Ironbridge Gorge: Cowpat Walk No. 1

A Circular Walk Round a UNESCO World Heritage Site

After spending some 25 days between February 2008 and May 2011 walking in large circles first round Stafford and then round Swynnerton, followed by a smaller circle round Stone (which appears on this blog in three parts starting here)

Francis suggested a series of circular walks around points of interest on or near our previous routes. I, somewhat whimsically, wanted to call them petal walks. Mike observed that they were roughly circular and scattered randomly about the map so should be dubbed ‘cowpat walks’. I hate it when somebody has a better idea than me, but here I nobly admit defeat: Cowpat Walks they are.

Shropshire

We gathered at Mike’s for bacon and oatcakes. Thus fortified, Mike drove us to and then round (or was it through?) Telford. Apparently 162,000 people live there but, like Milton Keynes, the other 1960s invention I drive through regularly, it is hard to tell if you are in the town or not. Where is Telford? What is it hiding?

From Little Wenlock to the River Severn

Telford may be difficult to spot, but the same cannot be said of the Wrekin. This 400 m high pile of ancient and heavily weathered lava dominates northern Shropshire and can be seen from Swynnerton some 40 km north – and indeed from much further away. Little Wenlock sits at the foot of the Wrekin and we parked on the southern edge of the village. The last houses enjoy a spectacular view across the Severn valley to the Long Mynd, Caer Caradoc and Clee Hill. They should also be able to see the Wrekin, just a mile to the northeast, but today it was sulking beneath a bank of cloud.

The Wrekin - somewhere inside that cloud.

We walked south over the small protuberance of Braggers Hill and down towards the Severn.  We soon had an excellent view of Ironbridge power station. There were few spots on the walk where we could not see either the power station or the Wrekin (mist permitting) - or both. The current version of the power station has been generating electricity since 1967. It may be hard to believe, but it was designed to merge as seamlessly as possible into its natural surroundings. The concrete of the cooling towers has a red pigment, granite chippings decorate the turbine hall, and it hides round the corner of a cliff so as to be invisible from Ironbridge itself. Friends of the Earth claim it is the second most polluting power station in Britain per megawatt output. There are no plans to reduce its emissions to meet modern standards and it will close in 2015. [Update Dec 2015: It was converted to burning wood chips in 2013 and closed as intended in November 2015][Updatier update: 6th of Dec 2019: The cooling towers were demolished by controlled explosion]

Ironbridge B - a coal fired power station opened 1967, closed 2015

A long, straight, stony descent brought us to the river just east of Buildwas.

Mike wears shorts in November

We, and the A4169, crossed the river on a bridge built in 1905 to replace Thomas Telford’s original. The constructors seemed pleased with their efforts and erected a commemorative plaque. I paused to wonder what the great engineer would have made of the city named after him, then plodded across the somewhat nondescript bridge that replaced his 18th century structure.

The constructors seemed pleased with their efforts

As we crossed the bridge, a coxed four appeared round the bend in the river. Rowing downstream they moved with impressive rapidity and soon passed beneath us.

Moving swiftly with the current, River Severn

Into the Wooded Hills to the South

For a kilometre we had no option but to follow the main road away from the river, passing Buildwas Cistercian Abbey. Maintained by English Heritage, the ruins are open to the public but are too well screened by trees to be worth a photograph - and hardly worth a mention.

Crossing the Severn valley from the Malverns to Breedon Hill had taken us a day (or more accurately two half days a year apart). Here, 60 km upstream, it took less than an hour. Crossing back at the Ironbridge gorge would take minutes.

Leaving the main road we struck off south west into low wooded hills. After some climbing, some contouring and some more climbing we emerged into an open meadow near the top of the hill.

A nice picture of the stile which allowed us to 'emerge into an open meadow'

In front of us the land dipped and rose to more woodland, the trees clothed in their autumn colours.

'In front of us the land dipped and rose....'

Back Towards the Severn Gorge

We stopped briefly for coffee before descending the hill, crossing the A4169 and turning north across open farmland. This side of the hill we could not see the Wrekin but the power station chimney (at 205 m the tallest structure in Shropshire) was there to guide our steps.

The power station chimney was there to guide our steps...

The Wooded Scarp back to the River

A minor road took us to the hamlet of Wyke from where we crossed more farmland to Benthall Edge. A kilometre west of Ironbridge the river bends north and the cliff that forms the southern edge of the gorge turns south, leaving enough space between them to accommodate a modest power station.

