Winter Walks

SOMEWHERE YOU'VE BEEN TO

This little trip almost didn't happen this morning. The words adventure and anxiety are never in sync with each other, never. They are the angel and the devil that sit upon my shoulders. Fortunately, I can proudly say that me and the angel are gradually becoming close buddies as of late. Thus, my somewhat planned stroll to a rather popular place close to home took place.

Now, Ironbridge has always been meh to me. I grew up near it and it was always there, whatever. Never understood it's popularity and never cared for it. That was until I moved to South Wales and when people found out that I came from Shropshire, they asked me if I had been to Ironbridge. I'd always answer with a rather confused "yeah, why?" and it wasn't until my then Geography teacher told me that it's the first bridge of it's kind to be built in the entire world, the birthplace of industrial revolution. No wonder I always saw people of different nationalities posing in front of the bridge for a picture, having picnics and reading stones with words carved into them. Just goes to show how much I paid attention to my surroundings as a child.

So with my grown up eyes and my sponge for knowledge (my brain), I gave this place another chance. The first thing I will comment on vent about actually, is that Google Earth lied to me. I use that program to map out routes and figure out directions and it shown me that I had to walk down a pretty long road to reach my destination. Cool, my brain didn't have to survive the shock it gets when it has to deal with complicated instructions. Pretty straight forward, it was. I told my mother which way I was going before I left. "Are you mad? You'll never walk back up that hill." I thought what? Huh? It doesn't look that steep at all. Until I got there myself. What Google Earth failed to show me was the sudden nosedive the road did. It never shown me that there was about four nosedives in total on the way to Ironbridge. It looked like a ten minute mute walk down a bit of road, not twenty minutes of trying to keep my balance as I stroll down this rollercoaster of a road. Cheers, Google.

To be honest, the gloomy winter weather today was perfect. With the mild fog lurking in the air, it made the bridge, the trees, the path, the sky look more eerie. I digged that. Considering the bitter cold, the little town wasn't empty by any means, I was actually lucky that no one got caught in the shot above. Cultural small cafes sprawled along the high street. Modernized, prouder restaurants dotted every far and few between. Towering hotels. Warm, welcoming gift shops. The settlement as a whole felt pleasant and I grew a little bit more to understand the ironclad history this place holds. It's not just any ol' silly bridge, as I thought 15 years ago. It's far beyond my understanding and pretty nifty that I'm only a walk away from here so I can come back here pretty much whenever I want to.

Did you honestly believe that I could ignore this sitting in a window display in one of Ironbridge's gift stores?

A SIGN

Saw this, immediately thought of my other half. We have a private humour between us that on the outside, we openly despise each other. It's all banter though, we just love to hate each other. We thrive on being mean to each other. That's how we, strangely enough, keep each other sane. I may buy this next time around, it's freakin' perfect. For him.