After being held up at Nuneaton due to faulty signals on my way back to Loughborough (that time I went to Coventry two years ago), I observed this unnaturally-shaped mound from the station footbridge. This is Mount Judd, a prominent artificial hill located just over a mile northwest of Nuneaton town centre. This prominent local landmark, which can be seen  for many miles around, is 158 metres tall. It was formed during the mid-20th century by the Judkins Quarry as a spoil tip, used as a dump for unusable material from their quarrying operations. The quarry eventually closed, and the mound became grassed over. Due to its strange conical shape, it has gained another rather unfortunate nickname... which I shan't tell - it's a bit embarrassing. The hill is privately owned and fenced off, and anyone who dares trespass this site does so at their own risk, as the surrounding site was afterwards used as a landfill, in addition to large precipices. In a poll by the Daily Mirror in May

 Here are twelve more photographs of Loughborough's many streets. Some of these photos are slightly older than other photos I have published previously. Lansdowne Drive in April 2014. This road runs parallel to part of Epinal Way. Wordsworth Road in November 2014. Alan Moss Road in August 2014. Arthur Street, seen form the Carillon Tower in April 2014. Epinal Way. Ashby Road, near the Holywell Way roundabout. Station Boulevard, soon after completion. Some more houses were built about three years later just in front of the substation partly visible on the far left. At this time, the section of Station Boulevard that ran between Meadow Lane and Gordon Road was still part of Gordon Road itself! Ashby Road in May 2018, just after resurfacing. And with no lines either! Gracedieu Road in May 2018. (Or is it spelt Grace-dieu?  It's spelt both ways at either end of the road! I shall have to do a special post about this formatting inconsistency in future!) Broad Street in May 2018. A ra

 In late September, I visited the library for the first time in about eighteen months, and while I was pleased to be back, I found something rather disturbing in the children's library. What is now the children's library is the oldest part and the original part of the library, having been built in 1905. The majority of the library's area is a CLASP structure built in the mid-1960s; the original part of the library then became the children's library. About two years ago, the original part of the library was beginning to show some signs of deterioration and eventually the south-western corner of the children's library was cordoned off (with bookcases, if I can remember correctly.) Then (you know what happened!) happened. I thought that by now, as the library had been closed for long periods, the repairs would have been over and done with, and the children's library would be looking as good as new. Nope. In fact, during the year and a half when I didn't visit t

 The Tesco Extra store off Park Road has had a lot of changes over the years. It was originally built as a William Low store before the Scottish chain was bought by Tesco. It subsequently became a Tesco Extra. In the mid-2000s the store was practically rebuilt, losing its hipped roofs and gaining a huge glass frontage. Now it's 2021, and the store has undergone the biggest (visual) change since then. When I visited the store in April this year, the store was painted white. But the next time I visited, in September... Several changes had happened since I last visited. The store had been painted grey (which seems to be the latest fashion, as quite a few houses on my street have also been repainted in some kind of grey!). Also, the store's opening hours had been cut drastically. The store formerly advertised 24-hour opening hours, being open from midnight on Monday until midnight on Saturday each week. (If you're from the UK, I won't need to tell you how many hours it was

 As much as I like trains, I was never really able to find any good reason to walk to the other side of town to watch trains, and thus the only times I saw trains were either when I was actually riding them (which was and still is an infrequent occasion) or the rare event when some truck comes along pulling train carriages on its back (like the Class 769 EMU that I saw at the Ashby Road/Epinal Way roundabout in December last year. ) However, one day in early September, I decided to go to the station for a spot of... trainspotting. I had been hoping to see some of the newer arrivals to the East Midlands Railway, such as the Class 170 Turbostar or the Class 185 Adelante; however, the only trains I saw were all older trains, though I was no less pleased to see any trains at all, given how infrequently I see them. Also, I didn't realize how high the parapets of the Nottingham Road bridge were! The first train that I saw was a seven-car Class 222 Meridian, no. 222003 Tornado , operati

 Welcome to the Loughborough Motor Park! The Belton Road area, in the midst of Loughborough's industrial estates, is home to virtually all of Loughborough's new car dealerships; along the road, there are six dealerships representing eleven manufacturers in some form or another. It's quite convenient for folks looking for new cars to have all the dealers in the same area instead of being all over the place. Five of the six dealers are between the Woodbrook and the Leicester Navigation of the Grand Union Canal, with a sixth on the corner of Belton Road and Derby Road. 9/2021 Belton Road, looking east. 9/2020 Note: The dealerships will be listed in order from west to east. Sandicliffe Ford, Mazda and Nissan Sandicliffe's branch in Loughborough is on the corner of Belton Road and Derby Road. Nowadays the branch specialises in car sales, but there was also a BP petrol station on the site until 2012, when the dealership began selling Mazda and Nissan cars (they had previously