12 Things to Do in Leicestershire for Foodies & History Lovers
Let’s be honest, when was the last time anyone recommended Leicestershire for a weekend
away?
Exactly.
The East Midlands has a serious PR problem, forever overshadowed by the Cotswolds to the south and the Peaks to the north.
However, Leicestershire has a lot to offer if you’re looking for a UK city break. Base yourself at the gorgeous boutique hotel East Midlands gem – The Loft in Market Harborough – spend a couple of days discovering the gastronomical and historical things to do in Leicestershire, and you’ll soon see why Leicestershire is one of England’s most underrated escapes.
Are you ready? Then let’s get into it.
12 Things to Do in Leicestershire for Foodies & History Lovers
Leicestershire is hiding many secrets: a king buried under a car park, a space rocket in the middle of its biggest city, an 800-year-old market town that puts most English villages to shame, and a pork pie so famous it has legal protection.
It’s also refreshingly affordable, easy to reach, and blissfully free of the coach-tour crowds that plague England’s better-known beauty spots.
So without further ado, here are 12 things to do in Leicestershire that might just convince you to give this county your next free weekend.
Your Leicestershire Cheat Sheet
Best Things to Do in Leicestershire
To make planning easier, here’s how the highlights stack up if you base yourself in Market Harborough:
| Stop | From Market Harborough | Cost | Don’t Miss |
| Foxton Locks | 10 min drive | Free | Boats climbing the staircase, canal-side pint |
| Market Harborough | You’re in it! | Free | The Old Grammar School on stilts, market days |
| King Richard III Centre | 40 min drive/train | £11 | The grave site itself, then Leicester Cathedral |
| National Space Centre | 45 min drive | £18-20 | The 42m rocket tower and the planetarium |
| Bradgate Park | 45 min drive | Free (parking fees) | Wild deer and the Old John Folly viewpoint |
| Melton Mowbray | 40 min drive | Free | Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, Tuesday market |
| Belvoir Castle | 50 min drive | £26 for adults, £10 for children | The Regency State Rooms from The Crown |
| Rutland Water | 35 min drive | Free | Half-submerged Normanton Church, ospreys |
1. Watch the narrowboats climb the hill at Foxton Locks
Foxton Locks is the longest, steepest staircase of canal locks in Britain, ten of them, climbing 75 feet up a Leicestershire hillside, and watching narrowboats slowly make their way up is definitely one of the most relaxing things to do in Leicestershire.
It takes each boat around 45 minutes to complete the climb and is completely free, gorgeous on a sunny day, and there’s more here than just the locks.
The towpath walk leads you to the ruins of the Victorian inclined plane, a steam-powered boat lift that once hauled entire narrowboats up the hill, and a small museum tells the whole story.
Two canal-side pubs mean you’re never far from a pint with a view.
READ | 14 Newcastle Food and Drink Experiences Worth Your Time
2. Mooch around Market Harborough
While high streets across the country fill up with vape shops, Market Harborough is thriving, full of independent boutiques, proper delis, riverside walks, and a lovely buzz on market days. The town has held a market for over 800 years, so they’ve had plenty of practice!
The star of the show is the Old Grammar School, a timber-framed building from 1614 perched on wooden stilts right in the town centre – it’s the town’s pin-up and rightly so.
The perfect Market Harborough day looks like this:
- Slow brunch at one of the independent cafés on the square
- A mooch through the boutiques and the indoor market
- A wander down to the canal basin at Union Wharf
- Evening drinks in a beer garden (the town is spoilt for good pubs)
3. Pay your respects to the King under the car park
In 2012, archaeologists dug up a council car park in Leicester and found Richard III (yes, the actual Plantagenet king, missing since 1485!).
It remains one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries ever made in Britain, and the story of how a lost monarch was identified from a hunch, a dig and some very clever DNA work is fascinating.
The King Richard III Visitor Centre now stands on the exact spot, and it’s one of the best small museums in England – part murder mystery, part archaeology lesson, and part Shakespearean rehabilitation project.
You can stand over the grave site itself, preserved under glass, then walk five minutes trom Leicester Cathedral, where the king was finally reburied with full honours in 2015.
It turns out that truth really is stranger than fiction!
Read | 11 Beautiful Books Set in the UK
4. Geek out at the National Space Centre
Leicester is home to the UK’s largest space museum, complete with a 42-metre rocket tower you can see from the motorway!
Inside there are real rockets, genuine spacesuits, a piece of moon rock, and the UK’s largest planetarium.
The National Space Centre is pitched at families, but it’s really for anyone. Allow at least half a day for your visit – it’s much bigger than it looks from outside, and the café under the rockets is a suitably surreal lunch spot.
You can find current ticket prices on their website.
5. Walk with deer at Bradgate Park
Bradgate Park is 850 acres of craggy, bracken-covered wilderness that feels more like the Scottish Highlands than the middle of England, complete with herds of red and fallow deer that have roamed here since medieval times. They’re remarkably relaxed around people, which makes for some brilliant photo opportunities (keep a respectful distance, obviously).
This is also where Lady Jane Grey, England’s tragic nine-day queen, grew up, and the ruins of her family home still stand in the middle of the park.
Climb up to Old John, the quirky beer-mug-shaped folly on the highest point, and you’ll be rewarded with views across half the county.
6. Eat a proper pork pie in Melton Mowbray
Melton Mowbray calls itself the ‘Rural Capital of Food,’ and for once the marketing slogan is deserved.
This is the home of the Melton Mowbray pork pie, protected by law like Champagne, and Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe (Google Maps link) on Nottingham Street has been hand-raising them since 1851. As a born and raised Northern lass, I love a good pork pie, and I often buy Melton Mowbray pork pies from my local supermarket in Manchester!
