Day 13 - Taking Shropshire at Speed

Birmingham to Shrewsbury

It's good to be on the move again. The fact that it's raining heavily for the first time in months dampens the streets but not my spirits. After a day pootling around Birmingham, I’m now ready to press on.

First stop of the day is Snow Hill Station in the city centre to catch a tram to Wolverhampton. The last time I visited Birmingham, the tram hadn't even been thought of so I was keen to take a closer look. It's everything you'd expect from a modern tramway – smooth, modern, comfortable and very, very quick. Much of the line appears to be along the track bed of disused railway lines so with no traffic or pedestrians to get in the way the drivers can really put their foot down. 

Snow Hill, Birmingham

Quite a lot of the line appears to have a smooth, tarmac-ed cycle way running right alongside it, too, which I must say seems like an excellent idea. Extra sustainability Brownie points for someone, clearly. 

I scour Snow Hill station for an automatic ticket machine without success until a fellow passenger helpfully informs me that you actually buy your ticket on the tram from a conductor. Remember them? No, me neither... 

It’s a brisk, gentle and altogether pleasant ride and only when our tram reaches Wolverhampton city centre do we leave the sheltered confines of the disused railway lines and take to the road itself. There doesn't seem to be any slackening in our pace, though. 

I rather expected Wolverhampton to be loud. This is, after all, the birthplace of the glam rock band Slade and I fully expected to ‘feel the noyz’, so to speak. Instead, it’s really quite normal, gently elegant even. I'd like to explore it more thoroughly but have to be content with gazing on its stately art gallery and its other fine civic buildings from the window of the 890 to Bridgnorth. 

Arriving at Wolverhampton

My bus quickly fills with elderly, white-haired ladies who chat amicably in apparent ignorance of the immense danger we must all be facing. You see, I've spotted the glass emergency escape hatch with its special hammer in a glass case close by to smash it open with – but I'm appalled to see that the escape hatch is actually located in the roof. Crikey. Exactly what kind of ride are we in for, for heaven's sake? 

I also spot no less than 4 separate CCTV cameras fitted to the inside of what is a fairly modest single decker, which strikes me as a little excessive if not downright paranoid. Still, at least it means if one of the old ladies launches a brutal full-frontal attack on me, we'd have the whole thing covered on video. We might even have our own TV show. 

Within minutes we were out on the Bridgnorth Road, gobbling up the miles at a rate which immediately explains the presence of the emergency exit in the roof. We maintain a frantic pace. Gripping hard on the seat in front, I glance out of the window to see a blurred countryside veiled in a mist tinted yellow by dozens of fields of flowering rape.

I finally bale out just as the Demon Bus Driver is about the cross the River Severn to begin its long pull up the hill into Bridgnorth. I've decided to take a more direct route straight up the near-vertical cliffs of the Severn Gorge using the delightful Bridgnorth Cliff Railway. This employs two carriages which closely resemble a vintage bus crossed with a 1930's pram dangling on the end of long cables. These rattle us up and down the precipitous 45 degree slope connecting the lofty town centre with its riverside. 

Bridgenorth Cliff Railway

Technically, it's a funicular railway and one of about 14 currently operating in the UK. However, this is one of only two I have discovered that are not purely for tourists or holiday-makers – Bridnorth Cliff Railway provides a genuine day-to-day link between one place and another, rather than just connecting a beach with its cliff top amusements.

Bridgnorth probably doesn't look its best in the rain... but it still looks pretty darned good. Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian, it's all here but blended in a way that is impressively easy on the eye. I eat lunch sitting on the steps of a church designed by Thomas Telford, who I'd assumed had limited his work to big stuff like bridges, roads and harbours. Apparently he also had a more sensitive side, too, as the elegantly austere St Mary Magdalene Church ably demonstrates.

Up the cliff to the upper town

I leave Bridgnorth as I arrive - at high speed, this time aboard the 99 for Telford. Blimey, what’s the rush? We positively hurtle through a muscular-though-slightly-blurred landscape of steep pasture, rolling tree-topped hills and winding roads. It's lovely, if a little indistinct due to the speed and vibration. Then we are dropping back down into the Severn Valley to Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge, the very crucible of the industrial revolution and an area with a fascinating history. You could profitably spend a whole week exploring its many extraordinary museums but I have to get to Telford for my bus to tonight's overnight stop-over, Shrewsbury. 

Telford is a new town with a town centre which seems little more than a 70's shopping mall. I take a quick look but head quickly back to the bus station. Now fair enough, it has to be accepted that Telford New Town probably doesn't look its best in the rain. Unfortunately, it’s not raining now so that can’t be it. I grab the first bus out of there. 

The Shrewsbury bus gives me another chance to gaze on Ironbridge before we clamber out of the valley a little further up stream, close by the distressing ugly Ironbridge Power Station. Why do they do these things? Because, power stations apart, the views just keeps getting better. One minute we speeding past flat meadows strewn with buttercups, with green hills rising all around us, their tops crusted with trees. The next we are diving through deep woodland before breaking out into high upland fields with wide, airy views and sudden glimpses of hills in the distance – the Welsh Border perhaps? It’s lovely. It’s a revelation.

Shrewsbury

It’s brief. We arrive speedily in Shrewsbury over the English Bridge, and I'm struck by how very English everything looks – Elizabethan timber-framed buildings, cobbled winding streets, elegant Georgian terraces, a grand imitation Tudor railway station, a romantically-ruined castle above the river, Greggs the Bakers. This is a strikingly beautiful town and I hurriedly drop my bag at the hotel and hit the streets in search of food, a beer or two and a wander through its quietening lanes. 

It has been a day of unexpectedly rapid travel so I admit I'm feeling a little frayed at the edges. I'm anxious to slow things down a bit. Fortunately, Shrewsbury doesn't disappoint.

NEXT: Shrewsbury – Wrexham - in which, after shadowing Thomas Telford for several day, I at last travel on one of his finest achievements, and find myself in countryside reminiscent of a prop forward in a Laura Ashley frock.

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