Driving around Kent inevitably prompts a reaction to each area through which you pass.

So, for example, Canterbury can be hellish if you time it wrong, but at least you have the medieval city walls to admire or the Cathedral looming large before you to take your mind off the traffic you’re sat in.

Medway can, at first, seem a little featureless but then you stop for a moment and realise the bulk of development is on land which once formed its industrial boat-building heritage and you appreciate that it is a place reborn; still reshaping itself after a seismic shock 40 years ago.

Tunbridge Wells can seem like a relentless jam at busy periods, but cast an eye out of the window and you can feast on Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architecture which, at least, makes it an aesthetically pleasing experience, if not still a slow-moving one.

Moving between the Thanet towns can be confusing, but you’re never far from glorious coastline.

But one town, in my opinion, falls flat. And given its status in the county, it really shouldn’t.

Because driving through Maidstone last weekend my overriding thought was that if there was one place in the county in need of a rethink, at least when it comes to its roads, it is surely our county town.

It needs not just a tweak here or there, but, ideally, a pull-it-all-down-and-have another-go approach.

There is no unity to the place – buildings from uninspiring eras jostle against office blocks which must have looked pretty awful the day they were built, let alone 40 or 50 years later. It’s far from alone in this problem, but the roads – the bulk of which are one-way - seem to showcase to those passing through the higgledy-piggledy nature of it all.

Have you been down the A249 and then up onto Upper Stone Street recently? It’s hard to think of a route which gives a worse impression of the town. Upper Stone Street is, it appears at a cursory glance, a road lined with empty or, at best, grubby, shop fronts.

The town’s one redeeming factor – the River Medway which snakes through it – is generally only glimpsed while you’re battling through lanes of traffic where taking your eyes off the road is not to be recommended as you leap from lane to lane to navigate it.

I used to work in Maidstone for a number of years and know the town is not without its redeeming factors. Its mainly pedestrianised town centre is half-decent, some of its surviving older buildings are worthy of praise and if you extricate yourself from your car and find yourself actually walking by the riverside, you can, momentarily at least, overlook the traffic hell it has created for itself.

But for many confined to their tin can cars, they simply don’t see that.

Of course, the moment you escape its traction beam you emerge in the surrounding villages – the bulk of which are pretty chocolate-box affairs.

It’s not alone in its failings – Ashford ticks most of the same boxes – but for a place which holds the honour of being our county town, you do wonder what was going through the minds of planners through the ages.