The Tavern

The previous day's burst water main seemed like a distant memory as I indulged in shower number two that day following our exhaustive twelve mile walk along the beach at Brean. On the agenda that night was a planned trip of what we'd christened the Brean Strip though in all honesty it could hardly have been any further removed from it's Las Vegas namesake.

It soon became apparent that some of the pubs in Brean are contained in the resorts holiday parks and this was the case with our first venue The Tavern which was situated in the Brean Leisure Park. I must admit it didn't look particularly appealing from the outside...

To be fair once we got inside the place certainly improved it was a large bar and function room used to host entertainment for the resort's holidaymakers however despite the fact that it was just before seven o'clock on Bank Holiday Friday there were only another six people in there...

The room was reminiscent of The Phoenix Club, the fictional venue featured in Peter Kay's comedy Phoenix Nights but I did remark at the time it wouldn't be a bad venue for a party assuming that more than eight people turned up !!

I was astonished to discover that there was a real ale available at The Tavern as I was expecting the usual offering of unappetising standard lager, and my Courage Bitter was surprisingly good with Shelley going down the Th*tchers Gold route.

Lack of people in The Tavern made for a fairly depressing feel in the place, and, as we looked around the room at the six other revellers, we noticed that one middle aged couple were tucking into some food, unsurprisingly their a la carte meal was scampi and chips in a basket. Shelley remarked that she reckoned they were that nights act and further investigation confirmed that she was indeed correct, Tiny Avocado were in the building !! The balding man and his partner who was mutton dressed as mutton remarkably refer to themselves as a 'classic boy/girl duo'. Oh behave !! There's some shockers on their set list, Love Really Hurts Without You, Angels, Hey Baby. Is this really true to their claim that they perform 'some of the best music that the last six decades has to offer'?!

The big named acts just keep coming this summer at The Tavern, they read like a who's who of entertainment, Stavros Flatley, Chico, Shane Richie Jnr, it's just like the bill at Live Aid !! Although we were planning on going home on Sunday we were half tempted to extend our stay when we discovered that we could see a man with his hand up a bear's backside on Monday evening, yep Richard and Sooty were doing a meet and greet.

I could almost hear Sooty's long term girlfriend whispering in my ear 'It's time to go Mark'....