August 2026. Frome. Somerset.
A weekend in student digs in Bath, with the centrepiece a Saturday pubbing in Frome, guided by local celebrities Jon and Tracey.
“Froooom. Throwm. ANiceTotnes. However you pronounce it, Frome is a gem”, I wrote on my last visit in March 2020, just before something cataclysmic happened.
I’m veering towards “A Nicer Totnes” to describe it, particularly after starting the day in the massive new Rye Bakery* complex at the Station Approach.
Cinnamon buns, yummie mummies and Cameron Winter (of Geese) soundtrack; Frome in a nutshell.
High quality cake and coffee, and a craft bar at the back if you don’t fancy artisan wine from Goose (not Geese).
That bar isn’t on the CAMRA pubs site, but there’s twenty pubs and bars and bottle shops in town, which is more than even the Sheffield Hatter could manage in one go.
It’s a quirky town. For example “In the 2003–04 campaign, Frome FC asked local white witch Titania Hardie, to help improve their home form as they struggled at Badgers Hill.“
And the architecture veers from the grand to the scruffy at regular intervals, shops with yellowing newspaper interrupting the posh shops, and the everpresent threat of a lady riding a pink flamingo.
I could have skipped the pubs completely and just stared into windows;
Name that Emperor !
Head the half mile from the station to St John,
and then to pedestrianised Cheap Street,
the town’s high point,
particularly for fans of leats, a waterway once used to carry Draught Bass through the town with only minimal risk of contamination (2017 photo used to show scale).
But I couldn’t linger; it was inevitable that Stafford Paul would already be seated in Pub 1, checking if the Pride was drinking well.
*Is there a Frome Bakery in Rye ?
retiredmartin 
Rye Bakery are part of Jempsons, a local food supermarket group, and they have several shops. Currently the nearest one to Rye is in Peasmarsh which is nearly 4 miles away.
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Thanks Jon. I’m familiar with Jempsons with their high prices and Sunday closing, with a caravan at Rye Harbour !
There’s no mention on Frome’s Rye bakery website about any link to the Sussex one.
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I have used Jempsons/Rye Bakery occasionally and agree about the high prices. They also annoyed me by not keeping their opening hours up to date on their website.
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Cheap fuel, as well as decent, local food at Jempsons Peasmarsh store. The company also have a smaller outlet in Wadhurst.
Neither store is open on a Sunday, as Martin points out below.
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That’s true, the fuel isn’t expensive.
Not much competition on groceries in that part of East Sussex.
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Interested to read about leats. Reminds me of the levadas which are tourist walking paths in Madeira.
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Did you know that in Sheffield, a leat is called a goit? (Neither did I until a couple of minutes ago, courtesy of Wiki)
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It won’t be long before this blog is fully integrated into ChatGPT and will automatically generate a response “excellent work Bill” or “that’s incorrect Bill” or possibly both at the same time.
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Can you get rye bread in a Rye bakery ?
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Oh yes. I imagine that’s why it’s named that.
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👀h MiL lives in Frome. Wondering now if the Cambridge leats were originally for the conveyance of Abbot Ale 🤔
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No, I think it was for the Level Head IPA.
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