The Severn Valley Railway in The View from the Terrace

We are still enjoying the spring weather. It has been a little colder over the past 2 days but now it is warming up again. My back is more or less right now and I managed to clear one small flower bed of weeds. Hubby put the hanging baskets back up last Monday. The wooden struts that held them were damaged when the plumbers took the old heavy pipe down. Hubby was going to simply put them back up but Tony suggested making a mini porch over the door. There was one when we first came here but Hubby took it down when it started to rot and just left the struts to hold the hanging baskets. Tony and Hubby worked on it over last weekend and it is now finished and looks lovely.

I thought it was time I wrote about the second day of our visit to the Wyre Forest when we had a trip on the Severn Valley Railway. It’s just over 40 years since the last time we visited it and I was very excited to be going there again. We set out mid morning but first we had to pop into Kidderminster to post Cat’s birthday present. We found it was market day. There was a plant stall which, of course, I had to look around. I bought some lobelia for my summer window boxes. Then we passed a pet stall and I remembered that Cat’s dog Billie Jean’s birthday was the day before hers. I always put a gift for Billie in Cat’s parcel, how could I have forgotten? We had just posted Cat’s gift but I bought a dog toy for Billie and we would have to send it separately. At this point it started to rain quite heavily so we rushed into a shopping precinct where we found a small cafe and decided to have lunch.

The trip on the railway was pure nostalgia. The station at Kidderminster is not the original one but they have rebuilt it to look exactly like it did in the old days with a W H Smith’s newspaper stall with newspaper placards about Fred Perry winning Wimbledon and prime minister Stanley Baldwin’s comments about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson. Baldwin was born in Bewdley just 3 miles away so that was very appropriate. In the ladies waiting room there was a photo of a busy Shrewsbury square during the same era and I spent a few minutes looking for members of my family, but didn’t find any. There was also museum of old railway artifacts and even a mock signal box.

Seeing the old Great Western Railway carriages took me right back to my childhood.

I insisted on getting into one of those old corridor ones with separate compartments each with 6 seats. I used to go on those trains with my mum when I was a child and we went to visit my Auntie in Wolverhampton. We travelled the whole journey from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth. At one point we saw a group of people in a field waiting to see our train, some were taking photos and others were waving, I waved back. I have often waved to people in the steam trains that occasionally go past the bottom of our garden, it made a change to be the one in the train waving back.

Bridgnorth is one of the places I used to go to with my parents in the car on a Sunday afternoon. In those days pubs closed from 2pm until 7pm on a Sunday so it was our family day. We would have Sunday dinner together and then go out. When we arrived at Bridgnorth we decided to have cream tea in the station cafe before having a walk around the town. The station is high on a hill and there is a bridge from it over the road to another hill. The town centre or high town is at the top and there is a funicular railway linking it with low town by the river. Dad used to drop off Mum and I at the top near the railway and we used to ride down to the riverside to meet Dad parked by a green grassy bank near the bridge where people used to picnic. I remembered boats on the river and a view across to an island. We found the bridge and the island but only a paved area beside the water and no boats. After a walk along the riverside I wanted to go on the funicular railway, but Hubby said he would rather walk up. The road up was very steep and I had to keep stopping to get my breath. We had a little look around the town and then it was time to walk back for the return journey.

I had found the road we needed to follow to get back to the station on a town map, but as we walked towards it, we saw a sign pointing right saying ‘To the railway station’ so we followed that. After a very long walk we seemed to be heading out of the town so we asked someone and he directed us down a steep hill. This didn’t seem to make sense as the railway station is on the top of a hill. We went down the road sure it must be wrong and then I spotted a very steep street going up on the left called Railway Street. That had to be the way. By now I was very tired and we were getting very short of time before the last train back to Kidderminster. About half way up I had to stop and I asked Hubby to go ahead and find someone to check we were going the right way. I was starting to wonder how much a taxi back to Kidderminster would cost as I was sure we were going to miss the train, perhaps it would be cheaper to find a b and b in Bridgnorth and go back on the railway in the morning, but then the tickets probably weren’t transferable.

Those thoughts were going round in my head as Hubby disappeared at the top of the hill but then I saw a long building on the top left with a sign in the shape of an engine in front of it. That had to be it, so I carried on up slowly. Eventually I got to the top and turned to look at the building only to find it was the library and tourist office and the sign was just an advert for the railway! At this point Hubby returned and said he had asked in a shop and we shouldn’t have come up the hill, so now we had to go back down. So back down we went and further along the road was the railway station up a different hill on the other side. I had forgotten we had crossed from one hill to another on the footbridge. I realised later that the sign we had seen directing us to the station was a very old one and had probably been there since before the footbridge had been built, which was why it had sent us the long was around. We just made the train. Once I had got my breath back I thoroughly enjoyed the journey home. Hubby bought us drinks I had coffee and he had something a bit stronger and we sat back to enjoy the scenery.



The steam is from the engine.

River Severn

This time we were on the train looking at the safari park

The Wyre Forest

Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal

Back at Kidderminster station