YHA Ironbridge Coalport

It is a brilliant experience. The hostel is near the museum and also Victoria Village. Be aware of the check-in time in Winter as it is an hour later than the closure of the nearest by museum.

Lovely hostel with great facilities and clean rooms. We visited over half term, taking a 4 bed room. Pros: Very clean Friendly informative staff Good cooking facilities Nice lounge area Great for exploring Ironbridge and nearby hotels Pleasant walk to several pubs Nice and warm - maybe too warm for some but I liked it! Food was very good Cons: I never find the YHA mattresses or pillows very comfortable - will take a SIM to go on top next time. We had a spare bed so I used the spare mattress to double up. Rooms were a bit noisy - it’s an old building and there are fire doors throughout the corridors which don’t always close softly. Ear plugs are a must.

This place is effectively a giant Faraday Cage, so don't expect a decent phone or internet signal inside most of the rooms. The building is basic but functional; the ensuite room I had was adequate for my needs and was largely empty so no late night noise problem. The YHA is right next to the China Museum, which is handy and not too far from the Jackfield Tile Museum (15 minutes). It's 30 minutes walk into Ironbridge itself along the safest route via Jackfield which avoids the main roads and is really very pleasant. There is a small canal along which you can walk in the morning or evening, as suits. The negative aspect is that the food, as at many YHAs, is a let down. I'm 63 and fading a bit, it takes me time in the morning to get going, so I arrive at breakfast after 0800 by which time the locusts have been through, overfilling their breakfast plates, eating what they can then making off with the remains, along with the bread and butter so they can make sandwiches for lunch. What remains isn't very palatable - rubbery scrambled egg, congealed bacon, anaemic sausages, mushy fried tomato - and they're very, very reluctant to make fresh. They often advertise the breakfast as 'unlimited - it isn't unlimited if you just point at what's left and say "that's all that there is, there's no more". The Tile Press Cafe at the Maws Centre (ten minutes away) does an amazing freshly prepared breakfast for an extra quid, I'd rather walk there and eat than have the poor, industrially-produced breakfast at the YHA. This, along with the inadequate and expensive new evening menu, is a problem all over the YHA with the honourable exception of YHA Chester (Trafford) where the kitchen staff were happy to go the extra mile to make the food enjoyable, even if the one breakfast I had there was overrun with noisy schoolkids. Obviously, I don't expect 4-star treatment at a hostel but I'd like the food to be better at the prices that they charge; even Wetherspoons do better for less money and O'Neill's certainly do better for less. When you factor in the price of the room and the expensive breakfast and the expensive evening meal, you might as well stay at a small B&B closer to Ironbridge via Trivago or Tripadvisor. And if the manager of the hostel comes on and vomits up the usual meaningless ManagerSpeak instead of making real efforts to change the culture in favour of the guests, you can make up your own mind about whether or not to stay here.