiar with things like Facebook when I retired and set up, but I didn't findit too difficult.
And then I realized there were other Facebook pages and there's some that specialize inpromoting events.
you know, there's What's On Reading, which is in the Facebook page as such.
(11:51):
But the wonderful council set that up and that is absolutely brilliant.
You know, the one stop in reading, you just go to what's on reading dot com, put inwhatever you're looking for, talk, walk.
theater, whatever you will find it.
And that's a wonderful addition to what there is in reading.
There are other Facebook groups.
Word of mouth is a very big one.
I ask people to write me reviews.
(12:13):
I have the astonishing four point nine nine, whether it's TripAdvisor or my own one.
I actually celebrate if I get four or three star review because it makes it look like I'mnot writing my own reviews.
But that allows me to concentrate on the quality.
It's great to raise money for charities.
I love that.
But I want people to have a wonderful experience.
(12:34):
I want people to realize that history is not a boring subject.
Some people said, oh, I dropped history at school because it was all about dates andboring reading.
History is not.
History is about who we are, shape what we do, why us British are eccentric and dodifferent things to other places in the world and what we should be celebrating.
(12:57):
If you understand history, you understand yourself, don't you?
Which explains a lot.
Yes, yes you do.
Why do we have a weird and wonderful voting system?
Why are we eccentric in certain ways?
The pomp and ceremony that this country is renowned for and we're wonderful at.
That didn't suddenly happen.
To add to how you promote the groups, you yourself are very good at networking.
(13:21):
As we said, you're at the First Friday groups, people seem to know you, you're going onradio boxers, isn't it?
You are everywhere, so I think you are very good at meeting people and getting to knowthem, so I think that's a really key part of how you promote your talks too.
It's quite funny, my youngest granddaughter, Amelie, we went to a water fest a few yearsback when her mum and her brother, and this was in the middle of Covid when there was a
(13:47):
bit of relaxation and I was saying hello to people and people were coming, patting me up.
then near the end of going to the water fest, Amelie turned around to her mum and said,does granddad know everybody in Reading?
So I have to appreciate that the fact that I probably do know a lot of people and Imanaged to get myself known.
Well, if you say, word of mouth is the best form, if you know most people in Reading, thenthat is a great form of promotion.
(14:12):
It sounds all very smooth.
You've got set up, you've got great promotion, people know you.
Have you faced any challenges while setting up Terry's Walks and how have you overcomethem?
Yes, I have.
I mean, when I was a project manager, because of the area I worked in, it was verydifficult to take opportunities.
Now, that was something I didn't like when I was a project management, because if you lookto the Victorians, they took about every opportunity came along.
(14:39):
That's why we had a rapid advance in our civilization under the Victorians arms.
They wouldn't let things hold them back.
I mean, for example, when Covid hit.
couldn't do walks.
Then the government said you could do walks of five.
That was very difficult because it meant I could do one and two couples.
So some of my walks, which were already planned, that they had to be slid up into three.
(15:02):
But I turned that on, it said, a friend of mine made them, which we did videos.
So there's several videos on YouTube of me doing the Abbey, reading prisons, HughFarringdon done in horrible history style, because my eldest grandson inspired me to do
that.
So I'm pretty good at kind of turning things around.
(15:22):
And the other thing, which was a bit of a challenge, was when I accidentally fell over,not on a walkabout, I don't think, and broke my hip.
But that was a time where an opportunity was there to write a book on the influentialwomen of Reading, which came out of two of my walks, which I was invited to do by the
wonderful counsellor, she was then Rachel Eden, later mayor, to celebrate 100 years ofwomen getting the book.
(15:48):
vote.
it was uh and I was a bit at the time unaware how long that that interest would last.
So I thought, well, if we can get it somehow into a book, then it was a great way for thefuture, because I've learned that women have been so badly undersold by history.
(16:10):
I interviewed Rachel Eden for the podcast too, so I will link her episode on the landingpage for everyone.
I'm really fascinated by this.
I think your ability to take a bad situation and just think, how can I make the most ofit?
think that probably, correct if I'm wrong, that's influenced maybe by your project managerbackground.
Would you say you've picked up any tips or learnings from your project manager backgroundthat have helped you?
(16:34):
And if so, what do you think they are?