As the cliff leaves the river it becomes wooded and less precipitous. We followed the Shropshire Way on its long descent across the face of this scarp. On the bank we could see clear signs of old workings, the first indication that there had once been industry here.

Alison leads the descent

We passed the fourth cooling tower of the power station and reached the river, though we were still 40m above it. Turning east we followed the stream and descended steadily. We noticed the first buildings of Ironbridge village on the far bank, then caught sight of the bridge itself through the trees. Soon we emerged on the road beside it.

Brian and Alison would help with the route finding - but only Francis has a map

The World's First Iron Bridge

Major advances in iron smelting were made near here by Abraham Darby in the early eighteenth century. Cast iron became much cheaper (and locally abundant) so in 1775 Thomas Farnolls Pritchard designed an iron bridge to be built across the Severn. He died in 1777 but the work was taken on by Abraham Darby III, the grandson of the man who had made it possible. The world’s first iron bridge was opened on the 1st of January 1781.

The settlement of Ironbridge grew up around the bridge. Tourism started early and in 1784 the bridge’s owners built a hotel to accommodate visitors. We marched across the bridge and straight into that hotel in search of lunch. The less said about the sandwiches the better, but the Station Bitter, from the Stonehouse Brewery in Oswestry, was exceptionally good.

The Iron Bridge

After lunch we paused briefly to photograph the bridge before heading straight up the side of the gorge through village streets too steep and narrow to have ever carried wheeled vehicles. As usual on walks, I phoned Lynne to assure her that I was still alive and fully intended returning home. The steepness of the path meant that most of the call consisted of heavy breathing. I do not make a habit of this.

I'm doing heavy breathing on the phone AND trying to take a photograph - no wonder I'm lagging behind

Coalbrookdale, Cradle of the Industrial Revolution

No sooner had we climbed up, than we started down, through more woods, towards Coalbrookdale. The path was signed to ‘Paradise’. I have always thought of Paradise as being vaguely ‘up’ but the descent was steep; indeed purgatory for those with arthritic knees. We emerged beside the Coalbrookdale Youth Hostel in a street called ‘Paradise’. The youth hostel, housed in a 19th century former literary and scientific institute, is an imposing building, but none of it quite lived up to my concept of paradise. Come to think of it, I have only a hazy idea of what paradise might be like – it probably involves a bar of chocolate-coated coconut.

Abraham Darby’s blast furnace was located in Coalbrookdale and fired by coal from drift mines in the surrounding valleys. Pedants might point out that the Industrial revolution did not start on one place, it involved a range of new ideas developed over a wide geographical area, but given the importance of cheap iron and the early date involved, Coalbrookdale has some justification for claiming to be the cradle of the industrial revolution.

In its pomp, Coalbrookdale looked more like hell than paradise, at least according to the 1801 painting ‘Coalbrookdale by Night’ by Philippe Jacques de Loutherburg, which now belongs to the Science Museum in London. I have shamelessly half-inched this image from Wikipedia.

Coalbrookdale at Night

Industry can look bad, but post-industrial dereliction looks worse. Coalbrookdale has gone beyond that and arrived at post-industrial cute folksiness. We passed the iron museum, a row of cottages that must soon form part of a museum and an old furnace pond. All this, along with the iron bridge and Blists Hill Victorian Town, forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Furnace pond, Coalbrookdale

We also passed the Aga cookers factory - some industry does remain in Coalbrookdale. Ironbridge, however, was never particularly industrialised and the largest factory there belongs to Merrythought Teddy Bears. This may not be heavy industry, but they are responsible for producing the mascots for the 2012 Olympics.

Coalbrookdale Rope Walk

We left Coalbrookdale along the Rope Walk, a long straight path above Leamhole Brook once used by ropemakers for stretching out and twisting together the strands of hemp. As the path left the village the surroundings became more wooded and the path became rougher. It rose gently and although we were quite deep in the valley, the brook was a long way below us.

The Rope Walk, Coalbrookdale

Back to Little Wenlock

The path, such as it was, eventually climbed out of Leamhole Dingle. Crossing the bridge over the main road, we found ourselves back in open farmland. A field of unharvested maize and another where a bull eyed us warily before running away brought us back to the top of Braggers Hill.

Back to the top of Braggers Hill

Sunset made the Shropshire hills look much more impressive and mysterious than they really are....

Sunset over the mysterious hills of Shropshire

...but we turned our backs to them and retraced our steps down and then up to Little Wenlock and the end of the walk.

