YHA Ironbridge Coalport

YHA hostels provide exceptional value, delicious meals, and clean, friendly atmosphere. The communal facilities and location near the River Severn make it suitable for families and groups.

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.

We went for a day out to the China Museum, time was getting on and we wanted some lunch so we decided to interrupt the visit and go to the YHA cafe, the only onsite catering option. It wasn’t busy and we placed our order for a simple snack, toasted sandwiches with salad and fries. After half an hour we realised that the waitress bringing some plates was actually going to the next table so we continued to wait. It was totally shambolic with kitchen staff juggling making the salad, shaking the deep fat fryer and watching the panini press. It was another 15 minutes before our order arrived, only for us to discover that it was incorrect, not cheese as requested but ham and tuna respectively. We decided not to wait for them to conjure up the right food and headed off to Ironbridge, missing out on the remainder of the museum. The cafe manager had just come on site and refunded us in full but we left hungry and our day out was marred. It’s a pity, we were thinking that we might join the YHA and stay in some hostels this summer.