In a massive way I kind of was quite quiet when I was young and I did an apprenticeship 16year old because I was in the lead top bit I had to do public speaking which the whole
fort terrified me at the time I picked a really boring subject to the history of computerswrites and notes on cue cards didn't look up from the cue cards because there were 200
(16:58):
people in front of me a lot of them my mates intent on trying to make me laugh or stumbleon whatever
but I was what, 17 at the time.
And here I am approaching my 67th birthday, so nearly 50 years later of doing publicspeaking.
So I'm not fazed by that now, but you have to start somewhere.
(17:22):
And I knew I'd have to do it for four years because that was the length of myapprenticeship and I got better and better and better.
And I think the important thing is to learn from experiences.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in this world from making a mistake as long as it's nota serious, dangerous mistake.
And you will learn from your mistakes more than you will something you just naturally doright.
(17:46):
So, yes, make the mistakes and learn from them.
And I think as we said before, I found the more painful the mistake, the quicker I'lllearn from it I won't do it again.
Yeah, it's nature.
We're not perfect.
None of us is perfect.
People ask me, I can never do what you do.
And they say, why?
I couldn't walk around with a t-shirt with something on.
Why?
There is nothing that says nobody can walk around with a t-shirt that supports a charity.
(18:10):
Half of my clothes support a charity one way or another because it's a great way of doingit.
Or, know, and talking to people, I understand my wife is very quiet, so I can understandthat everybody's different and not
people were like that.
But I couldn't be quiet and do what I do.
And I have to lead.
(18:30):
had ended up with a lot of safety qualifications.
I take the safeness of my walk is extremely important.
I write my risk assessments.
I never blase about things like that.
So it's always something I'm very focused on.
Above all, I want people to have a good time and we have a good time.
It'd be very rare that we do a walk where there isn't.
(18:52):
some laughter or some fun somewhere along the lines because I put a bit of fun in and wewant to laugh.
Now, if people are interested, Apple is listening to us today, how can they find out moreabout your walks and what's coming up?
Well, there are two main ways.
I have a Facebook page, is Terry's Reading Walkabouts, which you can find out easy from justGoogle in using another search and to find Terry's Reading Walkabouts.
(19:17):
And I also a few years ago set up my own web page because Facebook has a lot oflimitations.
My web page doesn't.
So you can go to readywalkingtours.co.uk.
Again, you'll probably get that link if you just put Terry's Reading Walkabouts.
That's very focused on being able to read and use on a phone.
(19:39):
On the first page, you'll see a red button that says, just click on it, upcoming walks.
And then you can see once you can join.
If you continue to scroll down the many information there, you'll find another red buttonsays all the list of the walks.
And then you could say, oh, I really want to do the Huntley and Palmer 200th anniversaryor Six Bridges Walk or one of the other themes or
(20:04):
coming up October, November, do my ghost and Halloween walk and then you can get incontact with me.
You can email me through the website and then we arrange a time of the day that's mute tous.
And then I advertise it and recruit people to come on.
You do one as well where you go and you do little samples of food, don't you?
(20:24):
Well, not exactly samples, but I do an edible reading.
We end up at a wonderful, iconic restaurant in Redmond.
I'm not going to tell you the name, but it's something to do with pies.
So would you like to leave our listeners with anything today?
I would just like to leave people with the impression that I hear a lot of moaning aboutreading.
(20:47):
Now, all right, we all like a good moan every now and then, but I think a lot of moaningabout reading is undeserved.
Like there's nothing to do and whatever, whatever.
There is so much to do in reading.
You could feel every minute of every day for 365 days a year.
You just got to get out there, look at what's on reading, find out what you like.
(21:08):
There are 250.
organizations to help people through Reading voluntary Association.
So if you're retired and looking something to do, just don't look at retirement at the endof your life.
Look at it as an opportunity to do all the things you couldn't do when you were working.
I think that's a brilliant thing to leave our listeners alone with, Terry.
Thank you so much for going on the podcast.
(21:30):
Everyone, if you're interested, the links will all be on the landing page.
And yeah, please book onto one of Terry's works.
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast.
I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Terry Dixon from Terry's Reading Walkabouts.
Terry, thank you so much for coming on.
How are you?
I'm okay, a little bit wet but that's because we did a wet walk about this morning.
So many fascinating things.
I'm actually quite glad you timed it very well with your weather app that by the time wegot to the end, that's when it started to rain and not before.
