October 3, 2022
Day 27: Shrewsbury to Bridgnorth
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We have now progressed as far in to the heart of England was we care to go, and today began to fall back toward the coast and our ultimate ferry to Dieppe in about one week. In that week we still have things to look forward to, like Bath, Salisbury, and Stonehenge.
We began our "retreat" by again passing the weir on the Severn, just outside of Shrewsbury, and then attempting to reverse engineer the twiddling we had done to reach this point the day before yesterday on the way in.
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Sometimes we are innocently cycling along, and we come to realize that for quite some distance we have been cycling beside a fence or wall of a single design that seems to go on forever. Such a fence or wall always belongs to some kind of palace or estate, so we then start to wonder what it is. Today's wall and fence belonged to Attingham Park, which was a mystery until we checked internet.
We found out that Attingham Park was built in 1785 for Noel Hill, 1st Baron Berwick, who already owned a house on the site called Tern Hall. With money he inherited, along with his title, he commissioned the architect George Steuart to design a new and grander house to be built around the original hall. The Berwick line died out in 1949? with no further heirs and like in so many cases, the property is now administered by the National Trust. According to their advertising:
"Attingham inspires a sense of beauty, space and awe. The imposing entrance, glimpses of the vast mansion against silhouettes of cedars and expansive parkland, epitomise classical design and Italian influence. Its completeness of survival exemplifies the rise and decline, love and neglect of great country-house estates."
And that fence? It is enclosing 4000 acres!
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That unpleasant road by Attingham was the only really nasty one of the day. Our standards on this have had to change since getting here, since we used to consider any road without a shoulder as nasty. But here, no roads have shoulders, and we can't call them all nasty (I guess).
Another road characteristic to note is the hilliness, and today we did encounter quite a few hills. We have tried to extract some meaning from the meters climbed and meters descended figures that you can see at the top left of the track map that we start each blog entry with. We are thinking that climbing of up to 500 meters is easy to normal, 500 to 1000 is "hilly", and over 1000 is "oh, oh". So today was 935. Hilly.
Some miscellaneous fun we had along the way is shown in the following three photos. The man with the road bike stopped to chat, and we learned that his son is leaving England due to its various economic woes and moving to Canada. Montreal, no less! The man also mentioned the "agenda" against cyclists in the UK. He mentioned the impatience of drivers who might be delayed a few seconds on the narrow roads by the presence of a cyclist. In fact, we have of course noted the problems caused by the narrow roads, but by and large motorists seem patient in dealing with them.
Next the sheep - yes, sheep are everywhere. So picturesque. And the classical ivy covered cottage - now decked out in Autumn red!
Part of the hilliness today involved the IronBridge Gorge, on the Severn River. This is right after that spike in the graph above, which is surely nonsense. The real situation is that we climbed fairly constantly and then descended quite abruptly to the river level around IronBridge.
IronBridge is a town named for an iron bridge that was the first one built, in 1779. "The Iron Bridge was made possible through advances in iron smelting that took place in the century before. Casting such large parts was complicated and required skills developed over generations.
Abraham Darby I of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, first experimented with the use of roasted coal, or coke, instead of charcoal in the production of iron in 1709. His grandson, Abraham Darby III, later funded much of the construction of the Iron Bridge out of his own pocket, and paid £3000 towards its construction. That's the equivalent of £438,000 today."
It is often said that the Industrial Revolution started in the Ironbridge Valley. I had rather thought of the Industrial Revolution as involving steam engines and knitting mills, but iron production through hot blast smelting is usually mentioned as a big part of it. So ok, IronBridge was a big part of the Industrial Revolution.
The IronBridge valley features a big concentration of museums - 10 in total. Some, like the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron sound like on topic, but others, like the Broseley Pipeworks (clay pipes for tobacco) or the Jackfield Tile (roof tiles) Museum seem a little forced. A family pass for all ten costs £92. We settled for one shot of fudge, £1.75.
Here is the famous iron bridge. We crossed over it for free, but famously it was a toll bridge. Even the Royal Family could not get a break.
IronBridge is a small town with one main street facing the river, and a church behind. I rather liked the pork pie shop. Their sign sounded to me like they started with baby pork pies and hand raised them.
The last 10 km of the ride was on a dirt road beside the river. This was flat, but bumpy. It really did Dodie's wrists no good. But soon enough we arrived in the historic town of Bridgnorth.
"After the Norman conquest, William I granted the manor of Bridgnorth to Roger de Montgomerie. The town itself was not created until 1101, when Robert of Bellême, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury, the son of Roger de Montgomerie, moved from Quatford, constructing a castle and a church on the site of the modern-day town." These of course are all the same people that were involved at Shrewsbury.
The Bridgnorth former town hall has a prominent position in the centre of the main street, and there is the one remaining (north) gate. Otherwise the main thing about Bridgnorth for us was the Tesco Express, source of some nice sandwiches and salads. The staff at the George Inn kindly put these in the fridge for us, so that way we got dinner at the Inn. We feel suitably fortified (and there will be breakfast here tomorrow as well). That's good, because we are planning a possibly hilly and possibly rainy run of 60 km or more when the new day comes.
Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 960 km (596 miles)
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An alternative might be to approach on one of the small roads from the north, maybe through Larkhill, but I don’t really know.
Also, if you end up staying in Marlborough I would ‘not’ recommend the Green Dragon.
2 years ago
2 years ago