I returned from a trip to Bedford singing John Bunyan’s hymn, having just visited the Bunyan Museum in the centre of the town. We had planned to visit the Higgins Museum and Gallery but en route we passed the imposing building housing the Bunyan Church, Museum and Library where we discovered that the famous preacher and author and pamphleteer was a son of Bedford born in a nearby village in 1828 just 14 years before the outbreak of the English Civil War.
Two delightful volunteers vied to show us around the museum and invited us to sit in the replica kitchen of John Bunyan’s cottage. We were directed to the tableau of his prison cell and, later, on our walk around Bedford town we found the plaque marking the site of the prison in which Bunyan was incarcerated for 12 years and where he began to write The Pilgrim’s Progress.