I live in the county of Bedfordshire & although not in the county town of Bedford itself I occasionally visit. My main gripe with Bedford is that it needs to clean up its act. As it is the county town I think it has somewhat of a reputation to uphold and quite frankly, it is not doing that. There are nice parts to visit in the town, but there are too many parts that need cleaning up. Considering that it was being considered as a tourist town, the planners should be looking at what they can do to improve Bedford's image. At the moment, the main attractions such as the riverside etc., are being overshadowed by the dingier parts of the town that no-one likes to walk through after dark. Of course many, many towns and cities have this problem I realise, but if Bedford wants to be thought of as somewhere overseas visitors would like to put at the top of their list for visiting then it needs to get it's act together!