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Showing posts from February, 2022

Streets galore

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 Here are even more photos of streets in Loughborough! Trust me - I have an abundance of these! High Street at night in December 2021. Alan Moss Road in May 2021. Sandringham Drive in May 2021. Wordsworth Road in May 2021. Frederick Street in May 2021. Note the number 16 bus, which has stopped at the official-unofficial bus stop outside the Old Arts College. For some reason they always stop there... Hermitage Road, September 2021. Kenilworth Avenue, January 2022. Paget Street seen from Derby Road in January 2022. The terraced houses frame St. Peter's Church at the far end on Storer Road most wonderfully! Kingfisher Way in January 2022. The wood-clad coach-houses with the outside are rather stylish! (I wouldn't have gone this way on that day had I not seen something quite abominable someplace else...) Regent Street in September 2021. (I wouldn't have gone this way on that day had I not  smelt  something quite abominable someplace else...) Wesley Close, September 2022. Oh, th

The end of the Whitworth Tower?

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The Whitworth Tower is part of Loughborough University's Rutherford Hall complex. It was built in around 1959, and is about 29 metres tall, making it Loughborough's third-tallest building (1), sitting behind the 46-metre high war memorial, the Carillon Tower, and the 68-metre tall Brutalist icon of Loughborough that is Towers Hall.) But two weeks ago, the university submitted a planning application to demolish the Whitworth Tower.  Why does the University want to demolish the Whitworth Tower? Well, in the demolition statement in the application, they wrote quite bluntly, "The Whitworth Tower has reached the end of its economic life (2)." They also wrote that the demolition is part of a "phased demolition of a number of residential buildings [e.g. Cayley (Cayley 16 and 17 have already been replaced), Faraday, Royce, Rutherford and eventually Telford and Falkner-Eggington Halls] across the campus [as] part of the University’s carbon reduction initiative, which will

Buses of 2021

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 Here are some photos of the more unusual buses that I spotted and photographed during last year. The first picture is of none other than Arriva Midlands' 4752 (FJ06 ZSX), seen on the 127 on its way to Leicester in December last year. It was the first good photo I had taken of this vehicle since I saw it on Alan Moss Road in the summer of 2020! Its type, the Wright Pulsar Gemini-bodied VDL DB250, is beginning to show its age, and lately sisters 4757 and 4774 have both been withdrawn. The fact that these are now the oldest double-decker buses in Arriva's Leicester operations isn't helped by the fact that in the next couple of years, nearly two dozen electric buses will be arriving at Leicester, replacing half of the once-32-strong DB250 fleet. This photo was taken in May, and shows National Express's 289 (BV19 XOU) heading up Schofield Road while not in service. After being passed by an older coach while waiting at the junction of Ashby Road and Schofield Road, this coac

Trouble spelling Gracedieu

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 In many towns and cities, there are some roads that have the same name as each other. Loughborough's no exception, having over 140 roads that share a name with at least one other thoroughfare. But while most of them are spelled more or less the same way, there is one group of roads with the same name where the folks who put up the signs don't know quite how it's spelled. Enter the Gracedieus! There are three roads in Loughborough that share the name of Gracedieu - a Road , a Way and a Court . They are all named after Grace Dieu Priory, a nunnery whose ruins lie just off Ashby Road, west of Shepshed, about five miles from the roads that were named after it. However, the way they are spelled is more or less at variance with each other. Gracedieu Way is spelled - exactly like that. The signs at the southwestern end of Gracedieu Road are also spelled the same way... …but at the northeastern end of Grace-Dieu Road, it's another matter entirely. And let's not forget Gr