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The Rise and Fall of Leicester Forest East
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The tale
Motorway services started off as a great part of Britain. Travelling down the M1 and stopping at Watford Gap was a novelty, but now it's the subject of a joke.
And it doesn't stop there. There was a 'trend' in services putting facilities on the bridge, and many of these 1960s concrete-filled sites have been refurbished to suite what we want today, Leicester Forest East included. However, within today's modern would of Tommy's Loo Awards and fluorescent lighting the services stand in the same structure, with some quirky and unique features.
The fact that you have to enter the shop to leave Coffee Primo is why we, Britain, loved it. Being so old it holds many childhood memories for many families, thundering down the M1 for Ross' frozen fish.
But now, this is all at stake. You see, Leicester was built on the M1 near, Leicester. Since then, a new junction was built very close to the north and the one to the south has somehow grown, which left accessing Leicester as more of a case of 'get in lane now or you'll miss it'. The M1 here has been widened, meaning throughout the services it has no hard shoulder.
Now they want to widen it again. Worse still, they want to give the M69 free-flowing access to the M1. Anyone who has used this bit of the M1 will know how close the junctions are, the Highways Agency did, so they came up with a grand plan which would only just scrape the top of LFE's lorry park.
But the locals didn't like that one, so the Highways Agency were sent back to the drawing board and came up with two more, one of which goes straight through the services, the other just missing it. So either way, the sliproads would meet the M1 too close to the services, so our favourite services will almost definitely be closed and could well end up with a motorway on top of it.
We have no excuses, either. Not too far away lies top-secret Markfield services, which could easily be used instead.
So there we are, 50 years on, three operators, a lot of line-painting and that's it. By 2012 the works will begin, and we will see our first former service station.
Not so fast
Our much-loved government has never been the sort that spends public money on things of use to us. As a result, the size of the potential roadworks has been scaled down and the date put off until 2017 (by which time it will be someone else's problem). The services will still need to be closed, but not as soon and not as brutally. That's good news for Leicester Lovers, but it means that those of us who were looking forward to a wider M1 and faster M69 will have to wait.
Motorway Services Online plans to expand this section as the end of LFE's life slowly reaches us.