Local Flavours
The Bedfordshire Clanger
The Bedfordshire Clanger is Bedfordshire’s traditional dish!
It is an elongated suet crust dumpling and buy-LOCAL’s very own bakery Gunns are still baking them for us!
It has a meat filling at one end and a fruit filling at the other, comprising main course and dessert in one item.
Traditionally, it was made by women for their menfolk to take to their agricultural work.
Our Bedfordshire Wines!
In 1846, the Bedfordshire Times wrote of the site of Warden Abbey 'would any modern ever think of planting either a 'greate or lyttel' vineyard in England at this day?'.
One hundred and forty years later, the answer was 'yes' for in 1986 after a fact finding tour of the Bordeaux Region, Jane Whitbread planted 4 acres of vines on the site of the 'lyttel' vineyard.
The first vintage was 1990 and every year since then, one or more of their wines have won awards including several from the prestigious Wine Magazine International Challenge (for which more than 5,000 wines from all over the world are entered).
They have also won the Country Landowners Association English/Welsh Wine of the Year Award in 1996 and 1998 and the East Anglian Wine of the Year in 2003.
So go on - try your local wines today!