Wedmore, Wells and Burnham

Sue's holiday from work started at midday Thursday.  On the evening, we are off to Wedmore to see Dave and Jan and to have a meal with them at the New Inn.  On Wednesday, Sue booked a night's B&B at the Swan Inn, so we won't have to drive home afterwards.  We set off for Wedmore at 3:00 pm and arrived at the Swan Inn 45 minutes later.

Swan Inn, Wedmore

The pub has recently been renovated to a very high spec and the restaurant has been awarded the Good Food Guide Readers' Restaurant of the Year, South West regional winner.

New Inn Restaurant

There was ample parking available in the car park, so we parked and were shown to our room, Room 1, where we unpacked and settled in.  The most unusual feature of the spacious bedroom was a large bath postioned right in front of the window, overlooking  the high street.  Thankfully, there were venetian style shutters at the window.  There was also the en suite room with a shower cubicle and power shower.  The bed was enormous, 6ft x 6ft 6 inches. There was tea and coffee making facilities with fresh ground coffee and two cafetierres.  There was also a jar of boiled sweets, but it would have been nice to have had some biscuits.  Free wifi was provided in the rooms.

Dave and Jan walked down to the Swan Inn to meet us. They arrived at 5:00 pm and showed us round the Wedmore shopping area, but we couldn't go into any shops as Wedmore closes down at 5:00pm.  We decided to return in the morning after breakfast.  During our walk, we found one of the Wells' Swans at the Borough Mall shopping precinct.

Apparently, there are 60 swans dotted around Wells, to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Sue is very interested in visiting Wells to photograph the Wells' Swans.  Last year we spent a lot of time going round photographing all 60 of the Gorillas in Bristol and surrounding area.

We made our way back to Dave and Jan's house for tea and biscuits before going out to the New Inn (no web site) for dinner. 

New Inn, Wedmore

The table was booked for 7:30 pm.  We had a couple of pints of the local Thatcher's Gold cider and we all opted for the excellent fish and chips, with the fish having arrived fresh from the south coast that day.  The batter was light and crispy and the chips, soft with a beautiful golden crispy outside.  The fish and chips was accompanied by your choice of garden peas or mushy peas.  I went for the mushy peas, purely from an ease of handling point of view.  It was a fun evening and we left and headed back to the Swan Inn at 10:30.

We had a good night's sleep in the comfortable bed at the Swan Inn.  We had thought that we may have been bothered by traffic noise, as we were on a busy road junction but it was fine.

Breakfast was served between 7:30 and 11:30. This is quite an exceptional time span for a B&B to serve breakfast, but it is served in the pub bar, which is also open to non residents for breakfast, so that would explain it.  All breakfast items ranging from museli to a Swan Full English breakfast are listed on the menu.  Normally in B&Bs, there is a buffet table with fruit, cereals, and fruit juice etc. to help yourself before you have the main cooked breakfast.  There is no indication as to what you are allowed to have, but I had read a Tripadvisor review where the reviewer had requested more than one item from the list, so I ordered fruit, yogurt with granola and scambled eggs and tomatoes on toast for Sue and muesli and a full Swan English for me.  We were given orange juice with ice cubes without being given the option of ice or no ice.  I would have preferred no ice.  My full English consisted of two grilled tomato halves, two rashers of streaky bacon with rind still attached, one small sausage, some black pudding and scrambled egg on one slice of toast.  The tomato was a lovely sweet one, perfectly cooked, and the scrambled egg was as it should be.  I would have preferred back bacon, but  anyway, I carried on and removed the rind from the streaky bacon which was very dry, hard and unpleasant.  I imagine it had been cooked much earlier and kept hot.  The sausage was very small and I suspect, sourced from a local butcher, but it was not to my taste.  I had read on the  Tripadvisor review that scrambled egg was the default, which I decided to go with, but normally, if given the choice, which I wasn't, I would opt for poached.  The toast which the scrambled egg was sat upon had a crust so hard a hammer and chisel would have been more suited than a knife and fork.  I left the black pudding untouched.  I would not rush back here for breakfast.  Compared to the magnificent feast at the Three Brooks pub in Bradley Stoke, this was very poor and cost double the price.

After breakfast we checked out and headed for the shops which included a number of designer clothes shops, some quaint gift shops and an antique shop.  I found a beautiful food/general store called the Paper Shop in Church Street, which made such a welcome, refreshing change having grown accustomed to the dreadful Tesco Express stores which have sprung up everywhere around us back at home in Bristol. 

Later on, we drove to Wells, parked the car and paid and displayed for 2 hours.  We wandered around enjoying the sights.  Wells is a very beautiful city.  During our tour, we photographed many of the Swans.  The Swans have been sponsored by businesses, individuals and organisations and decorated by a team of talented artists and craftspeople, who have transformed them into beautiful works of contemporary art.  Here is a small sample.

We left Wells and headed back along the B3139 towards Burnham on Sea.  We have recently booked another week's holiday at the Burnham on Sea Holiday Village in July, so we thought we would pop in and look around again.  We walked around the fishing lakes, had a look at the caravan and went into the Mash and Barrel for a cream tea.

Sam was at home alone, so we drove back and the three of us went out to the Baileys for something to eat.