Down and then up to Little Wenlock

Thanks are due to Mike for providing breakfast and doing the driving, Francis for planning the walk and doing all the map reading (well that is what happens when you are the only one with a map), and to Alison T who just happened to be taking a cake from the oven as we returned: fine timing, fine cake.

The Cowpats

1 Ironbridge Gorge

2 Eccleshall and Cop Mere

3 Swynnerton to Whitmore

4 Biddulph, The Cloud and Rushton Spencer

5 Shutlingsloe and Danebridge

6 Crowdecote
7 Scaling the Mighty Weaver Hills

 8 Morridge and Onecote
9 Codsall
10 The Roaches and Lud's Church

October in Staffordshire: The Weather's Gone Weird Again

Changing Weather Patterns - Snow in November, Al Fresco Dining in October

This is a travel blog, so it is not concerned with events at home, and by at home I mean right here, in our house and in our garden. But it is my blog and they are my rules, so if I wish to rewrite them – ignoring the small matter of their actually being unwritten – then I can.

The world is becoming warmer, and the activities of our species are to blame; but for those of us who don’t have access to the numbers, its nigh on impossible to pick out the signal from the noise. Over the last twelve months the weather noise over this patch of the world has been spectacularly chaotic.

I felt moved to write about weather last November, when we had an unexpected dump of snow. Coping with a Cold Snap has been one of the least visited postings on this blog (as maybe this will be, too), but that does not alter the fact that it does not snow in England in November. Only last year it did....

The First Dusting of Snow, November 2010

....and then it hung around, and it got cold.

Cannock Chase, 20th of December 2010

Then on the 24th March Brian and I tramped across a dozen miles of the Peak District and drank our lunch sitting in the garden of the Jervis Arms.

The White Peak, blue skies, warm sun, 24th of March 2011

And in April? The skies were blue, the sun was warm, I went walking in shorts and a t-shirt.

Walking the Stone Circle - or, in this picture, not walking the Stone Circle, 9th of April 2011

But summer could not be arsed to put in more than a token appearance. Lynne and I lunched in the fresh air more often in April than in July or August. We had dinner outside only once as even dry, sunny days – and there were precious few of them - seem to lose their warmth as the sun began to dip.

So now we have reached autumn. Next week we go to Portugal, where the southern sun should allow us to lunch al fresco every day, whether in our own (rented) garden or picnicking in the hills or sitting outside a favourite restaurant. By dinnertime, though, the evening cool will usually have forced us inside.

Normal October weather - in Portugal

But before we go we will enjoy the Indian summer here. Even in Staffordshire, even in a village on a hill with its own dismally cool microclimate, the temperature has leapt cheerfully into the mid twenties. Yesterday, on the first of October, we had dinner in the garden for the second time this year. The autumn equinox has passed, so we lacked the light we would have had in July – at least the hours of daylight have a reassuringly predictable pattern – but there was not a breath of wind, so we ate by candlelight.

Sitting outside and expecting to be served with food and drink - when the waiter's finished, taking photographs. October 2011

This should not happen in October, not here, not in Staffordshire.

Birmingham: Back-to-Backs, Dim Sum and some Random Thoughts on Garlic

[Updates: We have since enjoyed the same day out (with the adition of the viewing the Staffordshire Hoard in the Birmingham museum - which now features in a separate post ) with different visitors]

To Birmingham with Lynne on the last day of September to meet daughter Siân accompanied by grandson David, unquestionably the world’s cutest baby.

Our intention was to visit the National Trust’s back-to-back houses, so first - a little history.

7th century Birmingham was a hamlet beside the River Rea. It had grown into a village worth 20 shillings by the time of the Domesday Book and in 1166 Peter de Birmingham was granted a royal charter to hold a regular market. The Bull Ring is still there, but I doubt Pete de Brum would recognise the recently re-rebuilt shopping mall as being his cattle market.

The City of Birmingham (adopted 2015)

The City of Birmingham, though, is not a market town, it is a product of the industrial revolution. A population of 15,000 in 1700 had became 74,000 a century later and half a million by 1900. It doubled again in the following 50 years.

All those new people had to live somewhere and the answer for Birmingham, as in other growing cities, was back-to-back housing. A square of houses was constructed facing a small courtyard with another square of houses built on the back of them facing outwards to the street. Living in back-to-backs meant you were separated from your neighbours to left, right and behind by just one course of bricks.

