Bedfordshire

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Bedfordshire

Geography
Status	Ceremonial & (smaller) Non-metropolitan county
Region	East of England
Area - Total - Admin. council - Admin. area	Ranked 41st 1,235 km² Ranked 34th 1,192 km ²
Admin HQ	Bedford
ISO 3166-2	GB-BDF
ONS code	09
NUTS 3	UKH22
Demographics
Population - Total (2005 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 36th 582,600 472 / km² Ranked 32nd 397,700
Ethnicity	86.3% White 8.3% S.Asian 2.9% Afro-Carib.
Politics
Bedfordshire County Council http://www.bedfordshire.gov.uk/
Executive	Conservative
Members of Parliament	Alistair Burt Nadine Dorries Patrick Hall Kelvin Hopkins Margaret Moran Andrew Selous
Districts
Bedford Mid Bedfordshire South Bedfordshire Luton (Unitary)

Bedfordshire (abbreviated Beds) is a county in England that forms part of the East of England region.

Its county town is Bedford. It borders Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire (with the Borough of Milton Keynes) and Hertfordshire.

The highest elevation point is 243 metres (797 feet) on Dunstable Downs in the Chilterns.

The county motto is "Constant Be", which is taken from the hymn To Be A Pilgrim by John Bunyan.

As part of a 2002 marketing campaign, the plant conservation charity Plantlife chose the Bee Orchid as the county flower.^[1]

The traditional nickname for people from Bedfordshire is "Bedfordshire Bulldogs" or "Clangers", this last deriving from the popular local dish comprising a suet crust dumpling filled with meat or jam or both.

1 History
2 Geography and geology
3 Economy
4 Transport
5 Towns and villages
6 Places of interest
7 List of notable Bedfordians
8 References
9 External links

[edit] History

Main article: History of Bedfordshire

The first recorded use of the name was in 1011 as "Bedanfordscir", meaning "Beda's ford" (river crossing).

Bedfordshire was historically divided into the nine hundreds: Barford, Biggleswade, Clifton, Flitt, Manshead, Redbournestoke, Stodden, Willey, Wixamtree, along with the liberty and borough of Bedford.

There have been several minor changes to the county boundary; for example, in 1897 Kensworth and part of Caddington were transferred from Hertfordshire to Bedfordshire.

Luton was a county borough from 1964 until 1974, and it has been a unitary authority since 1997. However, it remains part of the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire, with a single Lord Lieutenant representing the sovereign throughout this entire area. Except where otherwise indicated, this article relates to the whole Ceremonial County of Bedfordshire, including Luton.

[edit] Geography and geology

The southern end of the county is part of the chalk ridge known as the Chiltern Hills. The remainder is part of the broad drainage basin of the River Great Ouse and its tributaries.

Most of Bedfordshire's rocks are clays and sandstones from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, with some limestone. Local clay has been used for brick-making at Fletton. Glacial erosion of chalk has left the hard flint nodules deposited as gravel — this has been commercially extracted in the past at pits which are now lakes, at Priory Country Park, Wyboston and Felmersham.

[edit] Economy

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Bedfordshire at current basic prices published (pp.240-253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.

Year	Regional Gross Value Added^[2]	Agriculture^[3]	Industry^[4]	Services^[5]
1995	4,109	81	1,584	2,444
2000	4,716	53	1,296	3,367
2003	5,466	52	1,311	4,102

[edit] Transport

Although not a major transport destination, Bedfordshire lies on many of the main transport routes which link London to the Midlands and Northern England.

[edit] Roads

Three of England's six main trunk roads pass through Bedfordshire:

The A1 London to Edinburgh road (The Great North Road) runs close by Biggleswade and Sandy
The A5 London to Holyhead road (Watling Street), passes through Dunstable
The A6 St Albans to Carlisle, through Luton and Bedford

To these were added in 1959 the M1 motorway London to Yorkshire motorway. This has three junctions around Luton, and one serving Bedford and Milton Keynes.

[edit] Railways

Again, three of England's main lines pass through Bedfordshire:

The West Coast Main Line has but a short section in the far west of the county. The one station at Leighton Buzzard is served by Silverlink trains to Euston and Northampton.
The East Coast Main Line has stations at Arlesey, Biggleswade and Sandy, served by First Capital Connect services to King's Cross and Peterborough
The Midland Main Line serves Luton and Bedford with trains to many destinations operated by Midland Mainline and First Capital Connect.

There are rural services also running between Bedford and Bletchley along the Marston Vale Line.

[edit] Taxis

Bedfordshire is served by a large number of taxi companies. Luton is noted for having the highest amount of taxi cabs per head of population in the United Kingdom^{[citation needed]} with a number of firms competing for work in the town and from London Luton Airport.

[edit] Waterways

The River Great Ouse links Bedfordshire to the Fenland waterways. As of 2004 there are plans to construct a canal linking the Great Ouse at Bedford to the Grand Union Canal at Milton Keynes, 23 km distant.^[6]