The other week we went to Huntingdon. Huntingdon reminds me of Bedford in being a place that could be so pleasant, even beautiful, but which isn’t. The central St Paul’s Square in Bedford, for example, could be amazing rather than the derilict and depressing disgrace it is now. Huntingdon, once you go under the enormous fly-overs out of the station and across the constricting ring road (in a similar manner to Ashford in Kent), seems to be split in two with the church and the Cromwell Museum (formerly the grammar school) in the middle. The old part off to the West, where you will find Oliver Cromwell’s birthplace is mostly filled with estate agents and recruitment agencies, again like the nice old bit of Ashford. There was a promising looking bakers, but they weren’t selling hot food because it was the day after Easter Monday and they didn’t have any bread in. Even if they were shy on baking their own bread (being a bakers), they could at least have sent someone down to the Tescos down the road. The eastern half is a mixture of depressing Chav heaven, a fantastic range of charity shops (a good thing!), and some frankly amazing craft shops, if you like that sort of thing, which my wife does. I would have been far happier to see said craft shops and even said charity shops occupying the nice old part of town.
This says much of the above rather more succinctly.