Central Bedfordshire

Central Bedfordshire is a unitary authority in the East of England that covers a mix of small towns, villages and countryside. The district includes Dunstable Downs, part of the Chiltern escarpment and the county’s highest point at about 243 metres, and stretches across the Greensand Ridge and the valley of the River Great Ouse. Towns within the district include Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard, Biggleswade, Sandy, Ampthill and Houghton Regis, and the council’s offices are based at Chicksands. The area has a long history of agriculture and quarrying, with field patterns, heath and chalk downland shaping local settlement and routes.

Local features include ZSL Whipsnade Zoo on the Downs and the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway, a narrow-gauge line originally built to serve sand workings that now runs as a heritage attraction. Historic sites include Chicksands Priory and market-place towns such as Ampthill with its parkland. The River Great Ouse and smaller tributaries thread the district, and a network of public footpaths and bridleways links villages, commons and ridge-top viewpoints.