This weekend I visited Bedford for the first time. Bedford is a town of about 100,000 people one and a half hours north of London. In Bitcoin circles, it is best known for Real Bedford, a "Bitcoin" football club currently playing in the Southern Football League Division One Central. The English football leagues can be quite hard to grasp, but unlike North American leagues, you don't "own" your spot in the league. Instead, you rise up and down the leagues as you win and lose games. That makes for fierce competition, and the opportunity to build a premier league club from the grassroots. I very much admire this strategy and goal and heard nice things about Bedford, so I decided to hop over.
🚌Getting there with public transportation isn't as easy as I had thought. The town is quite close to Luton Airport, but otherwise you'll likely take a 40-60 minute bus from Milton Keynes, England's one centrally planned city. There's no way to book bus or train tickets in the UK with Bitcoin.
🍃My first stop is Green Earth Cafe, a small vegan cafe and restaurant. There's a Bitcoin Accepted sticker at the door and as I ask to pay with Bitcoin, the cashier confidently pulls out a BTCPay point of sale on their smart phone. The Lightning payment smoothly goes to the Swiss Pay node. Great first impression.
🦢There's no hotel in town that accepts Bitcoin directly, so I book myself into "The Swan" through Travala. I'm shown a price of US$126.2, but looking at the exchange rate I pay closer to $129.9, a ~3% markup. I don't know if this is Travala doing this or OpenNode, but I did notice that on some occasion OpenNode will direct the Lightning payment to a node "hidden" behind their main node, and charging you an extra 0.1% for that last hop. The same room would have been ~ US$113.45 if I had booked on the hotel's website directly. We have heard a lot about Bitcoin's advantages regarding chargebacks and low transaction fees, but somehow almost nobody is offering to pay with Bitcoin for travel expenses, and when they do, you end up paying a hefty premium.
⚽Games are frequent, but if you're interested using Bitcoin, you have to go to a home game. There's a womens and a mens team, you can find their upcoming games under "fixtures" on the Real Bedford website. If the Real Bedford team name appears on the left, it's a home game. Easy! Tickets become available online about a week before the game, but online you aren't able to pay with Lightning. I don't know why that is. Tickets are sold through Ticket Tailor, for which there's theoretically a BTCPay Extension. I was never able to get that working for my own Ticket Tailor account, either... You can however pay with Lightning at the door, and there's really no pressure to buy tickets in advance. From the gate I was led into the club house, where I was given an OpenNode invoice for a £10 ticket. I later also got a program, hot tea and a scarf from the club house, all paid with sats. OpenNode doesn't have a PoS app, so to generate an invoice the merchant has to be logged into the OpenNode account, which is a terrible UI but they handle it well. Real Bedford was leading 2:0 against Aylesbury when the flood light went out. It's not clear yet whether the game has to be repeated or whether Bedford can book it as a win.
🍝After the game I head back to town and get dinner at La Terrazza, a small and very busy Italian restaurant that you might want to make a reservation for. The food was great, and when I was done I headed down to the bar where the manager presented me with a Lightning invoice from his Wallet of Satoshi app.
🪩The Auction Room is a club in the city centre. I headed there after dinner and the place quickly filled up behind me. My Real Bedford scarf was immediately recognized by some of the players who were celebrating here. I had a beer and paid with Lightning to the bar tender's Wallet of Satoshi which worked well when there weren't so many people, but might not have been so smooth just half an hour later.
🥪The next morning I headed to Cibo, an Italian deli and sandwich shop I saw on BTCMaps. I found the place closed, and only later by chance discovered it elsewhere in town. It had recently moved, but without a notice at the door, or an updated listing on Google/BTCMap, how could I have known? I asked about Bitcoin payments and was assured that they do still accept Bitcoin. I came back for lunch later, and was satisfied with my sandwich and the payment experience (a Lightning payment to Wallet of Satoshi on the smart phone of the manager).
🔮There's a massage parlor in town that accepts Bitcoin, Jade Buddha Spa. You can make an appointment through their website, then pay in person. The masseuse didn't know how to take a Bitcoin payment, but was confident that it could be done through their Square terminal. After the payment was made by card she called the person responsible and requested to be taught how to accept Bitcoin payments. Thoughtful.
🛒I wanted some snacks for the road, so I got a gift card for Tesco on Bitrefill. Unlike other countries I've visited, it seems to be very easy to get around just spending gift cards in the UK. Bitrefill will give you a fair exchange rate and sometimes even some sats as a kickback. I was able to add the gift card I got to my phone's wallet, and it updated the balance after use. Handy!
I believe there is only one more place in Bedford that accepts Bitcoin payments, a Turkish restaurant called Nazar that I didn't get the chance to visit. The town was quite lively and pleasant to visit, there are markets selling fresh produce and delicatessen from Poland and Italy. Walking along the river is quite nice, too. I'll be back!