(00:24):
We would have been totally soaked, but we were lucky.
Now, to jump in, could you please give a bit of a background introduction to yourself?
Yes, I'm Reading born and bred up in Tilehurst, which is my kind of village.
I've always lived in Reading.
I've traveled a lot, gone on holidays all over the world.
I had a very diverse kind of education, trained as electronics engineer, morphed into aproject manager.
(00:48):
And a few things in my life have kind of shaped it.
And one of them was when I lost my dad to a stroke just before I was going to get marriedfirst time round.
And that shaped it in the sense that my dad was only 70.
And the traditional time to retire then was 65.
My dad didn't have much of his retirement.
And I said, well, stroke's running my family.
(01:11):
Don't know if that would happen to me, but I'm going to retire as soon as I can.
So I did.
I retired when I was 58.
My dad gave me wonderful hobbies, gardening, history, geography, sport, all these things,but they were generally solitary.
So when I did retire, I wanted something which would get me out.
(01:32):
meet people and also really understand my hometown of Reading, its heritage, its cultureand its history.
Well that leads us nicely onto Terry's Reading Walkabouts because it's not just walks, isit?
You do brilliant things for charities.
So do want to give people a bit of an overview to what they are and the vast number ofthem that you have?
(01:54):
Well, I started off with just an easy way.
I've got a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, got the T-shirt printed, spent some money gettingleaflets and business cards.
I all the design myself.
I luckily had those skills set for that and started with walks of one, two, three extrapeople.
(02:14):
This was back in 2016.
So nine years I've been doing it.
An amazing nine years.
I've raised over 26,000.
pound for over 30 local charities.
And as one of my friend reminds me is from a small ag corn does a big oak tree grow.
All your money, just to clarify, goes towards charity, doesn't it?
(02:36):
It does.
I'd say minimum of expenses.
I get a lot of sponsorship.
Fortunately, being a project manager before and I do a lot of networking.
been on a couple of your walks now and what I like is the fact that I've lived in Readingnearly 20 years now.
There are so many things that I've walked past all these years and thought I wonder whatthat is, but you could actually tell me.
So that's one of the benefits of coming on your walks.
(02:58):
Do you have that often from people?
Yeah, there's a couple of sayings really for the people doing my work regularly and I amlucky enough to have an enthusiastic band of walkers who sometimes they're on their walk
second time round because they forgot what I've told them five, six years ago or they justlike the company.
And, you know, one of the big signs is if you go with Terry, you'll never walk aroundReading without looking up.
(03:23):
So if you're walking down Broad Street, for example, forget about the garish shopfronts.
what was that building built for originally?
In some cases it's school or a cinema or a bank that's now become a wonderful restaurantand whatever.
So I could do a two hour walk up and down Broad Street quite easily and we would go, what,a few hundred yards in real terms.
(03:47):
And it's just because Reading's a wonderful, friendly town, unassuming town.
doesn't put its history and its heritage and its culture out there like some places do,mainly because we're not known as a tourist destination, which I think is a massive
mistake.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on that.
fact that they said some places are well known, like Bath, for example, that's very wellknown.
(04:11):
You go to Bath, you expect the culture and the history, but Reading has so much, it goesback so long.
I think it's kind of subconsciously.
If you go back to the kind of 1960s when there were massive change in industry, I in thetraditional industries of brick making, biscuit making, the brewery and certain seeds were
(04:32):
dying or closing down.
Reading became the centre of the Silicon Valley for not just the UK, but for Europe.
So unemployment was very, very low.
We were a buoyant place to live and work.
And somehow, maybe because we were surrounded by Winchester and Bath and Oxford andWindsor, we thought we couldn't compete with them.
(04:55):
So why bother competing with them?
Let's compete on jobs.
And if I can say a small little win since I started talking to councillors, why hasn'tReading got a tourist information centre?
Why isn't Reading showing its wonderful history?
And I've led by example by now developing 22 different walking themes.
(05:16):
you have a wide range of walks, which are amazing.
Just to add there that you actually won the Pride of Reading Award, you, a couple of yearsago, which I think is a testament to the great work that you've been doing for charities
and highlighting areas in reading.
Yeah, was a...
been nominated a few times before and I don't kind of take any of these things forgranted, but 2023, the beginning of Reading Walking Festival and everything else, which I
(05:44):
had to contribute to, I just kind of got nominated and I didn't really understand how thenomination thing...
