In February (yes, I know, I'm a few months behind again!!) we went to visit Telford and Ironbridge in Shropshire, a lush county bordering Wales. I had always wanted to see this bridge, the first of its kind in the world 230 odd years ago. This was built by Abraham Darby III. His grandfather, Abraham Darby I, was perhaps even more ingenious, for he's the man who perfected the technique of smelting iron with coke, rather than the charcoal. This allowed for cheaper production of iron, (and spared the trees for shipbuilding) and ironbridge and the gorge in which it lies is thus credited as the birthplace of the industrial revolution.
The gorge houses 10 museums dedicated to the entire iron and industrial history. We only managed one - Enginuity, a sort of mini-science museum.
It was a great interactive place too. Here is Gregor just about to launch the rocket he made earlier!
They spent half the time hiding in this tyre!
One of the reasons we didn't exhaust ourselves with too many museums was that the weather was glorious and we decided to trek a stage of the South Telford trail, up along the top of the gorge. It was a fabulous walk and took us all afternoon.
After Telford we made a brief foray into Wales. More as a reconnaisance visit, to see if we'd like to go there again, perhaps in summer. The unanimous verdict was Yes!
This is at Harlech castle. We took the coastal road up, and again, the weather was so wonderful - who says February in Wales is dire?? - we chilled out and picnicked and basked in the sunshine and waived our tentative trip to the alternative energy centre!
We stayed in Porthmadog, a small but handy town for getting to the north Wales railways and seeing Snowdonia. We however, were intent on visiting a slate cavern, which Gregor found fascinating, and Alastair less so.
To facilitate our trip we stayed in a couple of different Travelodges (very cheap but perfectly adequate hotels) for the 4 days. This could have been the Hilton for the boys, because the view was of a Travis Perkins, edge of town builders' yard, complete with busy forklift shifting pallets! Heaven! We didn't even need to turn on the TV!!
A gorgeous little Welsh mountain pony said hello to us on our way to the slate cavern.
On the way back to Lowestoft, we stopped overnight in Leicester to stay with my old friend from those days, Jo and her family. Here we were trying to get Alastair to give her youngest daughter, Alannah, a kiss.
But she was not having any of it!!
