A Banging Birthday in Bridgnorth

The finest view in all my Kingdom” – Charles I

As we share a birthday (same date, 5 years apart. No, we’re not related), we usually plan something fairly big like a short break or a big day out to celebrate. We also got in to a tradition of doing this because having a birthday so close to Christmas, as any one who does will tell you, it can be a more difficult time of year to organise things.

Firstly, no one has any money to go out or do anything after the Christmas period. Secondly, work is also factor and as our birthday falls 2 weeks after the big day itself, anyone lucky enough to not have to work over the holiday season will be going back to work. And so the tradition started and we got used to booking ourselves a birthday treat amidst the post Christmas blues, usually involving going away.

December was more chore than explore

Over the years we have stayed in country mansions, been on spa breaks, done driving experience days and even ventured to Reykjavík (that was a particularly awesome trip and probably still our favourite). This year was slightly different though. We are already on one huge adventure and if we’re being honest, December was more chore than explore. With that, we hadn’t thought much beyond the end of the month.

With nothing planned and no real route worked out yet, we decided not to stress too much. We decided not to do Christmas presents this time around, for each other or for anyone for that matter. We simply couldn’t afford it and thankfully not one person took offence (we did tell everybody that their present this year was our company! it seemed to go down surprisingly well!). Its amazing how it took the pressure out of Christmas and so we (ok, I. I’m the planner you see so it went against my nature) decided to take the same approach to our birthday. No worrying about ‘big’ plans or celebrations, just seeing where our travels took us and enjoying our day whatever the outcome.

It turned out this was an amazing approach and it did work itself out very well! We happened to be in the Shropshire area for a previous engagement just after New Year and one of our followers on Twitter suggested a few things for us to see and do. One of them was the Cliff Railway, a victorian funicular railway that connects the two towns of Bridgnorth. Cliff Railway is Britains oldest, steepest and shortest funicular and it connects the High Town and Low Town, which are separated by the River Severn. This sounded right up our street so we decided to make our way there.

We ended up spending a couple of days in one sport for Jon to rest

Unfortunately Jon caught the dreaded winter cold (we have got away with it up until now, we think its where we were in contact with more people over the festive period!) and so we ended up spending a couple of days in one spot for Jon to rest up and nap the day away. It was beneficial for him and over the worst of it, we made plans to head to Bridgnorth for the day. It worked out now that it would be on our birthday!

(See our YouTube Vlog on our birthday trip to Bridgnorth Here)

Apart from the railway, we didn’t really know what else was there and so we took the chance to have a little look around the area beforehand. If we are close by to somewhere that we are planning to visit, we sometimes scope it out the evening before to look for suitable parking, we like to try and be prepared! Well we needn’t have worried, the town is jam packed with plenty to see and do, especially for history lovers like ourselves.

We started our day by phoning the local council. No, really, thats how we started our day! We found a great car park but whilst it allowed Motorhomes and Campervans to park (as long as you pay for the bays you use), the bays were not wide enough for us and once the car park was full, it was quite tight to manoeuvre. There was, however, an HGV section and seeing as we are registered as a PHGV, Jon thought he would phone up and find out if we could park more comfortably in there instead. The lady on the phone was helpful and said yes thats fine, just pay for an HGV ticket which we did. In the grand scheme of things, £10 to park for the entire day was fine with us as we would rather know we parked safely somewhere we fit!

This didn’t quite work out, however, as when we returned to the van briefly later that day to drop some stuff off and check on the girls, we happened to come across the traffic warden at the van. Turns out he has a differing opinion and we couldn’t park in the HGV section.

He explained that there are some grey areas with motorhomes and campers of all shapes, sizes and weights and that in this case in his and his boss’ opinion, we needed to be parked in the normal car parking bays. He did note that the bays were very narrow though and we could move in to the section next door to where we were that used to be a recycling section and doesn’t have any marked bays but still counts as parking.

This was fine except that we had paid for the HGV ticket when we could have got a normal parking ticket for around £2.50 for the day! Never mind, we were determined not to let anything ruin our day as in the grand scheme of things, we tried to do the right thing and we did have somewhere spacious to park within walking distance of the town.

Also, he was perfectly friendly and said that he really appreciated us taking the time and effort to abide by the parking regulations. We really liked this as its a small step to tackling some of the general mis-conceptions about vans and motorhomes taking the mickey when it comes to parking up.

Anyway, back to our day. Our next order of business was to go and find food. After a wander through the High Town, we settled on a lovely place called Castle Tea Rooms, a cute cafe that served Breakfast until 11am, perfect. We were not disappointed as the food was awesome and the service matched it.

Suitably full, we carried on down the street and came to the Castle gardens, a public garden created to commemorate Queen Victoria’s jubilee. The gardens are immaculate, including hedge sculptures, a Grade II listed bronze soldier statue, World War memorials and of course, the Ruins of Bridgnorth Castle.

The castle was first founded in 1101 by Robert de Belleme but its great square tower wasn’t built until the reign of Henry II. Expansion of the Castle continued in the early 1200’s and by the time of the Civil War, it was one of the Midlands’ Royalists’ main strongholds. Royalist troops were garrisoned there but after a 3 week siege, the castle was eventually taken by the Parliamentarians. Cromwell ordered the Castle to be destroyed and by 1647, all that remained is not too different from what we see today. The remains of the tower lean at 15 degrees, greater than the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

Time Team actually carried out a 3 week excavation here, determining the castle layouts and its construction details. It really is something to see up close, walking down the side it makes you wonder how it still stands and doesn’t topple over.

