Distance: Around 11 miles

Difficulty of the Terrain: Medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Walk following the route of the Severn Way and the National Cycle Network track. Walking from Ironbridge to Bridgnorth along the banks of the River Severn, through the beautiful Severn Gorge in mid-Shropshire, taking in lots of relics of the early industrial revolution along the way.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

The World’s First Post Industrial Community

Today the Ironbridge Gorge is a sleepy, narrow, steep sided valley on the River Severn in the middle of Shropshire. In the early 18th Century however, abundant coal, iron ore and clay deposits, coupled with a ready means of transport in the form of the Severn, made it the first part of the UK, if not the world, to industrialise.

New processes for smelting iron, developed from 1709 by Abraham Darby and others, made the valley a centre for the production of metals and other goods, especially those made from the gorge’s abundant clays.

As is the way with these things however, as the first to develop, so the Ironbridge Gorge, like central Shropshire more generally, was one of the earliest parts of the UK to de-industrialise. This process was already well advanced by the 1960s when a largely rural area just north of Coalbrookdale was designated Telford new town.

The creation of Telford coupled with the arrival of the M54 motorway, meant that central Shropshire rapidly became less isolated. A lot less isolated in fact, than had been the case at any point since the 18th Century, when the River Severn served as a superhighway facilitating trade the shipment of raw materials and finished industrial goods in the region.

This sudden accessibility made the sleepy Ironbridge Gorge, with it’s clapped out workshops, declining villages like Ironbridge, Coalport and Jackfield and gigantic ruined blast furnaces and kilns, a magnet for both industrial archaeologists and incomers seeking cheap country homes to do-up, alike.

A preservation trust, which today runs numerous museums and heritage attractions in the valley, was established in 1967. In 1986 UNESCO granted the gorge World Heritage Site status. They recently estimated that 600,000 people a year visit to see the industrial heritage sites and participate in a range of other leisure activities.

Against this backdrop the Ironbridge Gorge’s little riverside conurbation of former industrial villages and hamlets has become an affluent suburb of Telford. A striking example of successful post-industrial regeneration, transition and amidst the thick forests that line the gorge, rewilding as well. In many ways it is a transition plenty of deindustrialising communities have attempted to pull off since. But perhaps it is a kind of success that can in fact only be delivered once by shear fluke?

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

To get to the start of my walk from the village of Ironbridge to Bridgnorth, followingly roughly the route of the Severn Way, I took the train from Birmingham New Street to Telford which took 35-40 minutes. From Telford Railway Station I walked the short distance, following a handy set of sign-posts, along the dual carriageways separating shopping centres from each other, to the bus station.

Here I caught the Number 4 bus, which runs every 15-20 minutes, to the Abraham Darby further education college. The journey took a little under half an hour, winding around the expressways and 1970s suburban housing estates of Telford.

Abraham Darby College, named after the iron founder who kicked off industrial scale production utilising coke rather than charcoal along the Severn valley in the early 18th Century, is roughly ten minutes walk from Ironbridge and the formal start of the walk. So, I followed the road signposted to Ironbridge and the world heritage sites down the hill.

Presently, having walked down the steep heavily tree lined road for a few minutes, the trees receded to be replaced by houses and other buildings in the upper part of Ironbridge village. The views across to the other side of the valley are quite spectacular and show how green the heavy tree cover makes the gorge.

Following the road down, I entered the commercial heart of the village. Here there are a few shops where provisions can be bought as well as a handful of cafes, pubs and restaurants. The vibe is reminiscent of a Welsh mining village or Pennine mill town meeting an affluent seaside resort like Cromer, St Ives or Lytham Saint Annes. Along Ironbridge village’s main street and stretching up the steep hillside are solid 18th and 19th Century buildings, houses, shops and institutions, founded during the valley’s heyday at the forefront of the industrial revolution. Today, however, most of the businesses and the general feel of the place recalls the seaside. Ironbridge perched relatively high up above the deep, fast flowing channel cut by the Severn is very much in the mould of the midland’s riverside resort towns, like Stourport-upon-Severn or Matlock Bath, that due to its distance from the sea has for the benefit of tourists taken on some of the characteristics of a coastal resort.

