I booked for the convention some time in advance. Many Eastercons have the bulk of accommodation in the same site as convention events. The Telford International Centre has no internal accommodation but it is neighboured by two hotels, The Holiday Inn, and the International Hotel (the latter chosen by myself). Other invitees would be using nearby travelodges and other places around the town too.
I booked and secured my train tickets about a week before going and packed gradually as the journey drew nearer.
I knew I would be changing trains on both outbound and inbound journeys from Preston, at Wolverhampton. Days before setting off I was notified by Trainline to expect to go by replacement bus from Wolverhampton. My outbound journey was a breeze, unlike my nightmare return one. I got to Wolverhampton and asked where the replacement bus departed from, to be told that the train was running just fine and due out on Platform one in about ten minutes. Naturally I headed for that.
Telford has a bad reputation, often listed as one of the worst places in the UK for living, working and touring. I disagree. While lacking much found in bigger towns, it is simply a functional town with houses, standard shops (the central shopping precinct is the dominant feature) and limited nightlife. It isn’t a bad place, it just doesn’t stand out in any way. My interest in pub sign histories was frustrated by a town with just seven pubs, none of which have proper pictorial signage. There is also some lovely parkland and open space around Telford. Given its associations with Thomaas Telford and the heart of the Industrial Revolution, the town is actually new, having risen as a new model town in 1963, (it’s younger than me). It was originally called Dawley long before its redevelopment. Captain Webb, the famous Channel swimmer was from round there.
The train station is about half an hour’s walk from the town centre, with the walk mostly involving a construction site and the shopping precinct. The International Centre and hotel were well signposted all the way though and there was no chance of getting lost. The entertainment zone clusters most of the pubs together so I had most desired shots of those before I even reached the hotel.
I saw the International Centre first, from the opposite side to that where I’d be entering and leaving on the paths round to the hotels. It looked impressive.
The International Hotel is quite grand and rather over-priced but pleasant enough and efficiently run. Check in was easy, and it was great after so many hotels where my room was lift rides and labyrinthine corridors away to find my room here was just through the ground floor doors right by the reception desk and dining/bar area. It was a big room, with all the appropriate gubbins, more plug sockets and charging points than most rooms I have had and a strange circular picture on the wall, with random letters, looking like a wordsearch puzzle grid, with just one word highlighted and spelt out in the middle, Telford.
My only quibble with the room was that the bedside lights were a little too far from the bed on each side and I’d have to sit up and reach out to switch them on and off.
Unpacked, I set out with my camera to get more photos. Having already captured shots of Telford just in getting there I headed to the bus station, which is close to the shopping precinct. The bus station is the single worst feature of the town, for its sheer lack of useful travel information. While screens listed buses by final terminus destination, they did not have details of the stops in between.
I asked a station official which buses go to Ironbridge as I planned to pop there for the first time since a school visit c.1978. At first he told me no buses go there at all but suddenly remembered that one due to go out shortly went within walking distance of it. I got that and took a long leisurely if circuitous ride through the gorgeous Shropshire countryside to the very edge of the Ironbridge Gorge.
At one point the bus’s path was obstructed by a badly parked and abandoned delivery truck. The driver did a lot of manoeuvring and reversing to angle the bus for a nerve racking drive through the extremely narrow gap left for it by the vehicle and got a round of applause from everyone on board when he got us through without a scrape.
The short walking distance my stop was from the bridge was within sight of it and I saw that other buses go right past it so the information I got at the bus station was utterly unreliable.
Seeing the bridge again was a wall of happy nostalgia for me, and the bridge as impressive as ever. A convention event scheduled was for a walk from the International to the Ironbridge but I wanted to attend other con activities when it took place, and though I got a bus there, my longer walkabout would come the next day.
I visited the delightful free Toll Bridge Museum on the bridge and bought a few souvenirs there too. The cheery chatty receptionist clearly loves her job there a great deal and her enthusiasm was highly infectious.
I captured shots of the very swollen River Severn and of course, the pubs in the area, though they are few in number. Best was The Tontine Hotel, directly facing the bridge. The hotel was built by the bridge’s distinguished founders who created a Tontine Contract in there (a Tontine leaves an inheritance to the last surviving signatory of the contract) so they chose to call the hotel itself The Tontine. It’s a charming bar with great views of the river and bridge to share as well as excellent ales.
Equally exciting was seeing Eley’s Famous Pork Pie shop near the Tontine too. I had seen a highly favourable Youtube review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOkC7HGiFZc of this when looking online for recommended places to see and visit while in the county. I treated myself to a large pork pie that really was the best of its kind I ever had. I was very tempted to get other con attendees who would be going through Ironbridge to get me some more but I resisted.
I headed for the bus, only to find that while there are lots of bus stops on the ride into Ironbridge there are far fewer on the side of the road going back. I had to walk quite a way up to reach one.
Back in Telford I debated which bar to drink in for the evening. My first port of call was the Hungry Horse (Greene King subsidiary) owned Wrekin Giant which promised a few decent real ales but proved to have none on sale despite showing the beer clips which should be reversed or removed when the ales are not available.
I headed instead to Albert’s Shed, one of a growing chain of bars that I have not tried before. This was a wild and bonkers but fun experience. Albert’s Shed is designed around the gardening tool free sheds used by old eccentric family uncles to house all kinds of eclectic junk and bric-a-brac. The décor of the bar is about as quite intentionally barmy as it could possibly be. Round some tables you can sit on rope swings instead of chairs. Car bonnets, headlights and registration plates come out through the walls. Mopeds are sliced up and welded to the tables. Surreal art and fun caption boards like that warning that ‘Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again’ abound. The pub had a very good range of real ales on offer, and a pizza dominated food menu too (though I’d had my pork pie by the time I went in). There was promise of live music and DJ’ing events over the weekend and I could hear a decent sounding band rehearsing in a side room nearby.
I retired to my hotel room early, about 9.30pm, after all my journeying and touring, with plans for more exploration the next day.
Photos taken by me.
Arthur Chappell
Telford, Eastercon, Shropshire, Tontine, Ironbridge, pubs, pub signs, Industrial Revolution,
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