Unfortunately, we were going to be away at the award ceremony, so I couldn't be there andI didn't realize I'd actually won it until somebody kind of contacted me on the day.
But then the First Friday Club wonderfully got the ceremony, said my wife could be thereas well, and I got the presentation delivered then afterwards.
(06:09):
And just to see how I'd made other people happy and recognize their own town, it was justa humbling experience.
didn't know you'd had a separate ceremony at the first Friday club.
That is so lovely.
We've done a few because when I've handed the money over to the different charities, it'sa good opportunity for the charities to get a bit of a shout out.
(06:30):
And as you can see, I'm wearing the Ways and Means Trust T-shirt at the moment.
So I'm a bit of a walking billboard for whatever charity I support that year.
And I, besides raising them some money, I like to raise their profile.
Well, let's highlight that next then.
So you have two charities that you support every year, doesn't it?
And they change every year.
So who are the charities that you're supporting this year?
(06:52):
end up with four as has happened recently because I'm also a member of Reading CivicSociety and any talks I do at the moment that's going to a new scheme in Reading Civic
Society for new blue plaques.
We are sadly short of plaques in Reading for the wonderful people and places and eventsthat have happened in Reading and I've been banging on about this for a while.
(07:16):
It takes time to set up a new scheme.
Reading Civic Society have got a new website which lists the ones we've got and plaques.
And we're looking forward to getting new ones and they're not cheap.
You know, it's between £500 and maybe over £1000 per plaque to do it.
When planning permission, everything's taken into account.
And I also, over the remembrance period, I do a military charity.
(07:40):
I've strong links myself for working for the MOD and
My family, my father and my uncle's been in the RAF, so I do a military charity.
This year it's going to be Models for Heroes, which is a bit of a spring-off from Healthfor Heroes.
But my two main charities are Camp Mohawk, which raise money for providing activities forchildren with disabilities who couldn't cope with the average kind of a venture park, for
(08:07):
one reason or another, and the Ways and Means Trust.
in Caversham which provide work for adults with disability which unfortunately over thelast few years find robots are replacing the work they used to do.
So it's becoming harder for them to find the work and we're trying to promote them in apositive way.
(08:28):
How do you choose the charities you work with every year?
I mean, eventually you're going to get around all of them, but how do you choose them inthat?
Yeah, and it's amazing.
mean, people suggest ones to me.
I do have to have a criteria to meet.
For example, I couldn't support just one school without supporting all the other 40 or 50or 60 there might be in Reading.
(08:50):
And I generally steer away from animal charities for the same reason.
You know, I'd be which different animal would you stop at?
So and I tried to make them local to Reading or at least Berkshire wide and smaller.
local charities which would struggle or are struggling because it's a very difficultclimate out there for some charities and some charities because they deal with children or
(09:15):
other criteria which is easy for people to understand and support get easy funding.
Other charities which deal with things which are harder to support like PACT which isParents and Children Together which my wife volunteers for.
They always find it harder to get the funding because they deal with adoption and otherthings like that.
(09:39):
And people don't see that as much as a necessity for a charity than they do othercharities.
So as you said before, you have 22 books that you do.
Which is your favourite?
That's a hard one in some respect.
I have to do two new walks a year because my band of wonderful followers have done themall if I'm not careful.
(10:02):
Overall, it's my reading proud photographic heritage.
Wherever I do a walk, it's very unusual for me not to come up with a wow at the end of it.
Somewhere along the line, I found something I wasn't expecting, didn't know this and it'sjust blown my mind one way or another.
And on that wall, there's two or three things.
(10:23):
I'm not going to give them out what they are because I make people swear to secrecy.
They're not going to know where I'm taking them or what I'm going to do and what the endthings are.
But there are there's a big claim to how reading how in the Second World War in there andI can prove it and things like this.
So it's easy.
You can.
There's an iconic building in reading.
You look at everybody knows it by one name.
(10:45):
They don't know what it did originally.
And that is more of a wow than they know it from its second name.
So it's just, it's just bits like that.
There's not one of my walks I don't ever enjoy doing.
They change, they evolve, they change with the people come along, the questions I get.
(11:05):
People make suggestions, like my crime and punishment one has a new crime in it that Iknew nothing about until an ex-policeman came along and told me about it.
