Waste Management Leighton Buzzard

Leighton Buzzard is a small and quiet town in Bedfordshire populated by 37,000 people. With larger towns and cities such as Luton, Milton Keynes and Aylesbury nearby, it has largely managed to maintain its reputation as a traditional market town. Instead of Starbucks, Costa and McDonald’s, the high street consists of mostly independently run coffee shops, cafes and boutiques. Instead of showing a stream of Hollywood films at a chain cinema, they show selected films at the Leighton Buzzard library theatre. They mix their big name shops along the Waterbourne Walk with charity shops such as Oxfam and the British Heart Foundation.

The quiet, community feel emanating from every corner of town has largely contributed to two of the biggest events that have occurred in Leighton Buzzard. First the Grand Union Canal, that stretches 137 miles, from Hertfordshire to Birmingham, was first opened in Leighton Buzzard. The newly built bike paths take riders to canal side pubs such as the Grove Lock and the Three locks, and to some of the most beautiful and quaint villages in the south of England. The villages of Mentmore, Ledburn and Crafton – the last being almost impossible to find if you don’t know where it is – look, from a distance, like a few houses surrounded by acres of woods and farmland.

The famous Great Train Robbers of 1963, including the infamous Ronnie Biggs, chose an area between Ledburn and Mentmore – only 5 minutes from Leighton Buzzard – to stop a postal train and rid it of £2.6 million – at the time, it was the biggest train robbery in history.