Distance: just under 6.5 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Walk from South Wigston on the edge of the Leicester conurbation to the heart of the urban core. Largely along the Grand Union Canal towpath and a cycle greenway.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Welcome to the Midlands Third Largest City

Leicester is the Midlands third biggest city and the largest in the East Midlands. 

For much of its history, in common with many of the other traditional Midlands county towns, it was a relatively small place.

It has Roman antecedents, however, it only gained modern city status in 1919. Recognition of its growth during the 19th and early 20th Centuries into a major centre of light industry and precision engineering, much like Nottingham and Derby to its north.

In common with other parts of the East Midlands Leicester retains strong connections to the apparel trade to this day. This is reflected in brands and retailers like Next, Brantano and Dunelm Mill having bases in the city.

Interestingly in recent years there has been a trend towards “fast fashion” retailers like as well as more established mass fashion sellers like returning production to the city. This makes Leicester one of the key places in the UK for manufacturing garments on a mass scale. 

This trend towards inshoring is interesting but rightly controversial. Investigations by newspapers such as The Guardian have shown that the clothes are sometimes produced by sub-contractors, who themselves are often sub-contracted. Conditions in the little garment workshops where the clothes are made are often very poor. Workers are exploited by being made to work extremely long shifts, and paid illegally low rates for their skilled work, sometimes as little as £3.50 per hour. There are also questions about the safety, especially the fire safety of many of the factories.

Like so many cities in the region Leicester is dominated by its two universities, the University of Leicester which alongside Nottingham and Birmingham is one of the Midlands oldest, and DeMontfort. They both have pleasant city centre campuses with some interesting buildings. Especially the University of Leicester, which has a fine 1960s arts tower housing one of the UK’s last remaining paternoster lifts (now disused), and a redbrick engineering building of a similar vintage by James Stirling. Widely considered one of the finest University buildings in the country.

It was archaeologists from the University of Leicester which excavated the body of Richard III from the city council social services carpark where he had lain buried for over 500 years. 

Richard III was killed during the Battle of Bosworth Field which took place just north of Hinckley to the west of Leicester. This was the battle which finally settled the War of the Roses and brought Henry VII to power. 

The deposed King’s body was long considered lost, chucked into the River Soar shortly after the Battle. However, the discovery of the remains in 2012 and their reinterment at Leicester Cathedral has led to the creation of a mini Richard III tourism industry in the city. Including an imaginative and detailed, but rather kitsch statute of him, behind the cathedral building where he is buried.

More widely Leicester is considered to be the UK’s first minority – majority city. This is to say that it is the first city in the country to have a (slightly) larger population of people who are not white and British than are white and British. 

It is also alongside the other major Midlands cities one of the fastest growing in the country, with the population expected to hit 400,000 by 2035. Making Leicester significantly larger than cities such as Newcastle, and not much smaller than Edinburgh.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

From South Wigston Railway Station exit up a tarmac paved ramp.

At the top turn right.

Walk across a double span bridge over both sections of the track.

On the far side you come to a suburban street lined with terraces.

Here take a slight left and walk down a road, also lined with terraces, straight in front of you.

At the bottom you come to a high street.

Here, turn left and walk along the road through a suburban area for quite some distance.

South Wigston is part of the Borough of Oadby and Wigston, an unusually small and compact local government district beneath Leicestershire County Council. With the exception of the Isles of Scilly, it is geographically the smallest local government district in England outside of London. Somehow in the decades since it was created in 1974 this district of fewer than 60,000 people which is essentially part of Leicester’s southern suburbs has survived unabsorbed into the city of which it arguably an integral part to this day.

Part Way along the section of the walk along the road you cross into Blaby, another Leicestershire district which contains a number of what are arguably suburbs of Leicester.

Presently you approach a humpbacked bridge.

Beneath it runs the Leicester arm of the Grand Union Canal.

Cross the bridge.

On the far side of the bridge, across the road, there is a snicket running down between a hedgerow and the side of the bridge.

Cross over the road and turn down here.

At the bottom of the snicket you come out onto the towpath of the Grand Union Canal.

Here, turn left and begin walking.

In total you remain on the towpath for roughly three miles. There are handy signposts counting down the distance to Leicester.

The first part of the towpath walk is very suburban in character.

The second is quite rural, albeit a greenbelt type of rurality, as you approach the edge of Leicester proper.

Nearing the edge of Leicester I saw a narrowboat registered in Netherton (Dudley) tied up. Given the circumlocutious nature of the UK’s Canal network it felt a lot further from home than it was in actuality.

Continuing on, you pass markers indicating where the boundary of the City of Leicester lies.

You then pass a lock keeper cottage turned into a tearoom on your left before passing underneath a bridge just after the lock.

It is of course entirely possible to walk into Leicester entirely along the towpath, however, I opted to leave the towpath in favour of the monotonous, but super quick, tarmac of a cycle greenway.

At the next bridge I walked under it then turned left.

Which takes you up to the same level as the floor plate of the bridge.

Turning right cross over the bridge. Apparently known as the Packhorse Bridge, very Pennines.

On the far side of the bridge keep walking straight ahead across a small car park.

Here to the right, beside a railway type bridge, are some steps.

Turn right and walk up the steps.

At the top you reach the cycle greenway which runs along the bed of a disused railway line.

Turn left here and start walking.

After walking for some distance you cross over a quiet road next to some terraced houses.

Shortly afterwards you cross another road also at the end of a terrace of houses.

Then you continue along the greenway a bit further heading towards Leicester city centre.

Presently you cross a busy main road.

On the far side, more or less opposite the traffic lights, you continue a little further along the greenway.

Soon though it is time to turn off.

Approaching a park with a large children’s play area you head to the right.

Following a wide tarmac path walk across the park.

At the far side you are opposite the campus of De Montfort University. Named after a rebellious 13th Century baron who was 6th Earl of Leicester. In the 1990s De Montfort University had similarly ambitious plans to become a university with campuses across the East Midlands. This did not come to fruition and today their ambitions are more modest. They have a nice modern campus at Leicester though.

Cross over the main road in front of you.

Then take a very slight right to cross a bridge over the wide, very straight Grand Union Canal as it flows through central Leicester.

On the far side you enter De Montfort campus.

Walk straight across the campus.

Along the way you pass a fascinating brick building which houses an array of central functions and several academic schools. This is the Queen’s Building constructed in 1993 to fit DeMontfort’s early ambitions. Post modern architecture at its best.

Passing the Queen’s Building you keep walking across campus passing many other, serviceable, but less bold and baroque buildings.

Presently having passed the students’ Union to your left you come out onto a main road.

At this point the centre of Leicester is dead ahead of you.

Turn left and walk a short distance along the road.

Presently you reach some traffic lights which you can use to cross the busy thoroughfare.

Once on the other side, keep heading left.

The road here begins to cure to the right slightly. Keep walking along this arm. Above you are banners advertising the Richard III exhibition.

Presently you come to a road on your right.

Walking down here a short way you come to a church with a spire.

This is Leicester’s little cathedral where the remains of Richard III were interned in 2013.

The back of the Cathedral is where this walk ends.

From here you are close to the Richard III Visitor Centre, the Tourist Information Centre for Leicester and the attractive area of the city centre christened Leicester Lanes where the city’s markets are.