Bedford

John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in Bedford's gaol, and it's still the most famous thing anyone has produced while desperate to get out of the place. Since then the county town has mostly been the bit of Bedfordshire people pass on the bypass: they glance at the airship hangars Hollywood keeps borrowing for Gotham, and keep driving. What they miss is the Embankment, which on a regatta weekend is a better stretch of river than a town this unfussed about itself has any right to. Seals have swum all the way inland from the Wash to see it, which is more effort than most passing drivers make.