The Half Moon Motorhome Pub Stop & Ironbridge Gorge

After the best part of a month on the road time’s caught up with us and we’re heading for home. We’re looking forward to having a bit of time with our families and friends. I’m also ready to get in the gym and do some non-weight-bearing training (aka, sitting on the rowing machine for stupid periods of time). My feet are slowly recovering after injuring them in marathon training, so I’m currently unable to run, probably for another few weeks. I’m 50 in 4 weeks, and stuff takes longer to heal these days – tiny violin time :-).

We’ve also had word today our house sale might complete this week (update: might be next week now, you can’t rush these things), but we need to get another couple of bits of paperwork signed and witnessed. Before we heard this news (or we might have rushed home) we’d already decided to split up the journey home and had found The Half Moon at Jackfield, near Ironbridge, on Park4Night. It’s a pub by the River Severn with a large (sloping, bring ramps) car park about a mile walk down paths to the UNESCO-listed Ironbridge Gorge. They welcome motorhome overnight stays, selling a £15 voucher when you arrive which they credit back from your bar/food bill. Works for us! If you’ve not done a pub stop before, the Brit Stops scheme is well worth a look too.

Wales doesn’t have many fast, wide roads other than those in the far north and south. Once you’re away from the motorways, you’re onto twisting A and B roads, often with high hedges, along with every other vehicle which needs to get about. Lorries, buses, bin lorries, other motorhomes and caravans all mix it up with the cars. The one thing noticeably missing was cyclists, maybe they’ve got more sense? Travelling on a Monday morning the roads weren’t very busy, but being in a big fat wide thing like Zagan demands pin-point road positioning, which is a tad tiring. Constant corners, gradient changes and ever-varying volumes of rainfall hitting the windscreen had me dancing about on the wipers, gear lever, steering wheel and brakes like Animal of The Muppets fame. By the time we got here I was frazzled, ready for a strong coffee!

On that point, many thanks to Gillian Tate for recommending I use our Aeropress coffee maker ‘upside down’. I use this thing 2 or 3 times a day when we’re away in the van to brew filter coffee after my mate Chris demonstrated using one. The handy thing is the way the grinds are easy to get in the bin without them going into the van’s pipes and grey tank. The only thing was, when I was using it the ‘correct way’, the hot water didn’t stay in place for long, dripping through the small paper filter in seconds rather than minutes. By flipping the thing over you can let the coffee stew for as long as you want, and I’ve been getting much richer tasting brews since starting using it that way. Happy days.

Anyway, once we’d arrived at the Half Moon Inn (N52.622257, W2.459723) and Ju had bought the £15 voucher, we checked out the route to Ironbridge on maps.me and grabbed brollies (thank the gods we did). The walk’s only about 20 minutes, past the Jackfield Tile Museum, rose-fronted cottages and along an old railway line. We were heading for the iconic landmark which the area’s named after, an arched bridge over the Severn which was built to demonstrate to the world how iron could be cast and cost-effectively used for construction. It’s not huge, but apparently had a huge effect, helping kick-start the industrial revolution no less. Until it was created, no-one believed it would stay up. But stay up it has stayed, since 1779, through various floods and even an earthquake.

On a damp Monday afternoon there weren’t many tourists knocking about as we walked over the bridge, eyeing up the plaque with the old toll costs hand-painted, and getting a sideways-on view from the bank. The glacial gorge the bridge straddles was once awash with open mines, forges, dammed streams and furnaces. Old photos show a forest of chimneys, which presumably burned vast quantities of coal and smogged the whole valley up. That’s all gone, the air’s fresh and clean and the only noise comes from passing cars. Areas of brick-built industrial heritage show up here and there. The buildings which remain are all well preserved, including a very cool-looking Co-Op with lovely metal windows! The valley’s awash with museums too, although the only one we looked in was closed for roof repairs. As the sky threatened to collapse at any moment (good idea to get that roof sorted) we headed for a viewpoint high on the valley side. The old rotunda, which is now rotunda-less, is accessed via a couple of hundred steps or so. The foliage was too thick to actually see the bridge or river from the rotunda, but we could just crane our necks and spot it from further along the path.

This is my second visit to Ironbridge. I came here in a previous life when I worked for E.ON, to discuss some computer systems with an engineer at the coal-fired power station in the valley. The station’s since closed and its pink-red chimneys pulled down in 2019. Once the rest of the buildings are demolished, 1,000 homes will be built on the site. That seems to sum up Ironbridge’s long journey through heavy industry (with the associated employment, noise and dirt) and back again to a clean, quiet place, lined with architects and precision-engineering companies and coffee shops and perfect-looking houses (albeit flood-prone ones – see below!)

As the heavens opened we tried to hold off a million speeding droplets with brollies, finally escaping into the van with just slightly damp trousers. After a brief rest we found the pub was warm and comfortable with hardly anyone in there when we arrived. The food they brought was enormous. Ju even left some chips (OK, only 2), that’s how big it was, Ju never leaves chips. I had enough macaroni cheese for a family of six. We shelled out just under £40 (including the voucher). That’s the thing with pub stops – we tend to blow more money on the ‘free parking’ than if we’d stayed in a campsite and cooked our own food. But (a) we could have just had a couple of drinks to only spend the £15 voucher and (b) we really enjoyed the food and only had to stagger a short distance across the car park to bed!

Tomorrow we’ve only a couple of hours motorway driving to get home. Then it’s an unloadathon and we’re back in the Cooler for a while. We’ve not planned our next trip yet, and need to get the fridge looked out before we head out again. It’s started working fine on gas (we’ve not had hook-up for a week now) but there’s something not right with it as it wouldn’t stay lit when we first set off. Ju’s going to do a round-up post of our trip to Wales, but for now thanks for reading folks, catch you later, Jay