Bedfordshire is a small rural county near London. Home to to the Chiltern Hills, the main town of Bedford has more Italians than anywhere else, due to a recruitment drive a few decades back. But elsewhere it’s mostly villages and ponds, lovely flat walking country!
Bedfordshire has lots of lovely wildlife, due to the expansive rural areas. It has Greensand Ridge (rich runs acrosss the county) and a new woodlanad is being created in Marston Vale (south of Bedford) plus there is plenty of heathland for local creatures to explore. Find more ways to help your local wildlife rescue and animal shelter.
Greensand Country includes countryside bordering Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire, and includes lots of beautiful nature areas that are home to badgers, bats, endangered dormice and purple emperor and white admiral butterflies. The area is also home to the wetland Flit Valley, home to otters, slow worms, green tiger beetles, lizards and adders plus marsh fern, marsh violet and star sedge (along with native black popular trees and ancient willows). This is also the birthplace of the classic afternoon tea!
River Ivel (Mike Rollins) is the main river in Bedfordshire near Biggleswade, and flows north with the source from the Barton Hills.
Woburn Abbey is one of England’s grand country houses and home to beautiful deer and other wildlife, a former Cistercian Abbey that Henry VIII took from the resident monks, when he tried to outlaw Catholicism, because he wanted a divorce from one of his 8 wives. Now home to the Duke of Bedford, it has an interesting history. Previous Dukes of Bedford have gone off to marry the women they loved (being disinherited – also with no interest in hunting, shooting or fishing). Another was a Christian pacifist and another was privately tutored, as his own father loathed going to Eton.
The present Duchess of Bedford has spent years (with help!) restoring the gardens that now protect local wildlife through organic principles, and there’s also a bog garden and wildflowers in relaxing colours (‘pinks, blues and whites – I am not one for oranges and yellows’). She began not knowing much about horticulture, but recently their work has won an award for ‘best historical garden restoration’.
