The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Bedford, Bedfordshire*

Bedford, Bedfordshire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• The Old Chapel on Mill Street, soon to become a restaurant/bar downstairs & a club upstairs
• Lurke Street car park
• Anything which covers a general bar and alcohol serving area.
• The moot hall what a fantastic buliding!
• The Oasis beach pool - a chuffing big pyramid!

Demolish It Now Building

• THE BUS STATION !! IT IS DISGUSTING AND DANGEROUS. Most of the town centre. Don't forget the car parks.
• Oasis, it's got termianl concrete cancer, sick building syndrome and bad feng shui.
• County Hall - Fukkin ugly piece of shit. But then again, it suits the councils mundane attitude & shit ideas. They just like spending our taxes on £150 a bottle Champagne dinners for themselves. what lovely people.
• Plaza
• Hmm - the County Council Offices near Kingsway because it is seriously fucked up in many many ways. Also the Plaza - for obvious reasons - not least the fact it is a seedy, nasty little dive that smelt like a kennel on the one occasion I dared to go there!
• County hall - what a testemony to tasteless concrete architecture
• Esquires
• the police station It's very grey and has lots of policement inside If you need to go there it takes ages to get served I don't think it's nice to stay there either (not that I'd know)
• The tower block at DeMontfort Uni Polhill. It's dated and too tall for the area, and also badly decorated inside.
• The Plaza, for reasons stated above. My house.
• Bedford College - bomb it! Burn it! Bury it!

The Best Things

• The river's quite pretty, it's got Swans, and the villages round and about are very nice. Trains to London go very regularly so it's very easy to get out of Bedford, which is a bloody good job being as how it's one of the dullest places I've ever had the misfortune to live in.
• Lidl - what a great supermarket. The Limehouse - what IS that all about? Also Bedford's's only 8 miles from Carlton, where The Fox pub runs its legendary pub quiz every Thursday night.
• The women. In the summer, so many gorgous women can be seen on the high street. The music & the bars. It has potential to become quite a club & pub central town. But the council dont like it (even though it does attract people from MK & other areas), all it needs is a few more decent clubs and promotors who are willing to spend and bring in good DJ's. Afterall we are so close to London. Only Suburban beatz would do this. Big UP Mark!
• I lived in the Bedford area for two years, the people are great and I've made some really good friends there too.
• CHICARGOS IS THE IN PLACE TO BE ON A THURSDAY NIGHT FOR A CRACKING DOUBLE YOUR MONEY OFFER, YOU PAY ? THEY GIVE YOU DOUBLE BACK TO SPEND. THE ATMOSPHERE IS BRILL THE MUSIC IS 60'S, 70'S, 80'S AND FANTASTIC. NO VIOLENCE AND CERTAINLY NO BITCHINESS COS EVERYONE IS 20'S PLUS. SATURDAYS NIGHTS ARE BUSY BUT THE ATMOSPHERE JUST GETS BETTER THE MUSIC IS FANTASTIC IF YOU LIKE OLDER MUSIC NOT LIKE THIS BLOODY HEADBANGING STUFF CALLED GARAGE!!! DECENT MUSIC, ATMOSPHERE AND BRILLIANT FUN , YOU'D BE MAD NOT TO GO THERE!!!
• The people are great, and so is the atmosphere, just start talking to someonw and you'll make friends no probs!
• The diversity and lack of snobs - of course EVERYONE ignores all the little public school boys and girls who concentrate on nothing more than sipping Pimms down the Executive Club (sad place) while still unwrapping the car Daddy has just bought them for their 12th birthday - you should all fuck off up Eton! Other than that though people in Bedford are great - we've got our psychos, weirdos, crackpots and mad people but everyone else I have met in my hangout spots are geniune and nice - therefore avoid all places other than Esquires and the Hobgoblin.
• Cafe Bliss Small villages nearby to visit on a sunday afternoon
• When I'm at uni, I have a real laugh here, and miss it all when I go home. I love Bedford's Library.
• Bedford MAG.(Motorcycle Action Group)
• I fell in love in bedford , with bedford high school girl (1979)I still love you caroline,where are you your not at the grange , ravensden are you.
• The Bedford Music Festival in 1990! Got lucky while living there for a year.
• Very near to Maulden Wood where the bluebells in springtime do bloom the heart with gladness...
• The Embankment, The Music Scene (any one remember the Aubergine Boys? Wankas), Carl Bergen and "Buy us a pint" routine in the Bear, the Commercial Inn and the old Teddy Boy who does impressions at the bar, easy to crash parties and free peanuts at the Wellington.
• Claire Court this is like the cosmopolitan hotspot of the whole town, with the two coolest shops in town and a place to sit down and have a fag.
• Excellent music provision at all levels, good medical provision, easy to get to London, Oxford, and Cambridge.

