|
It’s not just orange cheese and Gary Lineker you know! Leicester is a compact
cosmopolitan city in the heart of England: a great gay away-day break from your
local scene writes OutUK's Adrian Gillan as he lifts the
lid on those lush local Leicester lads.
You barely have to stretch your legs to find your strength at small ambient stylish café-bar Bossa, scarce a spit and a spunk from the train station. Thaw and nestle snug by candlelight with Leicester’s finest Midland maties in winter, or sprawl out onto Granby Street in the sweltering heat - gorging on a fine menu of interesting, healthy and inexpensive tasties. | |
| Once settled, just stroll fifty meters round the corner to the flamboyant ‘Dolly’ Dover Castle, reputed - by locals at least - to be the oldest gay pub in the kingdom. Revamped more times than any can recall, it was once frequented by gay drama queens Joe Orton & Kenneth Halliwell when Joe lived in Leicester. Rumour has it that Reggie Kray visited the place once in the 60s too. |
The Dolly Dover Castle |
|
The ‘Dolly’ is a
real community hub, serving up good food by day and cabaret and dance by night to a
friendly crowd of both sexes and all ages.
By now fully steeped in the local gay lore, it’s time to up the style stakes and that means a short ten minute stroll uptown to the main gay epicentre around Belgrave Gate. Make Quebec your first port of call – a long, stylish pre-club gay café-bar where you’ll recognise the odd face from Bossa and ogle quite a few more, both sides of the bar. The Dolly crowd are more likely – if they venture out from their own sublimely home-grown shenanigans at all that is - to beat a path to the next bar along on Belgrave Gate. G2 is a slightly more earthy and doubtless more lively gay bar with dance space just over the road, used by one and all to rev up for the big club round the corner. Built on the site of the house of John Merrick - the famed ‘Elephant Man’ of Victorian times - Streetlife has been attracting its own unique exotic blend of queer life forms ever since. As the town’s only full-time gay club, it is packed to the rafters every night - even higher at weekends, especially with cheap entry on a Friday. It has a large sprawling bar area where locals dance to cheese and a spacious main hall overlooked by another lofty hanging bar – offering yet more cheese. The toilets are busy as are the numerous old, dimly lit, industrial red-bricked alleys outside nearby. Many who leave alone wend their ways to the neighbouring Abbey Park, a few minutes back beyond Quebec and G2. You cross a small bridge and drop down onto the towpath by the Grand Union Canal just inside the park. If it’s wet and muddy, you’ve a choice of two decent saunas, again not that far away. Celts - formerly known as Eros - sounds particularly popular by all accounts, but Sauna 31 seems to hold its own. Leicester also boasts a LGB Centre back by the station, but this café-bar and info centre appears to have somewhat sporadic hours at present, so best to call first. Leicester is little more than an hour away from London St Pancras by Midland Mainline.
THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK
Bossa (110 Granby Street; T: 0116 233 4544) |
|