Merchant Gate, Riverside Square, Bedford, MK40

STYLISH, ENERGY-EFFICIENT APARTMENT, WITH OUTSTANDING RIVER VIEWS

A highly energy-efficient, 2-double bedroom, 4th floor Bedford apartment, with bags of style, lift access, parking space and spectacular views from your balcony of the River Great Ouse and some of the County town’s iconic landmarks.

Visitors to your new Merchant Gate home can leave their cars in any number of car parks, including just across the road and one around the corner with 4 hours free parking. With every facility within a short stroll, you might even reserve your allocated parking for your guests rather than any car of your own.

After-all, half a mile away is the railway station from where fast trains reach London in under 40 minutes. Below you are a gym, a 7-screen cinema, restaurants and a fine choice of café and espresso bars. Every sport you can imagine is within a mile. Shops, supermarkets, schools (world-renowned private schools as well as outstanding Free School), music venues, theatre and pubs, library, galleries and museums are all in town. Not to mention surgeries, hospital, dentists and opticians.

You can walk to everything. You can wander past the historic law courts and the site of the old castle along one of the finest, flower-lined, river embankments in the Country. And you can walk or cycle as far as you wish along the beautiful Great Ouse.

Few homes are as suited to young go-getters as to downsizing retirees. This one is. They say that if something seems too good to be true, it generally is. At this value, not in this case.

MORE ABOUT THE PROPERTY

From the hustle and bustle of Riverside Square, with its espresso bar, pizzeria and other eateries, wave your key fob at the gate and you’re in to your peaceful, private, planted area that you share with other fortunate Merchant Gate apartment owners.

A lift (unless the stairs form part of your work-out) whisks you to the fourth floor, where windows rising the entire height of the building provide a hint of the glorious views that high-rise living affords you. But not quite those that are reserved for your own apartment.

Your new apartment home is at the end of the interior-designed communal corridor. No one walks past your door. Step into your hall, with its huge built-in coat and shoe cupboard, ceiling high above your head, stylish flooring beneath your feet matching the chunky, contemporary doors, tall full-length, high-performance window to the side, and you’re given a further sense of what your apartment is all about.

Spacious double bedrooms and stylish bath and shower rooms add to the immediate feeling of space, height and light that your new home provides.

Yet it’s not until you step into the open-plan living space that it really hits home how special it all is. Natural light pours through the balcony door and four floor-to-ceiling windows. Solid working surfaces, with drainer grooves etched aside the undermounted sink, top stylish, handleless furniture that houses all the appliances you could ask for. Larder storage slides out to meet you.

Relax, breakfast and entertain, whether over dinner or with guests milling around inside and out, high above the river. Enjoy a glass of something watching people promenading, swans in their pairs gliding serenely by, ducks in formation paddling past. Catch a birds-eye view of festival river craft and regatta rowers straining every sinew for that competition edge, mindful that they might be the next in a long line of great Bedford Olympians.

From your apartment you look out to mature, bird-filled trees on the lovely, green riverbank made for romantic, summer picnics. The 1000-year-old Church of St Mary contrasts with the former BT Tower, the historic Town Bridge with the C21st Riverside bridge – a special view of Bedford through the ages from a super apartment.

LEASE INFO

250-year lease (from 2015) / Ground rent: circa £400 pa / Service charge: £ 2,615 pa (2024/5)