Places to explore in BedfordshireEngland · East of England

Ducal seat with deer park and safari grounds.

A Capability Brown parkland on the Greensand Ridge with wide views, ancient oaks and Katherine's Cross marking a lost Tudor palace.

The romantic ruined shell of a 1621 mansion above Ampthill, reputedly Bunyan's 'House Beautiful', commanding views across the Marston vale.

A ten-acre garden planted between the wars in the outline of a cathedral, with grass avenues for nave and transepts and 'walls' of trees, a memorial to the fallen.

A vast recumbent lion cut into Dunstable Downs in the early 1930s to mark the zoo below — big enough to see from the air.

A chalk hilltop of beech and ash woodland, crossed by the Icknield Way.

0.49 km²

Beech woods and chalk downland within easy reach of London, laced with old ridge paths and grazing red kites

838 km²

French-style mansion and formal baroque gardens.

Two vast airship hangars built for the R101 that still dominate the flat land south-east of Bedford, among the largest structures in the country.

Greene King ales fetched by the jug straight from the cellar in a quarry-tiled village pub with no bar counter.

Four hundred acres of woodland, heath and meadow on the Greensand Ridge near Leighton Buzzard, with a lakeside cafe and hilltop views.

The RSPB's headquarters wrapped in over a hundred acres of woodland, heath and formal gardens on the Greensand Ridge, laced with nature trails.