Stilton cheese is also made in the villages around here (that’s legally protected too), so a visit doubles as a pilgrimage for two of Britain’s greatest food exports.
Come on a Tuesday when the market, one of the oldest livestock markets in the country, is in full swing, stock up on the best local produce, and have yourself the best picnic of your life.
7. Ride a steam train on the Great Central Railway
The Great Central is the UK’s only double-track mainline heritage railway, which means full-size steam locomotives thundering past each other at speed, just as they did in the 1950s.
The route runs for over eight miles between Loughborough and Leicester, through lovingly restored period stations that will make anyone’s inner Poirot very happy.
They run everything from standard heritage services to afternoon tea trains, gin trains and even murder mystery evenings!
There’s something very whimsical about the whole experience – the steam, the whistles, the smell of coal smoke.
Book ahead for the themed services as they sell out fast. You can find out more on their Events page.
8. Play Lady of the Manor at Belvoir Castle
Perched dramatically on a hilltop in the Vale of Belvoir (pronounced ‘beaver’), Belvoir Castle is the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland and one of the finest Regency houses in the country.
If the façade looks familiar, that’s because it stood in for Windsor Castle in The Crown.
The state rooms are jaw-dropping, all gilt, tapestries and impossibly high ceilings, and the terraced gardens tumble down the hillside with views across three counties.
The whole place has the sort of faded-grandeur romance that more polished stately homes often lose.
Check opening days before you go, as the family still lives here and the castle sometimes closes for private events. I always use GetYourGuide for attraction tickets, and luckily, you can get your Belvoir Castle entry tickets on there.
9. Eat your heart out on Leicester’s Golden Mile
Belgrave Road in Leicester, the Golden Mile, is one of the best places to eat Indian food anywhere in Britain (outside of Manchester, but I am admittedly biased).
This is the heart of the city’s East African-Indian community, and the vegetarian thalis, chaat houses, and sweet emporiums here are the real deal.
Come hungry – the dosas, the pani puri, the jalebi are all made fresh to order, and they’re so good.
If you can time your visit for Diwali, the Golden Mile hosts one of the biggest celebrations outside India, with tens of thousands of people, lights strung the length of the road, and fireworks over the city.
10. Mess about on the water at Rutland Water
Technically just over the border in England’s smallest county, Rutland Water is one of the largest reservoirs in Europe, wrapped by a 23-mile shoreline path that’s perfect for a day’s cycling (there’s bike hire on site if you haven’t brought your own).
Sailing, paddleboarding and kayaking are all on offer, birdwatchers come for the ospreys that nest here every summer, and photographers come for Normanton Church, a half-submerged church on the water’s edge that’s one of the most photogenic sights in the Midlands, especially at golden hour.
11. Wander the villages of the Welland Valley
The countryside along the Leicestershire–Northamptonshire border is the county’s best-kept secret, a soft, rolling landscape of ironstone villages, ancient churches and hedgerow-lined lanes that sees a fraction of the visitors the Cotswolds gets, at a fraction of the price.
Hallaton is the must-see, home of the gloriously bonkers Easter Monday bottle-kicking contest, a centuries-old village ‘sport’ with almost no rules and a great deal of mud, while Medbourne and Foxton reward a slow afternoon’s pottering.
Pack walking boots and keep your phone signal expectations low.
Read | How to Spend a Weekend in Stratford-Upon-Avon
12. Finish with a Sunday Roast in a proper village pub
You can’t have a proper English weekend without a Sunday Roast in an English pub, and Leicestershire does village pubs properly – log fires, local ales, dogs asleep under tables, and Sunday roasts that definitely require you loosening your belt afterwards!
The villages around Market Harborough and the Langtons are particularly worth exploring.
Where to Stay in Leicestershire
The Loft in Market Harborough is a stylish two-bedroom boutique bolthole with a dining balcony and views over the rooftops, blending the freedom of your own place with luxury five-star touches.
The stand-out details:
- Proper Hypnos beds
- Bean-to-cup coffee, breakfast provisions and fresh milk waiting on arrival
- Daily housekeeping, almost unheard of in self-catering stays
- Underfloor heating and air conditioning for whatever the British weather decides to do
The location seals it: you’re right in the middle of everything on this list, with Foxton Locks ten minutes away, the Market Harborough’s restaurants and pubs on your doorstep, and London under an hour away by train.
Getting There and Getting Around
One of Leicestershire’s biggest selling points is how easy it is to reach.
Trains from London St Pancras get you to Market Harborough in under an hour and to Leicester in just over it, which makes this genuinely viable as a car-free weekend (rare for the English countryside).
Drivers are equally well served: the county sits at the crossroads of the M1 and A14, an easy run from Birmingham, Cambridge and Sheffield alike.
I will say that having a car will unlock the best of the villages and Belvoir, so if you have the choice of driving vs. taking the train, I’d recommend driving.
As for timing: late spring and summer are made for canal-side pubs and Bradgate’s bracken hills, autumn turns the Welland Valley gold, and winter is prime log-fire-and-roast season.
Final Thoughts
Leicestershire will never shout about itself, but that’s precisely its charm.
Kings, rockets, steam trains, deer parks and the finest pork pies in the country – what more could you want from an English weekend break?
That’s all for today, but if this has given you a taste for exploring England’s less obvious corners, have a read of my guide to the best places to visit in Northern England next!
Until next time,
XOXO
If you like this article and would like to support my work, please click the button above to donate a couple of bucks and buy me a coffee. The revenue that I receive on this website is minimal, so support from my readers enables me to keep creating content that you (hopefully!) love to read.
Disclaimer: Travelling Jezebel contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase on a recommended site, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.
