Sue's Family, Flowers and Fun Stuff: Shropshire

Again not much chat with this one just some photos from our short holiday to Shropshire - very nice, relaxing, historic and very enjoyable. We bought a passport ticket which covered entrance into 10 museums and attractions and thought that we would have plenty of time to cover most of them, in fact we only managed 4 or 5 and so are planning a return trip to take in a couple more - as we really loved what we saw.

Here Mike and Jamie are sat at our first stop, a pub for lunch alongside the River Severn and as you can see from the picture below it was lovely. We were heading to the Jackfield Tile Museum which was really interesting, much more so than we thought and we got to see them making tiles which were to be used in the Houses of Parliament.

After the tile museum we headed to a craft centre, which had loads of crafting shops and interesting little retailers, I managed to resist!! We then headed to the Coalport China Museum and Tar Tunnel. The Coalport Museum was really interesting and lots of lovely China to look at, as well as learning a lot more about how it is made.

After a walk to the Tar Tunnel we headed to another pub and had another couple of drinks sat in the lovely sunshine and then over wandered a couple of goats for a look at us!!

They were of course very cute, although Mike is more interested in his mobile than the goats in this photo, Jamie and I were talking to them and offering them one or two nibbles.

After that pub we headed to another pub where we had a lovely meal, which was huge. Jamie had spaghetti bolognese, Mike had fajita and I had stuffed peppers which were divine, we had deserts too but they were huge and we couldn't even finish them!! I had quite happily worked my way down a bottle of rose too, so was by the end well and truly tiddly!! How I managed to take a photo is beyond me. After that we headed to our hotel and I slept like a log!!

More views of the River Severn, just below the Coalport Museum.

A final drink in the garden before we walked (me carefully!!) to the car and onto the hotel.

After a lovely breakfast and a look through the paper we headed into Ironbridge and here is Jamie with said bridge behind him - we had an enjoyable time wandering around a few shops, I picked up some flower books at the local charity shop and then some more in the second hand bookstore a few doors down. I just can't resist floristry and flower arranging books.

Then it was onto the Blists Victorian Town (as featured in the BBC programme The Victorian Pharmacy) and it was wonderful, a smaller version of Beamish Museum really but featuring on a time earlier than Beamish which I think is set around 1912 (ish).

Here is Mike making a beeline for the bank!

Everything is so authentic, even the posters telling you about everything were just as they would have been in the Victorian times. You can even change up for money for old money and use it in all of the shops and places to eat selling Victorian food and sweets. Mike trying to remember what old money was like.

Jamie stood outside the Pharmacy which featured very heavily in the BBC programme which was really really interesting .......

the chemist and the pill maker as featured in the show ......

....and a dentists chair, I wouldn't fancy that for any treatment!

Jamie trying to look cool - he loved the programme too and it was one of the reasons we ended up in Shropshire.

One of the houses, this was set up as a Doctors House, and had a surgery and waiting room, some of it was scary as I recognised some of the pottery and styles of furniture, which were similar to some which were in an Aunty's house at Guisborough.