Life in the back-to-backs was invariably overcrowded and often squalid, - though there were much more squalid ways of living in nineteenth century cities. The early residents were mainly skilled workers. They arrived with their families from all over the country, and beyond, attracted by the industrial boom that made Birmingham the workshop of the world. The three storey dwellings had a kitchen on the ground floor and a bedroom on each of the floors above. In houses already overcrowded by the large families of the era, space often had to be found for a workbench, as many men worked from home.

As the population continued to grow, those who could afford to moved out, making way for newer and poorer arrivals. As the city prospered, the poor were concentrated in the back-to-backs.

At their peak as many as 80,000 lived in Birmingham’s back-to-back houses, but as time moved on people wanted better accommodation. Clearance started in the 1930s. Second world war bombing cleared more, but those that survived gained an extra lease of life from the post-war housing shortage. The last residents moved out in the 1960s and by the mid 1970s only one block, Court 15 on the corner of Hurst Street and Inge Street survived, providing a home to several small businesses.

As the block was still standing in 1988 it was given listed building status. Restored in the 1990s by the Birmingham Conservation Trust, Court 15, now in the care of the National Trust, was opened to the public in 2004.



A corner of Court 15, looking cheerful in the warm sunshine

We were led through the tunnel from Inge Street by our guide Ann, who was herself born, brought up and started married life in back-to-backs not so very far away.

The courtyard was big enough for a vigorous game of badminton, though I doubt it was ever put to that use. Decorated with half-dry washing and a couple of decaying antique prams to give a flavour of the past, it looked remarkably cheerful in the warm sunshine.

Houses wrapped themselves round three sides while the fourth was occupied by the brewhouse (the communal laundry room, despite its name) and the two privies that served all the residents – up to 60 people. In the early days, the privies consisted of a plank with a hole over a bucket. Full buckets were stored outside until collected by the night-soil men to be used as fertilizer. The yard smells much better now than it must have done in 1840.



Siân & David outside the brewhouse

Gradually there were changes. The bucket privies were replaced by water closets, instead of a single communal tap, water was piped to the individual houses, mains gas was supplied, electricity arrived, but life remained hard. Ann looked back with no illusions, despite enjoying a happy and secure childhood, she was quite clear that nobody would willingly return to living that way.

The National Trust has restored three houses in three different styles.

We first entered the home of the Levy family in the 1830s. Mr Levy made hands for clocks and sold them in the Jewellery Quarter.  The family were members of what was then a large Jewish community – Birmingham has been multi-cultural as long as it has been a city.

In 1861 the house next-door was occupied by Herbert Oldfield, a maker of false eyes, his wife and their eight children. Living conditions seemed to have improved little.

The third house brought us into the early years of the twentieth century with plumbing and gas lighting. A substantial range filled half the tiny kitchen. ‘Cosy’ was one word that was used to describe it. ‘Cramped’ was another.

The fourth property open to the public was once a tailor’s shop owned by George Saunders, who had arrived in Birmingham from the Caribbean in the 1950s. He retired when the restoration programme began and agreed to leave his shop exactly as it was. Now almost 80, he still takes an active interest in the Back-to-Backs project. [We visited again in May 2017 and were sorry to learn that Mr Saunders has recently died].

The tour is an hour and a quarter well spent. A National Trust property devoted entirely to the lives of ordinary people is rare, a wander through the servants’ quarters of a country house is usually the only indication of the lives of the great mass of the population. It is also strange to visit a past that was still alive in my childhood – though it seems almost like another planet. Two more properties on the court have been fully modernised as holiday homes.  It is a great way to stay in the heart of the city while avoiding the anonymity of the major hotels.

Outside, part of Hurst Street has been pedestrianised. The pub opposite was covered in hanging baskets and, like a couple of nearby cafés, had tables lining the street. There were plenty of takers on this unusually warm September day. With the poverty and squalor of the back-to-backs behind us, the city looked relaxed and prosperous.

Birmingham’s ability to attract immigrants did not stop with the industrial revolution. Hurst Street stands on the edge of Birmingham’s Chinese quarter, so we headed for the Chung Ying Garden.

Once past the forbidding – and very Brummie – redbrick exterior, it was almost like being in China: the inevitable small flight of steps to the internal entrance being guarded by the obligatory stone lion. The clientele was overwhelmingly Chinese, too, undoubtedly a good sign.

David instantly charmed the waiter – he does it so effortlessly – and we were quickly brought menus, tea and a high chair.

