A Twenty-Pound Day on Belgrave Road: Chai, Thali and Change From a Note
You can spend £70 on Belgrave Road without breaking a sweat: dinner for four, a kilo of pistachio barfi, a new kurta and a bootload of vegetables. But the Mile is also one of the last genuinely cheap days out left in Leicester — if you know where the money goes, and where it really does not need to.
What follows is a plan for a full day on Belgrave Road with a £20 note in your pocket. That £20 covers everything you eat, drink and buy on the road itself. Bus fare or parking sits on top, so budget another couple of quid if you are coming in from the city centre.
The rules before you set off
Eat where the queue looks local. Drink chai twice rather than buying one big coffee. Take the free things seriously, because the Golden Mile has more free heritage per square metre than most postcodes in the Midlands. And check the price before you order — most places are honest, but a few counters charge tourist rates on the sweets.
Prices below are what we found on a weekday this autumn. They shift with the price of ghee and cashews, so treat them as ballpark rather than gospel.
9am: breakfast, eaten standing up
Skip the cafés with laminated menus and head for the small canteens tucked beside the sweet counters and grocers. A stuffed paratha — potato, methi or paneer — comes off the tawa for around £2.80, and a glass of masala chai is £1.40. That is £4.20 for a breakfast that will hold you until one o'clock.
Order at the counter, pay at the counter, and eat where you can see the kitchen. If there is a tray of freshly fried puris going past, that is a good sign rather than a distraction.
Running total: £4.20
10.15am: spend nothing for an hour
Walk the length of the road before the shops get busy. Start at the Gandhi statue, carry on past the temple domes and the fabric shops with their saris hanging out like bunting, and read the shopfronts properly — the oldest signage on the Mile is genuinely worth a look.
The Shree Jalaram Prathana Mandir on Belgrave Road welcomes visitors outside prayer times; shoes off, head covered, phones away, and a donation box if you want to leave something. Belgrave Hall and Gardens, a fifteen-minute walk up Church Road, is free to enter and one of Leicester's loveliest surprises — a Queen Anne house sitting in walled gardens with a lake behind it. It is not open every day, so check the Leicester Museums listings before you build the day around it.
The Golden Mile's other freebies: the Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre (useful for toilets and leaflets), the towpath along the Soar if you fancy stretching your legs, and the simple pleasure of watching a delivery van reverse into a gap that should not fit it.
Running total: still £4.20
11.30am: second chai, and something fried
This is where most budgets quietly fall apart. A plate of dhokla, a kachori or a couple of samosas will set you back £2.00–£2.50, and a second chai is £1.40. Sit down if there is a seat, stand if there is not. Nobody minds.
Running total: £8.10
1pm: the thali calculation
A Gujarati thali is the best-value meal on the road and the thing we would point a first-timer towards. Expect £8.00–£9.00 for dal, two or three shaak, rice, rotli, pickle, salad and something sweet at the end. Some places refill the bowls without being asked; some charge a little for extra rotli. Ask first, then settle in.
If you are a smaller eater, a masala dosa at £6.00 is a smart alternative, and sharing a thali between two leaves room for a proper sit-down chai afterwards. Arrive before half twelve to beat the lunch rush — after one, the queue at the popular rooms runs out of the door and onto the pavement.
Running total: £16.60 (thali at £8.50)
3pm: the sweet box
You have £3.40 left, which is exactly enough for 250g of mixed mithai from most counters on the Mile. Ask for a mix rather than a single type: a couple of barfi, a piece of soan papdi, something green and something pink. If the jalebi is coming out of the fryer, buy that instead and eat it from the paper on the way to the bus stop.
Two things to know. Many small shops have a £5 minimum on cards, so carry cash. And the price per kilo varies wildly between counters for what looks like the same sweet — a quick lap of three shops is worth the effort.
Running total: £20.10 — put one sweet back.
The running total
| Stop | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 9am | Stuffed paratha and chai | £4.20 |
| 11.30am | Dhokla or samosa and a second chai | £3.90 |
| Midday | Belgrave Hall, the temple and the statue | Free |
| 1pm | Gujarati thali | £8.50 |
| 3pm | 250g mixed mithai | £3.30 |
| Total | £19.90 |
Making the £20 stretch further
- Go on a weekday. Saturdays and the weeks around Diwali are wonderful and completely un-budgetable: queues, festival pricing and nowhere to sit.
- Drink tap water with lunch. Every sit-down place will bring it. Bottled drinks eat a fiver out of the pot without trying.
- Share. Two people sharing one thali and adding an extra side comes in cheaper than two thalis, and leaves money for pudding.
- Pay in cash where you can. It is quicker for the counter, it dodges card minimums, and small shops appreciate it.
- Park off the main road. The pay-and-display near Belgrave Circle and the side streets with meters are cheaper than chancing a yellow line, and the walk in is half the pleasure.
What £20 will not buy
Be honest with yourself about the ceiling. Twenty pounds is a grazing budget, not a dinner-and-sweets budget. It will not cover a big sit-down meal for two, a box of premium pistachio sweets, or the silk shop you wandered into by accident. What it will buy is a proper day out: four eating stops, a temple, a stately home and enough change for the bus home.
