Saturday 20th June 2026
With seven GBG pubs, only Belfast can boast more required BRAPA ticks than Weston-super-Mare in a single location.
My long overdue WSM trip had been high on the agenda all week, so I'm glad I'd lasted until day five. It'd prove the most angsty day of the hols, but a six tick outcome was a good result.
Today was the final day before the evil heatwave hits the UK, lasting until the day I leave (ugh), so this was my last chance to do something crazy involving a bonkers OS walk. It wasn't all gonna be WSM.
My first stop is Yatton, close to the home of one of Somerset's most famous sons, the Somerset Gimp. Which might help to explain why pub one felt a bit 'off'.
A private home that begrudgingly opens to the general public for drinks, that's the best way I can describe the peculiarly unwelcoming Butchers Arms, Yatton (3500 / 6290). The building has genuine age, 14th century in fact, and yes you can feel it in places - low beams, clompy stomper. Words like 'uncompromising' and 'basic' can be positives in some pubs, but not here. I'm the first customer in. I can see the landlady sanding down a piece of wood outside, she can surely see me, but takes her sweet arse time to wander inside and serve me, which she does with a huff, my small talk given short shrift. The Bass pump is turned around so Tribute or Butcombe it is. I go for the latter. Okay, but fizzy. The landlord wanders through, he's just as grumpy. Just when I'm about to write the pub off as a total dead loss, baldie local Gary arrives bringing with him a smattering of positivity. Shame we only get chatting when I'm on my last gulp of fizz, but he manages to salvage this place from bottom place, just! A strangely random GBG entry. Makes you wonder how dire the other pubs around here. Unless of course, the local CAMRA chairman is our Gimp, and the Butchers knows it and is blackmailing its way into the GBG?
Gary reckoned my walk to pub two would be scenic. It isn't. If he thinks this is scenic, he's due a day trip up Minehead way. More knobhead cars drive like it's Brands Hatch.
So blimmin' humid, it makes me bloody terrified for this heatwave which has become a bogie man in my mind by now. But at least a nice North Somerset Bird of Prey Centre brunette in leather pants (Sister Gimp?) wishes me 'good morning' at 12:45pm.
Before you can say 'disco minge', I've reached pub two.
What a difference a pub makes! By gum, I enjoyed the Plough, Congresbury (3501 / 6291). Not quite in the conversation for 'pub of the week', but not far off. This despite the aloof attitude on the part of some of the visiting silver spoon yoofs whose attitude seems to be 'I've travelled from Bristol so my shit doesn't stink as bad as yours'. A leafy urchin serves me a stunning 'Fallen Tree' straight from the barrel, and one of the more 'human' customers sidles up next to me and says "not bad prices here, I paid £30 last night for 3 pints of lager!" I reply "whaaat, £10 a pint, that's insane?" and he wasn't expecting to be questioned, mumbles that he's exaggerating because he was very drunk, and slopes off outside with the masses. I secrete myself in a snuggy nookie alcove beside the bar (why would anyone want to sit anywhere else?) and chortle silently as a tall spoilt Brizzle lass interrogates our poor leafy urchin on the specifics of the food menu and I wish I could remember some details, cos it truly was ridiculous. I'm suddenly conscious of a hush in the atmosphere, and can hear a loud female voice talking First Aid and think there's some medical demo going on ..... well that's until I see an old dude being stretchered through the pub into a waiting ambulance. Jeez! Takes the pub a while to recover, but on the way out the bald guv'nor wishes me a cheerful farewell. Yep, a really good pub.
Time for my final ridiculous walk of the holiday, and this even tops those I did yesterday.
On the plus side, there wasn't any road walking involved. On the negative side, farmers fields galore. The dotted paths on the OS map didn't always match the reality, leading me into fields I shouldn't be in, much gate hurdling and waist high crops.
Two encounters with bulls, a fraught golf course crossing (involving walking alongside the driving range - 'please don't pull your shots to the right' I pray), and finally a long distance chat with a farmer on a tractor who used the art of mime to help me find the stile at the far end of his field, although I did have to step over a freshly mangled rabbit, still twitching. Yup, it was a tough trek, but I made it!
Approaching the pub, a large local teen asks if I want to attend his village fete and I manage to be polite cos I am, and say 'maybe later' which was a massive lie. I just want my third tick!
I arrive with 40 minutes until the bus, I'd expected to be here for over an hour which says a lot about the toughness of the walk. At least it means I can spin this out into one 'nursed' pint rather than two speedy ones.
Up the little hill, through the postage stamp sized front garden awash with day trippers. Seems harsh to blame Bristolians with zero evidence to back it up, but it's an agenda I enjoy pushing. Crown Inn, Churchill (3502 / 6292) is rustic farmhouse joy meets dark candlelit cave. Unaltered by time, electric atmosphere, yet no National Inventory star that I can see. Lost in the post? Easily a pub of the week contender. The Bristolians have no taste, it is deserted inside save for a couple of rich accented local lads propping up the bar in the side room. This is where I end up. Chunky cool stone walls doing their job again as I'm obviously sweating buckets. The Palmers IPA goes down smooth, the barmaid laments her damaged leg caused by falling asleep after eating a cottage pie. In other foody news, the bloke who has just spent 1ten mins telling everyone (three people including me) how much he fackin' likes tuna rolls gets told he swears too much and needs to tone it down in case an unsighted little old lady is present in the front bar. "Fuck off, I don't fucking swear much at fucking all ya fucking fucker!" he replies, stung by the criticism. But Dr Google informs us to much surprise that the idea that swearers have a smaller vocabulary is misplaced. In fact, people who swear loads are actually more creative and emotionally mature. Well who knew? Vindicated, he concedes the one person he wouldn't swear in front of is his Grandma. I tell him to imagine that she's the imagined old lady in the front bar, but worry I might've overstepped as a one time visitor and quickly back track. The loos are outside through a wobbly paved courtyard full of bric-a-brac, OF COURSE THEY ARE, the most outdoors loo pub you could hope to visit. Bus time, WSM looms.
