Two more days of making myself useful spent, dismantling a built-in wardrobe that My Dad had constructed to never come apart, and lugging ridiculous quantities of compost around so that Spring might bring some gardening action for my folks, and the remaining day available for walking doesn't look too promising, with only half of it looking good before a lot of rain arrives. So I'll do only half of the walk planned, as it takes in quite a lot of my personal history, and leave the countryside half for later, as I ought to do more urban walking in Leicester, for it is the city where I was born and grew up. Places from my formative past are to fall beneath my feet then, and where better place to start at 9.20am than at Abbotts Road URC, where the family have had an influence for many years, and many significant social lessons were learned, not a place that will be removed from my psyche with any ease despite my religious nature being lost a long time ago. Not to far away, beyond the Ring Road and at the top of the street is to be found Humberstone village, where both my Infant and Junior schools still endure, where I had my formal education between 1978 and 1985, still housed in buildings of frustratingly indeterminate age that owe more to Victorian ideals than those of the Post-War age, and whilst the pre-fabs and the wooden nursery have gone, it's good to see how much remains. Tour the whole combined site by taking the walk along Main Street and then back through Windmill Park, to return down Lidster Court by St Mary's Church, a Victorian rebuild job of a Medieval foundation, before taking in the small corner of the villages that suggests it rural heritage before the city grew to swallow it in the 20th century. The loss of the rural aspect of this corner can be found in the tale of Humberstone Hall, the site of which, south of the village, was completely consumed by housing in the 1930s with the house itself demolished with only a couple of estate lodges remaining, and its driveway becoming the locally legendary Pine Tree Avenue, where the huge and proud trees are still present, despite actually being Sequoias.
More lost history at the Scraptoft Lane - Uppingham Road corner, where locals will still call the filling station and shopping parade the Troc and the Terminus despite the names having passed from currency a long time ago, and whilst Meadow House doesn't quite count as a lost estate, it's now a rather too large café and nursery dwelling in the grounds of Humberstone park, another recreation ground from my youth. I come this way for the nostalgia and to walk atop the Rally Bank, the stretch of the GNR Leicester extension line that has finally become a nature walk after far too many years of neglect, and the absence of its bridges could be lamented, but it's the closest railway walk to my old home these day, despite being less than half a mile long. Depart at Ambassador Road, to head up through the Rowlatt's Hill council estate, one of those rare roads that I might never have walked along before, and it's the shortest available route to Goodwood Road, where the Ring Road might one day be completed, if it wasn't for all the extra houses built along Greenacre Drive. It's opposite here we have another lost estate, that of Evington White Hall, largely covered by council houses and with even fewer of its features remaining, the most notable being its name, still attached to Whitehall Primary school. Onwards to Evington then, to be found at the other end of St Denys Road, the other urban village in the city of Leicester, where the village green endures, as does the terrible restaurant, The Cedars, and whilst there's less of the rustic feel in the old buildings, it does still have St Denys church, probably the best medieval church in the city (including those in the town centre) and it has the most rural corner of the village, where the tree lined Shady Lane leads south on the perimeter the grounds of Stoughton Grange, another estate that has lost its house but endures as a farm park on the edge of the city. Beyond Gartree Road, again, we head into the green space that has kept Stoneygate and Oadby as separate entities for a generation, and will probably remain that way unless the A47 - A6 link road ever gets built, and that ain't happening any time soon.
There are plush dwellings aplenty to be found on Blackthorn Lane, an upscale unadopetd road that has recently gotten a proper surface job on it, and the main points of interest to be found along Stoughton Road are the Clothworkers and Veterans courts, residential developments built in the 1920s to house those whose lives were dedicated to industry and military service. Troll down to the A6 Oadby bypass, one of the oldest in the country, and its good to see that the Stoughton House office building is getting a new lease of life as an apartment building, even if its signature staircase is the only the only surviving feature. Then down New Street, where a right turn on London Road would take us into the village centre, but my focus is straight forward, through a gateway that I might never have seen in the eight years that I was schooled out here, the old driveway to the grounds of Brox Hill farm, is still there complete with tree lining and lodge house, and yet hidden in plain sight. The trees continue up Brocks Hill drive, where 1970s & 80s development consumed the farmlands completely, and the roads beyond are still as confusing as they ever were, but the mature trees will take you to Briar Walk, where Brox Hill house still endures as a residential home, and whilst I must have seen it before, my mind is still blown by its continued existence. Anyway, the rail is coming on, so I'd better hurry to the finish, up through the suburbia to Ridgeway, where my upper schools once lay, but the Gartree High School isn't the one I knew between 1985-89, since demolished and replaced, ands whilst the fashion might have once been to send your kids out of area to a better school, it wasn't a place I liked much, despite being well educated there, so good riddance to it. Beauchamp College, right next door holds fonder memories, having sat my GCSEs and A-Levels here and having made friends that I actually wanted to have too in the 1989-93 years, and it's looking much the same since my day, though the number of security features suggest I won't be trying to get a closer look. Done with this trip down memory lane at 11.40am, and in good time to get a ride back and not interfere with My Parents plans for the day, but Mum cannot help but observe that if I'd taken up walking at age 10, they might have saved themselves a lot of money in bus fares...
5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 2082.7 miles
2016 Total: 68.3 miles
Up Country Total: 1886 miles
Solo Total: 1852.6 miles
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| Abbotts Road URC, where I learned a lot in my formative years, but mostly the skill I took away was the ability to do catering. |
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| Humberstone Junior School, of uncertain date, inter-war years or immediately post war? but still occupying the same footprint it did in the 1980s! |
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| The estate houses that are the last mortal remains of Humberstone Hall. |
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| Pine Tree Avenue, formerly the driveway to Humberstone Hall and now locally infamous for its, err, Giant Sequoias? |
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| Rally Bank, Humberstone Park, good to see this old GNR railway embankment finally put to use as a nature trail. |
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| Whitehall Primary School, Evington, where the Evington White Hall has been lost to the tides of time and redevelopment. |
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| St Denys church, Evington, one of my personal favourites. |
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| Clothworkers Benevolent Home, Oadby from the days when industrialists actually had a social conscience. |
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| Brox Hill Estate driveway, a small and well hidden rural fragment still enduring in the suburban sprawl of Oadby. |
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| Brox Hill house, how did I never acknowledge this place, hidden in plain sight, in eight years of riding past it? |
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| Beauchamp College, Oadby, my last school and a place that still holds fond memories, unlike the late and unlamented Gartree High. |
Next Up: Back Up Country to make the most of the long Easter weekend.
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