Shortly after entering the heart of the village with all it’s shops and other outlets I arrived at the start of the walk by a war memorial surmounted with a statue of a First World War vintage British soldier leaning on his rifle. His gaze is fixed back towards the town and the high street, whilst behind him yawns the River Severn at the bottom of it’s gorge, and the spectacular Iron Bridge built in the 1770s which gives the settlement its name.

Having taken in the view of the bridge, which is just as impressive as the photos suggest, it’s time to cross the river. Walk over the bridge, past the little tollhouse museum on the other side, and then turn left into the carpark.

This is an inauspicious beginning to the walk, however, the car park is not without interest. Prior to the site commencing its current use after the valley became a tourist destination in the 1960s and 1970s it was a goods yard for the Severn Valley Railway which closed in 1963.

Today the Severn Valley Railway which once served the settlements, farms and little coal mines between Hartlebury in mid-Worcestershire and Shrewsbury about 15 miles north of Ironbridge near the geographical centre of Shropshire. Today a long portion between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth remains open as a heritage railway – one of the largest in the country. North of Bridgnorth however, the trackbed has been transformed into a cycle track.

Having walked the length of the carpark you come to a portion of the cycle track.

Follow this for around half a mile. The route is heavily wooded all the way.

And there’s some interesting surviving railway and other industrial architecture along the way.

When I walked it, the trees had their full canopy, however, it was possible to get occasional glimpses of the river.

Presently you arrive in the village of Jackfield famous for its decorative tile works, which today is a museum. Your arrival in the village is greeted by an art-cum-heritage installation of a set of rails, level crossing and a signal post, signifying with little subtlety the path you have travelled ons past as a railway line.

Here the track briefly ends as you head through the village, so turn left and walk along the road.

Keep heading left following signs for the museum.

After a few minutes walking you reach the Jackfield Tile Museum, housed in an interesting, and incongruously large for the area, factory building.

Opposite the Tile Museum stands Jackfield’s unusual, gothic, yet strangely modern, mid-19th Century church St. Mary the Virgin, which stands on the same side of the road as the pavement. At this point in the walk views of the fast moving river beneath you start to open up.

Just past the church lies an empty and uneven expanse of ground with quite a desolate appearance. This area was subjected to stabilisation efforts in the mid-2010s by Shropshire Council. At one time the centre of the village of Jackfield stoof here, however, in 1952 a major landslip destroyed 27 buildings, and spurred the abandonment of others. The unstable land is naturally prone to subsidence, however, hundreds of years of mining and quarrying exacerbated the problem leading to the collapse in the 1950s and more recent remedial works.

Having crossed landslip territory you can either continue on the road or join the cyclepath. I was keen to see some of the industrial remains near the bottom of the Ironbridge Gorge area, so continued on the road.

Walking along the road you soon pass the Maws Craft Centre on your left.

After the craft centre keep on walking, travelling a couple of hundred metres further until you reach a t-junction.

Here turn left down Ferry Road.

Follow Ferry Road down past the Boat Inn.

Here in front of you you’ll see the Jackfield Memorial Bridge. This was erected in 1922 as a war memorial to the men from Jackfield who went to fight in the First World War and didn’t return.

Go up over the bridge and walk across the river. If you have enough of a head for heights it is worth pausing to look out across the gorge and the river below.

On the other side of the Severn stands Jackfield’s twin, the village of Coalport. Near where you alight from the bridge stand a couple of the gorge’s most interesting industrial relics. Seldom open these days besides Sunday afternoons, is the entrance to the Tar Tunnel.

In 1787 work began to dig a canal tunnel out of the valley to the Shropshire plain beyond. After digging some way, the navvies hit a naturally occurring reservoir of bituminous tar. They pressed on, but the volume of tar proved insurmountable, and after tunneling 910 metres into the hill, they ceased digging. The original canal scheme was abandoned and instead the tunnel became a bitumen mine. I recall visiting the tunnel as a child and finding it an eerie and unnerving place, cramped, with black tar oozing out between the bricks. I remember walking a short way down the tunnel and then turning back.

Despite being defeated by the voluminous tar, the canal company persisted. In the tunnel’s stead they constructed the Hay Inclined Plane which has been restored and whose rails rise steeply up the side of the gorge, to part of the Blists Hill Victorian Town museum site where the attraction’s internal network of industrial canals begins.

Beneath the inclined plane lies a small stubby canal which was served by Shropshire Tub Boats, crude skip like vessels perfect for forming into horse drawn chains to haul heavy loads of dirty raw materials relatively short distances.

One of the sites served by the Tub Boats was the Coalport China Works. As you turn left and walk all the towpath which lines the short section of restored canals, the conical chimney domes where the china was fired at this factory loom into view.

You walk past the former China Works, with its distinctive chimneys which are now a museum, and past the Coalport branch of the YHA, which is one of two youth hostels serving the valley.

Just after the museum and the YHA, stands a pleasant estate of modern, unusually tasteful and very expensive looking houses.

Don’t make the mistake I did and attempt to walk down the road. Instead turn left and walk up onto the main road though Coalport village.

Once at the main road turn right and walk all the way through the village.

After several hundred metres having passed the village green which is flanked by mid-20th Century council houses, you walk past the Brewery Inn which is on your left hand side.

A few minutes further on, right on the edge of the village you come to a t-junction.

Here turn to your right and walk down a small sloping road to another bridge.

This rather rickety structure is the Coalport Bridge and pretty much the only means of crossing the river between this point and Bridgnorth nearly 10 miles south. The bridge is so rickety and narrow that the types of vehicles that can use it are heavily restricted. Constructed in more or less it’s current form in 1818, like the Iron Bridge a couple of miles north, it is another unusual surviving example of an early wrought iron bridge, the pieces for which were cast in the valley.

Crossing over the bridge you come to the beer garden of The Woodbridge Inn. This pub is the final place for refreshments prior to the walk entering the very remote stretch between Coalport at the bottom of the Ironbridge Gorge area and Bridgnorth.

Having walked up past the end of the pub’s drive you come to a fork in the road. Here turn left onto the trackway, past a group of vintage railway carriages now used as holiday accommodation, on the site of what was Coalport’s railway station.

You are now once again walking along the trackbed of the old Severn Valley Railway, however, this section has been concrete over in a manner akin to a military road which armoured vehicles and caterpillar tracked vehicles regularly use.

This section – which is essentially part forestry road, part link road for the Severn Trent Sewage works which lies about half a mile along it, is probably the most boring part of the walk.

Though there are some rewarding glimpses down the heavily wooded bank to the river below as well.

Shortly after the sewage works you come to a point where the trail splits with the old trackbed carrying on over a bridge, and another rougher track leading steeply down towards the river.

Much of the land in this section is owned by the Rowley and District Angling Society. A pretty and out of the way little piece of Shropshire which is forever linked to a little Black Country town in the southern reaches of the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell.

Being keen to get off the somewhat monotonous trail, and spotting the distinctive Severn Way waymark of an old fashioned Severn Trow, the likes of which used to carry raw materials and finished goods up and down the river from the Ironbridge Gorge, the opted to leave the old railway line and head down the steep path.

This proved to be a mistake… So I wouldn’t advise you to do this.

At the bottom I was rewarded with an open vista, beautiful and spectacular in equal measure.

I walked down a gravel path, past a small car park for the anglers and walked past a small house to find the Severn Way.

The path here – so I discovered – is legible, but really not that well defined.

I edged my way through a thicket and then across two very muddy fields, claggy with the area’s ubiquitous and distinctive clay.

Then I reached a small holding with a few wandering sheep and a number of donkeys.

This little farm was grassy, which was pleasing after I’d slithered across the mud of the larger farm next door.

It was also served by several sturdy, quite new looking gates, proudly bearing the arms of the Shropshire Council that was set-up in 2009, so they were certainly no more than a dozen years old when I was undertaking the walk.

Right by the farmstead itself, the path passed through thickets of gorse and other bushes.

As I walked along the fence at the bottom of the little small holding’s garden I spotted a guinea fowl strutting on the other side of the fence.

A dozen steps further along and I encountered the other guinea fowl in the pair sat right in the middle of path, by a large piece of metallic junk, completely blocking my way. I stood there for what seemed like ages not wanting to disturb that bird. Though presently I sensed me somehow and took off with the most horrific squealing honk. Which I kept on doing and which the other guinea fowl presently took up as well.

Keen to get away from the horrible honking, once I was sure that I wasn’t going to be attacked by the two birds, I leapt over the nest and carried on the path. I made it about ten or so paces before I realised that the path had vanished. Ahead the thicket of gorse, brambles and all manner of bushes and creepers completely obscured it.

After a few moments of dithering and scanning the ground in front of me to see a way ahead, I gave up and decided to turn back.

I jumped over the nest again and hurried past the two still honking guinea fowl. A gaggle of donkeys from further back on the little farm had come across and gathered by the fence drawn by the honking sound. They stood and regarded me inquisitively.

Having fled the guinea fowl and begun to trudge back the way I came feeling somewhat deflated, a small piece of luck came upon me. A party of workers from the electricity supply company were working on a pylon line and had one of the gates in a field open onto the old Severn Valley trackbed.

I squelched up the hill and out through the gate back on the old railway line route. So, to cut a long story short, from spring, through to mid-autumn when the bushes presumably start dying back, that section of the Severn Way is currently at least, completely impassable. Best to stick to the boring retired permanent way.

Luckily the next section of the former railway line was rather more interesting than the section just after Coalport.

The way is studded with interesting little farmsteads, and derelict remains of others, apparently no longer viable.

And through the thick woodland of mature trees the river is often viewable.

As is the interesting, steeply sloping, often wooded countryside to the left of the track.

Former railway infrastructure is evident along the way – though, the trackbed’s afterlife as an access road for the farms along its route, and a cycle-cum-walking trail is interesting as well.

Presently after a couple of miles walking I arrived at Linley Station House.

This little station building is now a holiday cottage, and also by my crude reckoning, roughly the halfway point on the route.

At the Station House the trackbed entered a series of short cuttings.

Through gaps in it, on the right handside across the Severn, Apley Hall, the local stately home, whose residents own much of the land thereabouts, was visible.

A short way after passing the hall, I came across a somewhat tumbled down style leading onto the meadow running down to the river.

Wanting to get back to the Severn Way I decided to cross over it and see whether I would have more luck on the river bank this time.

With Bridgnorth only a few miles away I had left the territory of the Rowley Anglers. This land instead was used by the Bridgnorth Angling Club, quite a few of whom were out pursuing their sport from little dugouts by the water line, many of them well fortified with cool boxes and relatively comfy looking camping chairs.

Despite the path along this stretch also being relatively un-waymarked the way was smooth and pretty flat. Allowing me to enjoy the lovely scenery as I trod along the river bank.

There is the occasional style along this part of the route, demarking boundaries between the large fields and pastures. But in contrast to the territory higher up nearer the Ironbridge Gorge the path is pretty well marked, clearly worn and easy going.

As such it makes for easy walking, without to much thinking as to where you’re going, allowing for more sightseeing and taking in the countryside around you.

A mile or so north of Bridgnorth you encounter a golf course, stretching for quite some way along the flat land by the river.

As golf courses go, the one at Bridgnorth seems fairly used to and relaxed about walkers. I did have to wait for a few people to tee-off, on what was quite a busy seeming day for golf, but in the main the golf course users were also happy to let me quickly walk through before they played their shots.

At the far side of the course, follow the path through a patch of undergrowth.

Then across an unusual concrete bridge.

Followed by a bit more undergrowth onto a playing field lying beneath the town.

After yet more undergrowth, at the edge of the playing field.

You get to a cul-de-sac by the river, apparently built on the site of a former abbey, a small portion of whose ruins were encircled by railings in front of a couple of houses.

This nearly the end of the walk.

From here there are steps and steep lanes up the steep escarpment into the oldest part of the town.

Getting Back

At the very top there is a main road with the town’s old council house building on it.

It is from this street that it is possible to catch the 297 Arriva bus to Kidderminster. There is one roughly hourly until around 18:00 in the evening. From Kidderminster Station it is possible to catch trains in the direction of both Birmingham and Worcester. There are also less frequent buses back up to Telford and to Wolverhampton and Dudley in the Black Country.