Weird French student Pierre is laying on the grass with a Toulouse rucksack, I ascertain he's waiting for the bus like me, just with a very 'je ne sais quoi' attitude to bus-catching so it's up to me to concentrate and stick my hand out.
The driver is an irritable munchkin and barks at any drivers who so much as breathe in the wrong direction, hurling me off with a 'tut' for daring to press the button a few stops before the main WSM stop, in the southern backstreets.
To suffer not one, but two of my most irrationally hated punters of the week, was bad news for the Bear Inn, Weston-super-Mare (3503 / 6293) because this highly carpetted lounge-like hotel bar was a gaff I could normally get behind. Inevitable teddy bears are scatted liberally, and there's a reassuring old fusty stench. Our guv'nor is made of the right stuff, his leather cowboy hat gave 'real ale vibes', encouraging me that the ale would be decent. Gorge Best from Cheddar, I wonder if mentioning Belfast earlier caused it to appear? But there's this older couple holidaying from Bromsgrove, utter wrong 'uns. Locals are trying to advise them to swerve a dodgy disco bar she has her heart set on in favour of a GBG entry called Brit Bar, but she's is so dismissive and condescending of the locals. And despite being like in their 70's, theatrical slurpy tongue kissing at five minutely intervals, yuck! I'm sat slap bang in middle of the room on one of those tiny circular tables with nowhere to hide. It isn't her other half who bothers me, he's just a non-entity, but one of the blokes doing the helping makes my skin crawl too. Can't really say way, reminds me of THAT 2016 Wokingham painter decorator in the Queen's Head. He's just a real motormouth know-it-all, says 'fuck' like he's just learnt the word, so I love it, ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT when our leather hatted host tells him to tone down his swearing! Twice in two pubs, what were the chances? He crumbles and doesn't speak for the next ten mins. Total bliss. The Gorge Best is a touch sweaty to cap off a difficult experience. Time to leave.
It is a fair trek north to reach the other GBG ticks on foot (Mrs Bromsgrove was after a taxi, and I'd made a mental note to swerve Brit Bar today in case she finally did start listening to what the locals were trying to tell her), so I decide to pick out two that sound like micropubs.
The sunny Saturday coastal town effect had turned WSM into an edgy shithole, it felt like Donny-by-the-Sea as I wandered up, topless teens hooning around on bikes going "awite mate" like junior Barrymore's try to be intimidating, whilst fat sunburnt tramp stamps block the pavements.
BlueSky dystopia stylings, awash with generous gays, lost Irishmen, bored kids suffering selfish parents and dorky Americans playing obscure card games, the Black Cat, Weston-super-Mare (3504 / 6294) was a micropub that impressed in part, but set my teeth on edge. My first holiday sighting of Bass in the last place I'd expected to see it, but by gosh it is kept extremely well. Twee was the decor, but effort had been put in. As much I love a black cat, ditch the fluffy cushions please! The toilet cubicle is wrapped in old Viz articles. 'Cabinet Minister had sex with dolphin' is an interesting read when you're finally forced into your daily poo. The barman is very flippant when I can't get their WiFi to connect. Not arsed at all. Hairy lady at the bar is arsey too. Contrast this with Turvey's Three Cranes a few months back, which looked like Bedfordshire gastro hell on the surface but their commitment to fixing their ailing WiFi and general good grace and hardworking attitude had me realising I'd been far too quick to judge it. Couldn't say that about this place. All was surface level.
A quick hop across the road took me to another WSM micro, and our final tick of the day .....
Much more like it! Just when I was losing all hope in what had proved a testing Saturday, Fat Tap, Weston super Mare (3505 / 6295) brings me back from the brink. Having recently moved from the GBG listed '127 High Street' to '132 High Street', you could even argue I should be treating this as a pre-emptive, but I won't. The barmaid apologises for her sweaty state. I think back to all the sweaty states I've entered pubs this holiday and give her a brief greatest hits of BRAPA's Somerset sweatiest, which I'm sure she enjoys because she gives me a pub loyalty card although I'll almost certainly never come here again. The perfume inspired ale is called 'Dolci and Karmana', I've seen it on so many bars this week and it has finally worn me down. Tropical chewy, bit much for me. But the pub kicks the shit out of the Black Cat. 9/10 carpet, cucumber smell, positive atmosphere. An even taller Haaland gurgles and a modern interpretation of Led Zep block the route to the loos. No wonder our WiFi denying mate from Black Cat has made his way across the road, no surprise that he's friends with a lass who earlier confessed she likes Barry Manilow and stuck Elastoplast to her arm. I give him a glare. The WiFi is good in here so take that and party! This happy ending to day five gave me hope for Weston's four other ticks which we'll look at in part seven.
Arriving back into Taunton by train for the first time this holiday was something of a novelty. Our evening World Cup game saw the evil Germans sneak home v Ivory Coast. Boooo. Didn't stay up for Brazil Haiti, CBA.
So, our highly anticipated heatwave begins tomorrow and a nice man is driving me around four obscure ones + a pre-emptive. I'll tell you about that on Wednesday, then I'll try and get the month ender out on Friday. It's a plan.
Keep it pub, Si
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