“Madeley Court Hotel… is open to non-residents and there is a pleasant lakeside bar”
Late morning and I’m doing a diversion to see the C17th Madeley Court. It is surrounded by pools. I’m hoping to get a morning coffee as it is now a hotel and it is now coffee time.. But something is strange. There is a heavy presence of burly security men all around and at the entrances. No way are they letting me pass, and they are not for telling me why. “No photographs sir”. Conspiracy theories go through my brain, but I’m most disappointed about missing that coffee. 
Earlier I had made my way past the shopping mecca, all 25 acres of it, at heart of Telford,
Suddenly, I’m in the Town Park, all 370 acres of it. There seems to be something for everyone in here. Fairground, zoo, paddling pools, climbing wall, lakes, all sorts of playgrounds, cycle hire, and trails going in every direction. The Telford T50 officially starts by the old chapel, which is strangely in the centre of a kiddies play area. There is the usual map and info, but the first section of the way is closed off for repairs. Not a good start.
I take a nearby road, which soon becomes the T50 with the now familiar waymarks. Families are out for walks, and a few cyclists come by. Along this stretch, I divert to have a look at the 209ft high Stirchley chimney, a remnant of the iron works started in 1790. The whole area was rich in Ironstone, wood, and then coal, limestone, and clay. Can you imagine the activity and pollution back in the heday of industrial production.
Soon, the waymarks suggest I’m following the Silkin Way, here an old railway, originally a tramway. It goes all the way to Ironbridge directly, but T50 will take in convoluted paths through several nature reserves.
The Dawley and Stirchley station platform has been preserved. Trains last ran in 1952. The ‘line’ goes under an aqueduct, which brought water to the Coalport branch of the Shropshire Canal, which predated the railway.
Along this stretch, I meet a couple in their eighties out for a 15-mile stroll. They regularly do twice that amount, amazing. In contrast, a man on a mobility scooter stops to chat. I notice he is on oxygen. It turns out he has asbestosis, that cruel industrial disease. But getting out as much as he can. All very humbling.
Now, out of the Town Park, I leave the Silkin Way at an old windmill to head down to Madeley Court.
After the missing coffee a few intricate paths through flowering meadows, just follow the waymarks, land me in a confusing housing estate, turn on the app. Once extricated, I come across the Dawley Pools, supplying water for the canal in the past. A couple of anglers are just setting up for the day.
I pass more pools, which are overgrown but must be a haven for wildlife. I stroll on through the maze of trees. There are few ancient trees as they were cut down in the industrial era. Mostly, they just regenerated naturally after the pits and furnaces were abandoned. Though new trees have been planted on some of the contaminated brownfield sites.
After crossing a disused railway, there is a newly surfaced path through Rough Park. Alongside bordering a stream, I notice a gate leading to a community willow plantation. Different varieties are being grown, and there are some willow arches. It would be good to be part of that community.
The first uphill of the day and a series of those dreaded steps lead up into a more open area of Rough Park looking north. A bench provides a suitable lunch spot. Dog walkers appear from all directions, all very friendly and proud of their woodland walks. Buzzards are soring overhead.
Housing that I navigate through next shows little architectural imagination. More housing is destroying a wooded area. I see notices up asking people to object to overdevelopment of their green spaces. I think it is too late.
Further on, I walk through a smaller nature reserve maintained by the community. Let’s hope the land is safe. Another small nature reserve follows now looking out over the wooded Coalbrook Dale, 500ft below, the Wrekin pops up its head as usual.
All of a sudden, I’m in the little lanes above Ironbridge. Workers’ cottages, some a few centuries old, display some lovely cottage garden flowers.
One cottage squeezed into a junction is delightfully named The Wedge of Cheese.
A plaque on an other records the birthplace of Billy Wright, the famous footballer from the fifties, if you remember.
Across the road was the old pub where the nine Madeley miners bodies were taken to after the mine shaft disaster of 1864.
Off route I find a steep stairway dropping all the way down to the Severn, Wisteria archways and little wild spaces add to its charm.
This brings me out right next to the remains of the Bedlam Furnaces which I wanted to see. All that remains are the rear walls and foundations of the engine house, bellows house and one of the furnaces. All is covered by a big tent and the casting area where pig iron would have been run into sand moulds would have been in the car park. Most people drive by without a look.
Bedlam Coalbrookdale. c1780s.Edward Dayes.
You’re familiar with the word ‘bedlam’, a chaotic scene. The word emerged as a nickname for the early asylum, The Bethlem Hospital, established in London way back in the C15th. The scene in the early C19th painting below hints at the conditions in the valley in those days.
Coalbrookdale by night. 1801. Philip James de Loutherbourg.
I walk alongside the River Severn to reach my comfortable abode for the night, ‘Ye Olde Robin Hood Inn’. 
It’s been a long day with lots of history below my feet. I am ready for a pint of Holden’s Black Country beer, brewed in Dudley. 
***
