retiredmartin

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; Frome in a nutshell.

High quality cake and coffee, and a craft bar at the back if you don’t fancy artisan wine.

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 ?}