The Worst Things

• Apart from the lack of decent nights out? Tends to get repetative on a night out, as do the gangs of rude boys who patrol and try to start fights. If you keep out of their way you only have to protect yourself from the mad pigeons and people around the bus station and in Pigeon Square. Oh, and the dead bodies that drift every couple of weeks in the river, shot by yardies. Plus taxi's are extortionate from Aspects, despite onboard entertainment (we once got seranaded to Cliff Richard's 'Livin' Doll') The buses are absolutely pants and arrive either really early or really late, usually filled with Kappa Slappers
• I've been told of so many "dodgy" areas in Bedford I don't know where to start, and I'm a student so I'm not fussy where I go. I've been approached by countless mobs of arseholes looking to cause trouble. The bus services are crap. The one way system is off another planet. And while there are a lot of very nice people in Bedford who are friendly, outgoing and only too pleased to help, I think they're in the minority. The centre of town seems permanently overrun with school kids in Kappa gear skiving off school to have a fag and piss about or look after their kids. The nightlife is limited, it's far too expensive for what it offers. All the shops are being shut down so it's not even like you can shop properly anymore and it's always messy.
• The attitude. It's not what you know or how hard you are, it's who you know in this town. Everyone is always trying to be better than everyone else.
• THE DANCE FLOORS TOO SMALL! WITH ALL THE GREAT MUSIC EVERYONE WANTS TO DANCE BUT IT GETS A BIT CRAMPED SOMETIMES SO BE PREPARED TO BE ELBOWED!
• Saturday night in the town centre.
• The rude boys and the little girls that think they are all that!
• The Plaza, Engima and those damn public school girls - I swear to god these people are into interbreeding. I really hate the pretentious little cows!
• Getting back from an Esquires gig on a Saturday night if you came by train. The main band finishes at about 11.35pm and the last train goes at 11.18pm. On Mondays to Fridays there's an 11.55pm but not on Saturdays, when most gigs are staged. The management refuses to put bands on so a lot of gig goers are now looking to London - or to Venue 27 in Luton, which is new and excellent.
• If you move here from other places it is a hard place to make friends because of loads of attitude which can make it really unfriendly. Don't look at people and don't smile at strangers on the street because they'll think you're being a bit funny with them. Trying to look different by the way you dress really stigmatises you here. A very kind of conformist, provincial town
• Saw Mike and the Mechanics in a food line at a local homeless shelter, stealing all the grub. Fat bastards. And that Damon Alburn was buying records at Woolworths, and he looked like a right tramp.
• Worst thing about Bedford is the Bluebell pub in Putnoe, it is frequented by the biggest bunch of wankers in the world, and the beer is expensive. Also about Putnoe Bedford, has the misfortune to endure a large group of youngsters who congregate in Putnoe Park and cause a load of shit, I'd love to beat up the little tossers.
  [But:] Rubbish! Perfectly good pub, and no more expensive than others. In fact, quite a lot of what is stated in this page is either outdated or the impression given by rather sad individuals!
• The worst thing about Bedford is that it's full of thieving bastards who break into your house on New Year's Eve. It was probably some slimeball from the Stanley Arms. They even took the kettle for fuck sake!
• Getting beaten shitless on a Saturday night, smell of rotting cabbages from September to November, losing your heart to 16 year old art students.
• Too many people trying to fill the baggy jeans with attitude.
• [But] I'm not claiming that Bedford is perfect, of course! But much depends upon what one is seeking for. The notion that Bedford "gets so violent on a Saturday night, big black BMWs etc." is absolute nonsense, I can assure you!
• It gets sooo violent on a Saturday night, big black BMWs with tinted windows cruising around with four yardies and their shotguns, scary.
• From nearby Maulden Wood to "The House Beautiful" from "The Pilgrims Progress" to today...

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

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Credits

Last updated: 2007-12-11