Our own desert sandstone on the Fenwick's arch

At the road junction: The statue of John Biggs shows you the difference between polished Shap Granite (right under Mr Bigg's feet), and unpolished Shap Granite (holding up the polished bit).

Outside Newarke Street car park: The cobbles were made round by ice sheets and water thousands of years of years ago. In the square outside Phoenix Arts, you will pass pollution-busting plane trees which absorb fumes from cars and other human activity and store these in their bark.

On your right, De Montfort University's Crown Building: here you can feel the different layers of sediments in the yellow Millstone Grit at the bottom of the building, and see how they were laid down under the sea. Sometimes you can see changes from flat layers to diagonal layers in the same stone. The diagonal layers are called-cross bedding and were formed in ripples on the sea floor.

Traffic from inside The Magazine

The castly thing: This is the Magazine. It was built in the 14th century as a decorative gateway to the castle, and was lived in, rather than used for defence. It is called the magazine because it was used to store arms during the English Civil War. It is made of Millstone Grit, and probably has the original chisel marks in the stones.

Today, the Magazine is surrounded and cut off by Leicester's inner ring road. This has definitely brought advantages to motorists and the modern users of the city, but a heavy price has been paid in terms of loss of open space for people and wildlife.