So they evolve.
I went on the photographic one and yes, we won't say but there are a couple of things onthere that yes, you really do need to go on and see for yourself.
So if you're listening, please book on to one of Terry's talks, especially thephotographic one.
(11:29):
Now, how do you promote them?
Yeah, well, it was because I worked for the M.O.D.
I wasn't familiar with things like Facebook when I retired and set up, but I didn't findit too difficult.
And then I realized there were other Facebook pages and there's some that specialize inpromoting events.
you know, there's What's On Reading, which is in the Facebook page as such.
(11:51):
But the wonderful council set that up and that is absolutely brilliant.
You know, the one stop in reading, you just go to what's on reading dot com, put inwhatever you're looking for, talk, walk.
theater, whatever you will find it.
And that's a wonderful addition to what there is in reading.
There are other Facebook groups.
Word of mouth is a very big one.
I ask people to write me reviews.
(12:13):
I have the astonishing four point nine nine, whether it's TripAdvisor or my own one.
I actually celebrate if I get four or three star review because it makes it look like I'mnot writing my own reviews.
But that allows me to concentrate on the quality.
It's great to raise money for charities.
I love that.
But I want people to have a wonderful experience.
(12:34):
I want people to realize that history is not a boring subject.
Some people said, oh, I dropped history at school because it was all about dates andboring reading.
History is not.
History is about who we are, shape what we do, why us British are eccentric and dodifferent things to other places in the world and what we should be celebrating.
(12:57):
If you understand history, you understand yourself, don't you?
Which explains a lot.
Yes, yes you do.
Why do we have a weird and wonderful voting system?
Why are we eccentric in certain ways?
The pomp and ceremony that this country is renowned for and we're wonderful at.
That didn't suddenly happen.
To add to how you promote the groups, you yourself are very good at networking.
(13:21):
As we said, you're at the First Friday groups, people seem to know you, you're going onradio boxers, isn't it?
You are everywhere, so I think you are very good at meeting people and getting to knowthem, so I think that's a really key part of how you promote your talks too.
It's quite funny, my youngest granddaughter, Amelie, we went to a water fest a few yearsback when her mum and her brother, and this was in the middle of Covid when there was a
(13:47):
bit of relaxation and I was saying hello to people and people were coming, patting me up.
then near the end of going to the water fest, Amelie turned around to her mum and said,does granddad know everybody in Reading?
So I have to appreciate that the fact that I probably do know a lot of people and Imanaged to get myself known.
Well, if you say, word of mouth is the best form, if you know most people in Reading, thenthat is a great form of promotion.
(14:12):
It sounds all very smooth.
You've got set up, you've got great promotion, people know you.
Have you faced any challenges while setting up Terry's Walks and how have you overcomethem?
Yes, I have.
I mean, when I was a project manager, because of the area I worked in, it was verydifficult to take opportunities.
Now, that was something I didn't like when I was a project management, because if you lookto the Victorians, they took about every opportunity came along.
(14:39):
That's why we had a rapid advance in our civilization under the Victorians arms.
They wouldn't let things hold them back.
I mean, for example, when Covid hit.
couldn't do walks.
Then the government said you could do walks of five.
That was very difficult because it meant I could do one and two couples.
So some of my walks, which were already planned, that they had to be slid up into three.
(15:02):
But I turned that on, it said, a friend of mine made them, which we did videos.
So there's several videos on YouTube of me doing the Abbey, reading prisons, HughFarringdon done in horrible history style, because my eldest grandson inspired me to do
that.
So I'm pretty good at kind of turning things around.
(15:22):
And the other thing, which was a bit of a challenge, was when I accidentally fell over,not on a walkabout, I don't think, and broke my hip.
But that was a time where an opportunity was there to write a book on the influentialwomen of Reading, which came out of two of my walks, which I was invited to do by the
wonderful counsellor, she was then Rachel Eden, later mayor, to celebrate 100 years ofwomen getting the book.
(15:48):
vote.
it was uh and I was a bit at the time unaware how long that that interest would last.
So I thought, well, if we can get it somehow into a book, then it was a great way for thefuture, because I've learned that women have been so badly undersold by history.
(16:10):
I interviewed Rachel Eden for the podcast too, so I will link her episode on the landingpage for everyone.
I'm really fascinated by this.
