Ironbridge Gorge Museum

Victorian Village - Blists Hill This is a fantastic place to visit. Its a working museum with people dressed in traditional clothing and set in a life style victorian village. There is a bank where you can exchange money for 'old' money to spend in the various shops etc. There is a chemist, schoolhouse and you can attend a lesson, a farm area, a blacksmith, ironmonger, printers, butcher, baker and yes a candlestick maker! You can buy pies and pasties etc and bread and cakes all freshly baked that day on the premises. There is an old fashioned sweetshop with all your old favourites and a village pub with a ...  Read the complete review

Under the title Ironbridge Gorge Museum there are a number of different museums all located close to the River Severn as it passes close to Telford. The total area of the museums is about 6 miles and n-one could feasibly see them all in a day. There is therefore a passport system which enables you to visit them all over as many days in the following 12 months as you wish. This passport costs £10 for adults and £6 for children. I appreciate this is a lot to fork out for a family and a family ticket at £30 is only really good value if you have more than 2 children (it pays for up to 5 kids) but if you get more than 2 days out of the ticket then you have probably got your ...  Read the complete review

I sat my ‘O’ levels, as they were then called, shortly after the Industrial Revolution started, or so it seems now, in this age of T- mobiles and self-heating food in cans. Coincidentally, my favourite subject was ‘Economic and Social History’, taught by a passionate and slightly mad Welshman, a character straight out of Alexander Cordell’s ‘Host of Rebecca’. This involved learning about railways, canals, spinning jennies and Jethro Tull which was much more interesting than Kings and Queens and all that political stuff, especially as I lived in Shropshire - the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. Anyone ...  Read the complete review

Bank Holiday Weekends. Where everyone gets time off work. Unless you work in a job where you have to work the Bank Holiday Weekends, in which case, you'll be bitter but double-paid. Unless you don't get double pay, in which case you'll just be bitter. I solved any potential bitterness by feigning amnesia, calling myself Norma Gayheart and going down to Shropshire for the whole weekend. This way, no one from work would care that I wasn't there, regardless if I was meant to be working or not, because I didn't know who or where I was. Problem solved, phone soon. During my long-weekend exile, I visited some places, like a true tourist. I ...  Read the complete review

I have just come back from Broseley, which is about a mile and half from Ironbridge. It was a quick break as we have so many commitments we did not think that we could go for a week. So we went for 3 nights in a B&B. It cost us £110 for an en-suite for three nights and the people where really nice. I had already done some research on what to see and there is a lot to see. The original reason for going was that in Telford 5 miles from Broseley was an exhibition that I wanted to see. So we thought that rather than go up just for the day to stay a few. We went up on Sunday and just had a look around Broseley. But we had already decided to take in a few ...  Read the complete review