Lights, Chai and Canal Water: A November Night Loop Through Leicester

It's twenty to five on a wet Tuesday in November and Belgrave Road is already lit up like a fairground. The Diwali decorations are still strung across the Golden Mile, somebody's reversing a van into a space outside a sweet shop, and the air smells of ghee and cold diesel. You've got two hours, a decent coat and no particular plan.

Here's one.

This is the first of our Loops After Dark series — a walkable circuit for each season, built around the city we've actually got rather than the one in the brochure. November's version starts and finishes at Belgrave Circle and takes in the best free light show in the East Midlands.

The loop in numbers

• Distance: roughly 4.5 miles (7km)
• Time: 2 to 2½ hours including stops
• Start and finish: Belgrave Circle, Belgrave Road
• Surface: pavements, a little shared path, and about a mile and a half of canal towpath
• Lighting: good on the roads, patchy on the water — bring a torch or use your phone
• Best done: any dry evening, though the city-centre stretch gets noticeably better once the Christmas lights go up later this month

Before you leave the house

Sunset on 8 November is around 4.25pm and it's properly dark by five. That's rather the point — the whole route is designed for the dark rather than in spite of it. Two practical bits: wear something a driver can actually see on Belgrave Road, and don't assume the towpath is lit, because between Frog Island and Belgrave Lock it mostly isn't.

Also, eat something before you go. You'll thank us at the chai stop.

Leg one: the Golden Mile, at full volume

Start at Belgrave Circle and walk south-east down Belgrave Road. Diwali fell on 8 November this year, so the illuminations are at peak brightness right now — arches of light over the road, shopfronts doing their absolute best, and a queue outside every mithai counter in the city.

Take this stretch slowly. It's the loudest, busiest, most alive part of the walk and worth half an hour on its own. Get a chai — small cup, extra cardamom, drunk standing up outside — and if you've got room, a couple of barfi from one of the sweet shops to see you through the canal.

Roughly a mile of this and you'll reach the point where the lights stop and Belgrave Gate begins. The contrast is abrupt. Enjoy it.

Leg two: Belgrave Gate and the quiet bit

Keep going straight. Belgrave Gate carries you down past the bus station and into the city proper. This is the transition stretch: fewer people, ordinary streetlights, stacked-up takeaway boxes by the bins, a bus idling at the lights.

It isn't glamorous, and it isn't meant to be. It's five minutes, and it does something important — it gives your eyes a rest before the centre.

Leg three: the Christmas coat

You'll reach the Clock Tower at roughly the halfway point. By mid-to-late November the Christmas lights are up, the trees are on the squares and the whole centre takes on that slightly smug glow it wears every December.

Turn off the main drag and cut through the Cathedral Quarter. You'll pass the cathedral, where Richard III is buried and where the queue for evensong is generally shorter than people expect, then along Loseby Lane for a warm slice of something. There's a decent bakery or two down there, and a coffee worth carrying to the water.

Give yourself twenty minutes here. It's the only sit-down of the route.

Leg four: down to the water

From the Lanes, head west — Millstone Lane, then down to West Bridge. You'll know you've arrived when the traffic noise drops and the lights start smearing on black water.

Turn right onto the towpath and head north.

Leg five: the Mile Straight and the dark

This is the best bit, and we'll argue with anyone who says otherwise.

The canal runs north-east past Frog Island and up towards Abbey Park, and for about a mile and a half you get reflections, narrowboats with their stoves going, the occasional heron doing its statue act, and a November sky that's either absolutely nothing or absolutely spectacular.

It's quiet. Properly quiet, in a way that's hard to find a mile from a ring road. Keep your torch on low and your ears open — cyclists use this stretch and they don't always ring.

You'll pass under North Bridge and the Abbey Park Road bridge, and then you're at Belgrave Lock. Good place to stop, lean on the rail and decide you've earned the walk.

Leg six: back up the hill

Leave the towpath at Thurcaston Road and follow it south-east until it meets Belgrave Road. Turn right and you're back on the Golden Mile, heading for Belgrave Circle — and the lights are still on, and somebody is still queueing for sweets, and the loop closes the way it opened.

Nine times out of ten there's a chai with your name on it. Make it ten.

Variations worth knowing

• Short version (about 2.5 miles): Golden Mile to the Clock Tower, then back the way you came. All lights, no towpath.
• Daylight version: add Abbey Park itself, which is lovely and which you really can't do properly after dark.
• Group version: the towpath is wide enough for four abreast in most places, and there's comfort in numbers on the darker stretch.

Next in the series

Loops After Dark runs right through the winter — a spring equinox edition in March, and a summer one for anyone who's forgotten what daylight looks like. If you walk this one, tell us where you stopped for chai. We're collecting recommendations, and we're not fussy about the order they arrive in.