I think your ability to take a bad situation and just think, how can I make the most ofit?
think that probably, correct if I'm wrong, that's influenced maybe by your project managerbackground.
Would you say you've picked up any tips or learnings from your project manager backgroundthat have helped you?
(16:34):
And if so, what do you think they are?
In a massive way I kind of was quite quiet when I was young and I did an apprenticeship 16year old because I was in the lead top bit I had to do public speaking which the whole
fort terrified me at the time I picked a really boring subject to the history of computerswrites and notes on cue cards didn't look up from the cue cards because there were 200
(16:58):
people in front of me a lot of them my mates intent on trying to make me laugh or stumbleon whatever
but I was what, 17 at the time.
And here I am approaching my 67th birthday, so nearly 50 years later of doing publicspeaking.
So I'm not fazed by that now, but you have to start somewhere.
(17:22):
And I knew I'd have to do it for four years because that was the length of myapprenticeship and I got better and better and better.
And I think the important thing is to learn from experiences.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in this world from making a mistake as long as it's nota serious, dangerous mistake.
And you will learn from your mistakes more than you will something you just naturally doright.
(17:46):
So, yes, make the mistakes and learn from them.
And I think as we said before, I found the more painful the mistake, the quicker I'lllearn from it I won't do it again.
Yeah, it's nature.
We're not perfect.
None of us is perfect.
People ask me, I can never do what you do.
And they say, why?
I couldn't walk around with a t-shirt with something on.
Why?
There is nothing that says nobody can walk around with a t-shirt that supports a charity.
(18:10):
Half of my clothes support a charity one way or another because it's a great way of doingit.
Or, know, and talking to people, I understand my wife is very quiet, so I can understandthat everybody's different and not
people were like that.
But I couldn't be quiet and do what I do.
And I have to lead.
(18:30):
had ended up with a lot of safety qualifications.
I take the safeness of my walk is extremely important.
I write my risk assessments.
I never blase about things like that.
So it's always something I'm very focused on.
Above all, I want people to have a good time and we have a good time.
It'd be very rare that we do a walk where there isn't.
(18:52):
some laughter or some fun somewhere along the lines because I put a bit of fun in and wewant to laugh.
Now, if people are interested, Apple is listening to us today, how can they find out moreabout your walks and what's coming up?
Well, there are two main ways.
I have a Facebook page, is Terry's Reading Walkabouts, which you can find out easy from justGoogle in using another search and to find Terry's Reading Walkabouts.
(19:17):
And I also a few years ago set up my own web page because Facebook has a lot oflimitations.
My web page doesn't.
So you can go to readywalkingtours.co.uk.
Again, you'll probably get that link if you just put Terry's Reading Walkabouts.
That's very focused on being able to read and use on a phone.
(19:39):
On the first page, you'll see a red button that says, just click on it, upcoming walks.
And then you can see once you can join.
If you continue to scroll down the many information there, you'll find another red buttonsays all the list of the walks.
And then you could say, oh, I really want to do the Huntley and Palmer 200th anniversaryor Six Bridges Walk or one of the other themes or
(20:04):
coming up October, November, do my ghost and Halloween walk and then you can get incontact with me.
You can email me through the website and then we arrange a time of the day that's mute tous.
And then I advertise it and recruit people to come on.
You do one as well where you go and you do little samples of food, don't you?
(20:24):
Well, not exactly samples, but I do an edible reading.
We end up at a wonderful, iconic restaurant in Redmond.
I'm not going to tell you the name, but it's something to do with pies.
So would you like to leave our listeners with anything today?
I would just like to leave people with the impression that I hear a lot of moaning aboutreading.
(20:47):
Now, all right, we all like a good moan every now and then, but I think a lot of moaningabout reading is undeserved.
Like there's nothing to do and whatever, whatever.
There is so much to do in reading.
You could feel every minute of every day for 365 days a year.
You just got to get out there, look at what's on reading, find out what you like.
(21:08):
There are 250.
organizations to help people through Reading voluntary Association.
So if you're retired and looking something to do, just don't look at retirement at the endof your life.
Look at it as an opportunity to do all the things you couldn't do when you were working.
I think that's a brilliant thing to leave our listeners alone with, Terry.
Thank you so much for going on the podcast.
(21:30):
Everyone, if you're interested, the links will all be on the landing page.
And yeah, please book onto one of Terry's works.
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