Exploring Leicester
A walking tour round this English Midlands city
The best way to explore the centre of Leicester is on foot, and this has become a lot easier, and more pleasant, thanks to the efforts made during recent years to pedestrianize several main streets and extend the central shopping mall.
Shopping
For the shopper, Leicester has a lot to offer. From the Clock Tower, you can go east along Humberstone Gate, south along Gallowtree Gate, or west along High Street, and find many of the stores that are familiar in an English city centre, but without the traffic that usually separates one side of the street from the other. However, Leicester has a few surprises as well. For one thing, you may come across street musicians and other entertainers in this area, or fairground rides and stalls at certain times of the year. The various festivals celebrated by many different religious groups make their mark on these streets, which are decorated accordingly.
Just off Gallowtree Gate is Leicester Market, the largest covered market in Europe. There has been a market on this site for 700 years, and there is a huge number of stalls, many of them selling fresh fruit and vegetables but a variety of other goods besides.
From the market, you can easily wander into “The Lanes”. These are some of the oldest…