Baldock

Baldock spent the best part of two thousand years as the place where the Great North Road met the Icknield Way, then the whole motorway age being steered round it. The A1(M) was called the Baldock Bypass for a while, which is a peculiar sort of fame: a town best known for the road that lets you miss it. The River Ivel starts here, which is more than most of the through traffic ever did. Letchworth next door got the garden city and the planners, Baldock got left alone, and the people who live here tend to think they won that trade.