The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Leicester, Leicestershire*

Leicester, Leicestershire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Old John, Bradgate Park. Excellent folly.
• Silver Arcade - but get it while you can.......closing Jan 01.......
• Silver Arcade
• Queen's building at DMU is very unusual and apparently won loads of architechture awards.
• any big buildings with something to skate
• James Went Poly building a fine suicide venue
• Turkey Cafe - proper Architecture. The Queens Building (DMU) - passive heating and ventilating system - as a result it is always bloody freezing inside.
• DeMontfort university queens building has won several architecture awards. It has no central heating but is designed in such a way that it uses the body heat of people in the building a redistributes it. Clever hey!
• The railway station is pretty cool. Plus the fountain (I know it's not a building, but it's nice).
• Jongleurs comedy club
• Turkey Cafe Old Fish Market Guildhall
• The Turkey Cafe on Granby Street, now some sort of opticians but if you look up from pavement level, wow!

Demolish It Now Building

• Silver Arcade
• Clocktower
• That tacky looking "tribute to Leicester's sporting achievement"
• The Leicester Grammer
• Most of the high street could do with a shake-up.
• underpass and overpasses
• krystals/kudos
• The Thames tower and the council buildings on Welford road. Biggest pile of pants when you talk about design.
• The "St James Hotel": an oval shaped building consisting of two hotel floors on top of a multi-storey car park. As to my knowledge, the most hideous building in Britain. Maybe it deserves to be listed just for this reason.
• Fletcher building, DMU City campus
• Fosse Park (large retail park)
• The whole Haymarket shopping centre

The Best Things

• Leicester is a fab, cultural, interesting, diverse and most of all relatively unpretentious place to live. I love it! And it has a few good clubs (but just a few).
• Everybody shops in Leicester
• Red bull, fags ( smoking's cool and you know it!), lager and sleeping all day.
• Museums. Loads of them if you like that sort of thing. And if you don't, I suppose. Me? I love 'em. Bradgate Park.
• i live here
• Having a Batman
• Uni's, MKT harborough, Casino
• The Fish Market
• Pork Pies - best in the land Bradgate Park
• Walkers Crisps Linekers stall on the market. Well the whole market.
• Leicester City FC! Its a cliche but it is easy to get away from! The countryside esp Rutland,Charnwood is an discovered classic better than the Cotswolds. Lovely villages,& great pubs.
• Beer, beer and more beer+ <> in the union bar at the uni
• Brilliant for remnant bookshops - lots of good stuff at amazing prices.
• Many pleasant areas for walks close to town, including Abbey Park, Castle Gardens and the canal. Leicester is an evolved city centre which has retained many old buildings with character. Much of the City Centre has been redeveloped, with care taken to preserve the original building frontage. Currently a major redevelopment has removed a complete block near the Clock Tower, leaving only the Lewis' "tower" sticking up into the skyline.
• Any attempt to describe life in Leicester requires considerable attention to the Belgrave road, area. No city in Europe that I can think of off hand contains the extremely rich mix of aroma, culture and colour that Belgrave Road brings, from the many quality restaurants, to the saree shops that dazzle in their brightness, bringing Leicester alive. Therefore I feel that your description of Leicester is very incomplete without greater detail of Belgrave Road.
• The best aspects of Leicester are due to its true cosmopolitan nature; outside of Bradford it has one of the highest ethnic populations with thriving Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. If you want any food from anywhere in the world (bar Japan for some reason) you can get it, but more importantly you can get all the raw ingredients to make it yourself (try Narborugh Road, Belgrave Road and parts of Highfields). There are fruit and veg available in Leicester that I'd never even heard off before I lived there. Leicester also has a lot of history and whilst at first glance the town centre is exactly the same as any other in Britain, all you need to do is look up and look sideways to see a very different perspective. Try the Silver Arcade and areas around the Market (great for cheap fruit and veg but not much variety) for a bit of the old Leicester. Also New Walk stretching from the University down to the city is really beautiful in summer and autumn.
• Another good spot in leicester is the Saffron Lane Sports Arena where both the Leicester Panthers American Football Team and the Rugby League teams train and play.
• Dominos Pizza, Canton House on Welford Road and The Curry House on London Road. Wilkies Continental Bar for really delicious beer.

The Worst Things

• The tramps n townies, they always bother you, also the people that ask u for money for charity, u know it goes straight in there back pocket.Worth stopping to try and pull anyones that look attractive tho.
• The ammount of townies
• Leicester has the most wobbly paving stones of any city I've been to. Horrible booby traps in the rain, and I'm sure car drivers aim for the puddles. Swine.
• Fake red bull, Tequila, goatee beards, female under arm hair, real ale drinkers, no smoking signs, the people who make womens suits and think they don't need pockets in them!, people who have nothing better to do than fill out opinion web sites!
• Little Hill estate, Wigston. Okay: all of Wigston.
• The train station is a nightmare when it comes to picking up anyone from there. Seems to be a taxi-drivers hideout in the evenings!
• That accent.....AARRGH!
• The worst aspect of Leicester is that it isn't famous for anything in particular (at least not within the last 100 years), ....WRONG..... DNA fingerprinting was discovered/developed in Leicester DNA tests in solving crime and genetic research
• i live here
• Raining ( go have a Batman instead )
• Brannigan's.
• There is a reference to Clarendon Park as the cool place to rent. In my opiion there is a trend away from this area as it tends to be overpriced. The in crowd are moving to the West End. This is as Claredon Park was 10 yrs ago
• Rutland
• It's as dull as dull gets. The approach from the motorway down Narborough Rd is a depressing shabby looking first impression for anyone.
• Large amount of BNP supporters
• The apparent prejudice from bouncers when groups of asian blokes wish to attend a night club (ie. Flaming Colossus).
• The people are a bit offhand at first, even for a Londoner like me. The bus service is crap, it stops at 11, is expensive and erratic. Taxi's consequently are over priced (even compared to London)
• Leicester Railway Station: Definitely a God-forsaken place!
• The worst aspect of Leicester is that it isn't famous for anything in particular (at least not within the last 100 years), it's a good all round city but because it has no clear focus it lacks an overall image, for example Nottingham has Robin Hood, Sheffield has steel. It also suffered at the hands of the town planners, in the 60s a lot of historic buildings and features were ripped out and replaced by the ubiquitous concrete office buildings
• Flat as a pancake, boring and two-dimensional. Nothing ever happens in Leicester. Also home of both Everards and Ansells bad beer.

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

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Credits

Last updated: 2008-04-21