Big Horse Frightens Poor Gypsy Into Arrest By Police (Ironbridge Gorge Museum)

Member Name: Muffin_the_Mule

Product:	Ironbridge Gorge Museum
Date:	04/04/02 (482 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: If we need it it's there.

Disadvantages: We probably won't need it.

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 even took my dad, brother and sister in-law along with me, in Dad's car, with him driving and me in the back - I was in complete control of our destination.

I can only assume that it was therefore a complete chance that we stopped for the day at Blist Hills Victorian Town Museum, which is not far from lots of places and roads that we went on.
In the interests of information provision, we accidentally drove down the A500 from Telford and caringly followed the lovely brown signs that hypnotised father into stopping.
Rumour has it that all roads that lead to Rome also pass these brown signs and you will eventually find Blist Hills. Look for the big Iron bridge, whom has an inspirationally unique name, christened by locals who called it "IronBridge".
Those of you who wish to punish these locals are out of luck, as they are conveniently all dead now, and they did build the thing in 1779.

Blist Hills is on of a total of nine attractions siphoning a living from the IronBridge Gorge, where incidentally the Industrial revolution started.
It is a Victorian town, where real Victorians live a real Victorian life.
The Government breed the Victorian people in a room where you're not allowed to look in, or sometimes they used real modern people.
The two
are very similar, and I couldn't tell the difference at all.

Once through the gates, you saunter down the path by the canal, past the thoroughly modern and oddly appealing Crèche, and to a canal-edged village.

First stop for everybody it seams is the Old Lloyds Bank. In this pre-TSB-merger establishment, you can exchange your handy, modern tax-deducted earnings, for old money like your grandma gives you.
This old money can be used to buy other old things like old bread from the old bakery, where they bake using old techniques, such as heating old yeast and other old stuff in an old oven until it's edible.
Not like todays techniques, where you open the packet and there it is. This bread didn't even come sliced; they expect you to do that yourselves.

The day I went, was the day after the night before, where I didn?t need the world to lose me an hour of my life by changing the clocks - I'd done that easily myself with my good friend Mr Smirnoff.
So I was confused and the equivalent of Jet-lagged as it was.
I was coming round out of my hungover hazed state when, whilst browsing through the old Chemists, a man came in and told the shop assistant that her husband was dead, killed in action according to the telegram she had. I felt awful, in that

"oh god I'm still drunk, Shhhh"

way.

If that wasn't bad enough, moments later, a jobsworth copper arrested a Gypsy man, and for all I could deduce, his crime was being a Gypsy.
I blame the parents.

Other than the newly-widowed Chemists and the Bank, you can also observe an Iron Foundry in action and watch them do things with Iron that the cavemen could only Ug about.
In the Butchers shop, for one Penny you can buy some really horrid Pork scratchings. One Penny is 40p, this is obvious because 2½d is £1.00 and one pound is £96.00 you see?

Gasp as the candle maker lets you touch his wick just after
he's dipped it,
Marvel at the pigs, Hens, lonely Donkey and quite probably the worlds largest Horse, who by my amateur estimations was at least massive, if not Enormous.

There are several other establishments you can look in, but by far the longest queue in the museum is for the Confectioners store, who don?t actually sell old things, but anarchically, they stock their shelves with modernity's.

The Museum is named after the Blist Hill Blast Furnaces, which are towards the bottom of a hill, past the smelly Pigs and the estate agents on the left and opposite a gypsy fair on the green.
The Policeman would have his hands full down here without a doubt.
These Blast Furnaces are just like all other archaeological discoveries, in the way that they are a "series of small walls" although there is the odd huge wall, but that could be the back of a Tesco's for all I know.

To have the honour of walking around this time-warped town, you have to pay.
And it's not cheap so get a grown up to help you with this part.

Adults £8 each
Children £4 each
OAP?s / Soapdodgers £5 each

These prices are just for the entry into this one Museum, but as there are another 8 sites you can visit in the area, there is a 'Passport' available for around £30 for 2 adults and up to 5 children, which grants access to all 9 locations over an unlimited time period, or until you lose it / wash it / give it to the orphans.

The Village itself can quite easily fill a full day to look round and learn the ways we used to do things before we got good at computers, and is probably quite well worth the entry fee.
At least it's not the old money exchange rates for the entrance fees, which would mean I'd have paid £768 per adult to get in. blimey.

Summary: