There are many museums surrounding Ironbridge, and if you look at a schematic map, it seems as if you just waddle over from one to the other in a circle, but, no! If you walking, you have to decide which cluster to prioritize. Yesterday, since a walk was my priority, I visited three: The Victorian Village and two small museums in Ironbridge. Today I did some walk exploring—becasue remember, nothing opens until 10:00 at the earliest—and discovered something interesting: all those walking sites such as All Trails, and Outdoor Active, do not exploit the walking possibilities in a given area because l will tell you for a fact that there are many more paths to explore right here in Ironbridge than any of the apps reveal.
Today the ducks out of the water:

Remnants of a Bottle Kiln:
Supplemented by a whole bottle kiln at the China Museum (about which more later)
Is that huge or what?!
And the shortest set of railroad tracks you ever saw:
Pack your bags for that trip!
First stop was at Mews Art Studios
where a number of artists have studios. The setting was lovelier than the art,

but, for £10 I bought three hand painted note cards from this nice artist-man, whose name is Graham Sherman:

Then I headed on to the Coalport China Museum where they had a unique audio system. You were given a tea cup and when you saw a saucer on a stand, you put your cup on the saucer at which point the audio would commence. That there were other people in the room who might not want to listen is just too bad because the audio was loud and, unfortunately, ridiculous. At one cup and saucer stop, a lady with an exceedingly shrill voice, belted out "I'm a little teapot short and stout...." Gracias a Dios, it is a short song!
At this museum, I learned many interesting things about tea. Please click on the texts to enlarge
Two dainty, gold-lined, blue tea cups with matching spoons:
Not all the items had to do with tea:
As you might imagine (correctly), working with the materials to make these objects was hazardous to one's health:
Sounds as bad as end stage syphilis.
Next stop was the Tar Tunnel:
The sign on the door reads: "The museum is now closed for the winter season."
Then it was off to the Jackfield Tile Museum, located in a large industrial complex. I learned one interesting thing at the tile museum: that the regard paid to sanitation in the modern era was very good for the tile business because tile allows you to achieve sanitary perfection in every class of buildings. Yes!
As I was wandering around the complex, looking for the entrance, I took a picture of this tile:
which, apparently, was forbidden.
It was not forbidden to take a picture of the tiles on the floor:
Oy!The tile museum was not well curated. In fact, the only truly interesting museum among the bunch, was the China Museum However, I did not visit the museums with a more scientific bent. Maybe some real treats awaited there. I leave tomorrow for Wellington, and, besides, I am museum-ed out.
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