Yes, near the river, and not much away from it. Most of Goring sits on dry ground. A band of it along the Thames sits firmly in the high-risk flood zone. The river has flooded homes here before. The village isn't a flood risk as a whole, but the riverside streets are.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea mapping, about 15% of Goring's postcodes fall in flood zone 3, the highest-probability band. A further 9% sit in flood zone 2, the medium-probability fringe beyond it. The two bands don't overlap, so a postcode is in one or the other, not both. About 9% of postcodes fall inside the outline of recorded historic flooding. The Environment Agency has 17 recorded flood events for the area, the latest in July 2007, when the main river exceeded its channel with no raised defences in the way. The river doesn't have to break anything to get in. It only has to rise.
Surface water, meaning rain with nowhere to drain, doesn't have its own separate figure for Goring. It's folded into the postcode-level indicators further down this page. Those indicators are the right place to look if a property is well away from the river but at the bottom of a slope.
Looking ahead, the Environment Agency's climate-adjusted flood zone takes in about 24% of postcodes. That's the modelled extent once future rainfall and river flows are allowed for. It's a projection built into the mapping, not a prediction of what next winter will bring.
For insurance, a home in flood zone 3 with a recorded flood nearby is exactly what underwriters ask about first. Expect cover to cost more, and expect some insurers to decline, on the lowest-lying streets. Get a quote on the specific address before committing, rather than assuming the previous owner's policy will carry over at the same price. A lovely view of the river and a cheap insurance premium rarely come with the same house.
The postcode-level indicators take a wider view, combining rivers, sea and surface water, and count a postcode if it rates on at least one measure. By that test, about 13% of postcodes rate high on at least one measure, 18% medium and 30% low. These bands overlap with the flood-zone shares above rather than adding to them, so the two sets of figures shouldn't be combined.
Counting homes rather than postcodes is more useful. The Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea assessment lists 314 properties in the postcodes that carry some risk. Of these, 45 are rated high risk, 73 medium and 80 low. Twenty-three of the high-risk properties are homes. Only postcodes with some risk appear in the list, so every other address in the village falls outside it entirely.
Then there's the question of whether defences change anything. The high-probability flood extent covers about 15% of postcodes whether or not defences are included in the model. In the Environment Agency's modelling, "defended" means a defence is present, not that the property is safe. Here, including defences makes no difference to the high-risk footprint.
The nearest tide gauge to Goring is at Portsmouth, where the record from 1962 to 2023 shows sea level rising at about 2 millimetres a year. That's a measured historic rate at a gauge a long way from an inland village on the Thames. It's background, not the risk that matters here.
Goring's flood risk is middling overall. Most addresses are dry, and a clear minority by the river are properly exposed, so the street you choose matters more than the village.