SPOONS OR NOTHING, THEN

August 2026. Bristol.

A day in Bath, a day in Frome, two (2) identical Chinese takeaways from Twerton’s wonderful Bamboo Garden, which proves I know how to live.

After the Zig Zag beer in Frome, the Zig Zag rail journey home, as a fallen tree (posh version of cows on the line) near Bristol Parkway meant heading back to Bath straight after leaving it, then being diverted via Swindon. So two and a hald hours drifted to nearly four, punctuated by a shrill announcement every 20 minutes urging us to claim “Delay Repay”. Will it make things any better if I do ?

It was almost fortunate then, that the first stage of my trip back had been cancelled as well, forcing me to Dither in Brizzle (a Cream deep cut album track) at the Temple Meads Spoons for an hour.

Look, I was SO tempted by that Sunday morning of festival cider, but 4 later might have regretted around about, ooh, Tamworth.

So it was just the Freedom Breakfast in the Knights Templar, in the company of an anxious juggler, which also sounds like a 70s prog rock track, probably by Caravan.

The most extraordinary aspect of this nondescript edge-of-station Spoons is the speed with which a cooked breakfast was delivered to my table while I was collecting the brown sauce.

Never mind four, three minutes from order to table. And it was one of the most generous plates anywhere, albeit at £4.50 over a quid more than oop north.

Now, Bristol is a wonderful city, but Sundays are not the day to enjoy its pubby pleasures. Brewery Taps often closed, and (I think) Spoons your only option before that 10:31 departure.

If I’d stayed another hour I could have popped in this gem on Old Market Street, but it’s best to leave some treats for later.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

7 thoughts on “SPOONS OR NOTHING, THEN”

  1. I thought “In The Company of an Anxious Juggler” was by Marillion, but what do I know of such things?

    The Knights Templar was the first pub where I saw queueing at the bar. Turning up a little late for a work leaving do (not mine, that was in the Cornubia) I was told I needed to stand in line to get served. “Sod that”, I thought, walked straight up to the bar and got served immediately. Walked over to my friends while soaking up the hatred from the poor saps in the queue. I’ve never queued in a pub and I never will.

    The Long Bar used to open at 8.00 am for the ciderheads. You could buy anything in there for £20 from a junkie. It was £20 because that’s how much a rock of crack was. It was a truly scary place, where people didn’t get drunk so much as progress from there into stony, arid areas of the mind from where there may be no means of escape.

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      1. When they started, Marillion were figures of fun, if not ridicule, in the circles in which I moved. First album, “Script for a Jester’s Tear”! Oh how we laughed. And carried on laughing. Then they went and delivered themselves of the sliver of perfection that is “Kayleigh”. Damn you to hell, Fish.

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  2. Wetherspoons or nothing is how it can be nowadays, including for weekday lunchtime cask beer in Cannock.
    You were lucky with the mushroom and tomato, probably the healthiest two of the six ingredients, as I’ve had neither with my occasional Wetherspoons breakfasts for years.
    My main memory of that Knights Templar is their attempts to short change me.

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