7th August 2019
I spent the morning looking round Leicester. It doesn't have much of a "county town" atmosphere - being too large and bustling a city for that, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. It's generally thought of as a modern city but it does have a small medieval core, something brought to light a few years ago when the body of King Richard III was discovered in one of the city's car parks. That seems to have started a small attempt at a tourist industry in the town, although I didn't think it worth paying £8.95 to go into the Richard III Visitor Centre I'm afraid.
Leicester Clock Tower was once very much the centre of the city, being sited at the junction of the town's main streets and a focal point in the public transport network
Nowadays it's at the heart of a large pedestrianised area, which seems somehow to have diminished it's impact on the surrounding townscape.
The Clock Tower then.... ........and now
I just had to fit in a visit to the city's open market - somewhat diminished from how I remember it from the 1970s but still impressive and still surviving.
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| Leicester Market |
The city has a wealth of Victorian and 20th Century architecture summed-up I think in this photo of the magnificent former Odeon Cinema - but look also at the neighbouring buildings.
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| Leicester Architecture |
And if you liked Joseph Hansom's Town Hall in Lutterworth, which I visited yesterday, here's another of his creations in Leicester:
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| Joseph Hansom's "Pork Pie Chapel" |
Originally built as a Baptist chapel, and known as the "Pork Pie Chapel" after its architectural styling, the building later became the city library.
Talking of Pork Pies, I called in at the market hall to buy one for lunch, which I ate on the bus to Loughborough.
On to Rutland
Oakham isn't very far from Leicester and can be reached with only one change of bus, so I had to fill in the rest of the day with a little diversion and take in a bit more of Leicestershire on the way. There are several ways of getting to Loughborough by bus, but I chose the route that most closely followed the old A6 trunk road through the villages of Mountsorrel and Quorn. I know Loughborough very well, having had friends there in the 70's and more recently through visits on my boat Starcross, so 20 minutes was just the right amount of time to make sure I caught the next bus.
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| Melton's finest! |
Centrebus was a new operator as far as this trip is concerned and the first of several of their services that I used was the number 8 from Loughborough to Melton Mowbray. The bus arrived late and left five minutes late and despite there being very little custom from any of the villages we passed through we were still five minutes late at Melton. Perhaps the bus runs five minutes late all day?
In contrast to Loughborough, I had just over an hour at Melton. I would have been very tempted to buy one of the town's famous products - had I not already had one for lunch - but I did have a cup of tea at a pavement stall overlooking the small market (two markets in one day - hooray!)
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| Melton Mowbray Market |
Centrebus also operated my final bus of the day: The "Rutland Flyer" on to Oakham. Rutland is not "good bus country", being a rural and affluent county, but the County Council does its best to maintain a network of bus routes connecting the main villages with Oakham and surrounding towns. The description "Flyer" presumably started as a bit of a joke, but one which stuck and became adopted as an official name for the service. "Fly" it most certainly does not, although as we left 10 minutes late the driver did do his best to catch up along the country lanes and through pretty - but passenger-less - villages. On a country lane between the villages of Edmondthorpe and Market Overton we crossed the remains of the long-lost Oakham Canal, which also linked Melton Mowbray with Oakham, followed shortly by the county boundary with Rutland.
Rutland, England's smallest county, led a tranquil and untroubled existence until 1974 when local government re-organisation saw it forcibly incorporated into Leicestershire: a move that satisfied nobody!
The people of Rutland simply refused to accept it and campaigned tirelessly to regain their independence, which they finally achieved in 1997, despite the county having a population of only 37,000 which is usually regarded as far too small even for a District Council. In fact, Rutland's borders seem almost designed to minimise its population figures with the substantial town of Stamford that to the outsider looks very much a "Rutland" town being just over the border in Lincolnshire!
The Rutland Flyer continued to weave its sinuous way through the sleepy villages of Greetham (served by a lengthy double-run from Cottesmore) and a long loop through Exton necessitated more by the need to avoid turning the bus round than by any passenger demand. We arrived at the genteel county town of Oakham eight minutes late at the town's small bus station, tucked away out-of-sight behind a giant Wilko's store on the High Street.
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| Journey's End at Oakham Bus Station |
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