The restaurant claims the largest variety of dim sum (I am unconvinced by dim sums as a plural) outside Hong Kong. The menu offers 69 choices, but in case that fails to substantiate their claim, a note at the bottom says a full list is available on request.



First taste of Cha Shao Bao

The bilingual menu appears to have been written in Chinese and translated into English. Some of the translation is a touch brutal; ‘pig’s intestines in satay sauce’ would put off some though, perhaps strangely, it attracts me. The intestines were excellent, mouth-meltingly meaty with a good chilli kick. With Siân’s help, I soon discovered I knew the Chinese for several menu items - though not the Chinese characters - but was unsure of the translations. Jiaozi are not really dumplings, but that is how they are always translated.  I never found the big fluffy pork filled buns I know as Cha Shao Bao on the menu, but we succeeded in ordering some anyway. Spring rolls are more obvious, tofu with shredded duck was not quite written that way, but tasted wonderful. The sweet water chestnut paste was a revelation; looking like Turkish delight, it was a sticky Chinese delight with a fresh water chestnut flavour. Chickens’ feet, of course, translate as ‘Chickens’ feet’ - what else? Not all Europeans share my (and Lynne’s) delight in chickens’ feet - Siân for one – but a billion Chinese cannot be wrong. I have discussed their pleasures before and although I prefer the ginger and chilli treatment we enjoyed in Shanghai, Chung Ying Garden’s version with black bean sauce was undoubtedly a genuine taste of Canton. Indeed the whole meal was full of rich and subtle Cantonese flavours, a contrast to the technicolour palate assault of the average Anglo-Chinese takeaway.



Classic chopstick technique

Not for the first time, I admired Siân’s use of chopsticks. Living in China for eighteen months, she perfected a stylish, classical technique. Lynne and I use chopsticks effectively, but without the same elegance. Young David had to make do with milk and a few slices from the apple Siân had brought with her. He also had a go at his very first piece of Cha Shao Bao – such pleasures there are in store, little fella.



Inelegant but effective chopstick technique

Inevitably, somewhere in our meal, we encountered garlic; it plays a pivotal role in many cuisines. It was important in medieval England too, but somehow, as the industrial revolution separated people from the production of their food, garlic slipped out of use. By the early 20th century, and even in my youth in the 50s and 60s, it was a metaphor for everything that was foreign - indeed everything that was wrong about being foreign.

With the growth of package holidays this slowly began to change. In the early 70s garlic appeared in our local Macfisheries (a now defunct supermarket chain) - sold by the clove. In the early 90s, we were reading the menu outside a restaurant in Portugal when an elderly British couple walked up and started reading over our shoulders. “I might like that,” he said cautiously, indicating an item on the menu. “There’ll probably be garlic in it,” she said threateningly. “We can always ask for it without garlic,” he suggested. She tutted. “Remember you asked for it without garlic in that place and they said ‘no garlic, no garlic,’ but when it came it was swimming in it.” I still occasionally wonder how anything can swim in a vegetable, but the British suspicion of garlic was deep rooted – even if they were not always sure what it was.

But all that has changed. There is scarcely a greengrocer in the country where you cannot buy a bulb of garlic; garlic bread is considered comfort food and is given to children. It should always have been thus; if bananas, pineapples and oranges, which cannot grow in our cool climate, have become integral parts of the national diet, why not the humble garlic. It grows here, after all, though our attempt was less than spectacularly successful.



Our entire garlic crop 2007

Standing on the flagged floor of one of the back-to-backs Ann, the guide, remarked that some of them had earth floors and in wet weather slugs used to come up through the earth. “We didn’t waste them,” she said, “we fried them up with garlic butter.” She told us she had made this crack once and later a teenage member of the group had asked her quietly “Did you really do that with the slugs?” “We didn’t,” she replied, mischievously allowing him to believe that perhaps others had. But, as Ann herself said, back then she had never heard of garlic butter and would have had no idea what to do with it if she had. Such is the change in two generations.

We finished our Birmingham outing with a visit to the indoor market to find a Chinese grocer. The Chinese butcher by the entrance had plenty of pork, including some fine trotters - a dish we have not enjoyed since Xingyi - but, strangely, no chicken’s feet. They were, however, plentiful at the Halal butcher’s next-door.

The market is clean and light. Birmingham’s huge variety of ethnic groups work in harmony to sell food, both exotic and everyday, to a huge variety of shoppers. On a bright sunshiny day, everything in the garden looked rosy.

It rains sometimes, though.