We looped the gardens and headed back towards the High Street, stopping constantly along the way to admire the architecture. The cottages that line West Castle street are so endearing, its hard not to stop and look at the features such as the smaller sized wooden doors. Or to sneak a peek at the low wooden ceiling beams through the window. Sometimes we forget that these are peoples homes and have to stop ourselves staring for too long!

Of all the buildings and dwellings around, some date back to Tudor times and its fascinating to think they are still standing! Nestled in amongst the modern buildings around them, the town is made up of structures from all of the various time periods, coming right up to modern day and it really is special when you take the time to admire it all.

Once back along the main high street, we took a closer look at the Town Hall. It’s hard to miss, sat right in the middle of the busy High Street, one story up, sat on pillars with an open through way underneath. This timber framed building was constructed in the 17th Century and has stood here ever since. It was originally built on stilts to provide a covered area for market traders underneath and it still has this purpose today, with marked bays for the stalls.

Inside, the decor is largely from the 19th Century, panelled with Oak throughout and housing a Council chamber, Court room and a Tea room. The stained glass is also still proudly intact, first installed to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Jubilee and said to be some of the finest work from that Century. You can hire the hall out for weddings or ceremonies and the market space beneath can also be hired for events or displays.

We strolled back towards Castle Street and swung a left towards the Cliff Railway. Down some steps and then back up a little narrow street, we found the office. It is still decorated in a victorian style, complete with the old cigarette machine on the wall! It’s only £1.60 return (you can’t buy singles) and as short as the route is, it is still fun to ride and so fantastic that it is still actually running!

We got in to the car and admired the view over the Severn Valley whilst we waited for our short journey to start and then after a couple of minutes, we were off. The railway runs two cars parallel to each other and so as we descended, the other car ascended. It is all electric now but when it was first opened, it was operated by water being pumped in to a tank under the steel frame that the cars sit on. Whilst the top car’s tank was being filled, the bottom car’s tank was being emptied and then pumped directly in to a tank above the top station. When the top car’s tank was full, it would counter balance the bottom one.

Once at the bottom station, we ventured out in to the Low Town to have a look around. The first thing we came across was Lavingtons Hole, the entrance to a 69ft tunnel dug in to the soft rock face by Colonel Lavington and the Parliamentary forces. This is more evidence from the toll the Civil War took on Bridgnorth although for safety reasons, you can not enter. Lavington ordered his men to dig a 70ft hole under Castle Hill with the aim of reaching St Mary’s Church above as he knew thats where the Royalists were storing their gun powder. The tunnel was never complete though as the Royalists eventually surrendered. There are still other holes visible today which were used as dwellings.

As we carried on, we noticed one of the seven different sets of steps that connect the tow towns (this would have been the only way to get between the two before the railway was introduced, cutting out the need to walk some 200 steps!). We didn’t realise this at first, we were drawn in by the houses that seemed to be built in to and up the cliff side. We walked up the steps and about halfway realised we were heading back up to the Castle Walk but by then, we were determined to get to the top and see more of the houses. We did come across one really cool house called The Old Library at the top of this particular set of stairs; the top of the house had a crenelated design and was completely unobstructed to the views!

Not wanting to miss out on our return journey on the railway, we admired more of the views over the valley and then trekked back to the bottom (think of the calorie burning!). We then walked back past the railway and down to the river side where we happened upon a 3 story building, distinctly Tudor in its design which caught our attention straight away.

It had the usual structure of beams in a pattern with small windows with squares filled in with glass. It also has that tell tale lean where the overhanging levels have moved over time and so are no longer perfectly vertical and to say I was obsessed is an understatement. I stood at the bottom to admire it from all angles while Jon wandered through an entrance alleyway underneath to inspect the rear. The property adjoining from the rear courtyard is starkly modern and emphasises the character of this building.

The building turned out to be Bishop Percy’s House, now a Tea Room complete with holiday lets. The plaque at the very top of the building reads 1580 and once you go inside, you can really feel all 440 years of the history in here. It is one of the few buildings of its type to survive the great fire of Bridgnorth in 1646 (yet another product of that Civil War!) and has been a Grade 1 listed building since 18th July 1949. It was originally built by local shipping merchant Richard Forster but was renamed after the Dr Rev Thomas Percy, Author and Royal Chaplain to King George III. It has had many purposes over its lifetime with its last being for the Bridgnorth Boy’s Club up until 2003. From then it stood vacant until it was re-opened in 2018 as the Tea Rooms and Holiday Lets after 5 yeas of careful restoration.

Of course we went in for coffee and cake as, by now, we had burnt off some of the brunch from earlier and the setting couldn’t have been more perfect for finishing off our day in beautiful, historic Bridgnorth. The giant stone plaque still on the wall above the tea room’s kitchen entrance was fascinating as was the large wooden fireplace in the seating area, updated with a log burner making it very cosy. The furniture was very sympathetic to the character of the building with dark wooden tables and chairs and lovely armchairs by the windows. The visit was topped off by the fact that the cake and drinks were very nice indeed.

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It was starting to get dark by now so we walked back to the railway to take the ride back up to the High Town and start making our way back to the van. We’re really glad we took that trip back up as back up as it felt different to going down! Jon couldn’t resist stopping at ‘Ye Olde Terrace Sweet Shop’ on the way where they had shelves upon shelves of sweets to choose from! Safe to say he was in his happy place (he’s a fiend for sweets)

All in all, we had such a great day. We wandered around at our own pace and took the time to really appreciate what was around us. Thats something we have definitely done more of since travelling, taking the time to appreciate the little details that we might have seen but not really appreciated before.