Bournemouth short break

[Lawrence001]

Enjoying my £1.25 latte with free refills as I type

[Lawrence001]

I agree they're not for everyone, I'd like to support local pubs when I can but as I said above I've always had issues, even with quite upmarket ones.

Most either don't do kids meals or if they do they always come with chips.

And the (often single) vegetarian option is pasta, risotto or a vegetable or mushroom burger (ie literally crushed vegetables like peas and carrots in breadcrumbs, or an actual portebello mushroom, in a bun) for the same price or £1 less than a freshly made quarter pounder beef burger.

If it's breakfast they will also just give you the meat breakfast without the locally sourced fancy meat with an extra egg and/or tomato again for the same or £1 less.

If a pub doesn't offer high protein meat substitutes - and I include beans (not of the baked variety!) and lentils in that, but plant protein is better) then they won't get my business.

Wetherspoons has a very good choice of vegetarian food and you can have mash and baked potato instead of chips in the kids meals.

Of course if I'm going out for a beer with my mates none of the above applies!

[Roy S]

I occasionally go for a ‘pub crawl’ in Brentwood (only place locally where there are enough pubs within walking distance of each other to warrant being described as a ‘crawl’) and generally the drink prices in the independent pubs are almost twice that in Spoons, dunno why we just don’t go straight there to be honest but we like to mix with all classes

[Lawrence001]

Yeah I think after a few drinks you get less picky about where you are and some of the smarter pubs can feel a bit boring once you start to feel like having a bit more fun as well.

[Roy S]

[Pigmy Pony]

Oi! Go back and flush that log, you manky bint!

[Pigmy Pony]

We only used to use Wetherspoons for meeting up. As I suspect many others did. Now at our one (in Preston) there was no music playing. I don't know if this was company policy, but someone told me it was so people could have a conversation without shouting over the music. Thing is, everyone was talking louder than everyone else, so it was still deafening. And the clientele/competent staff ratio was all wrong.

Ok for cheap grub and drink in the daytime though.

[Pigmy Pony]

We once went for breakfast at a Wetherspoons in Poole, and as it was nice weather we sat outside. Unfortunately next to a family who's young kids had everything on the menu, with no chance of finishing it all.

The staff clearly couldn't be arsed clearing up after the family had left, so it was left to the local seagull population. It was like a scene from "The Birds", and by the time they'd finished the floor was strewn with broken plates and cups. Better that I suppose than having the same lazy staff cleaning the bird shit off those plates and putting the next customers' meals on them.

[Roy S]

Oi! Go back and flush that log, you manky bint!

I suspect this newish strategy of putting the bogs upstairs is to give your esteemed clientele a quick sobriety self test on the way down.... If you end up doing one of those running type falls you've failed and they cart you off to a&e after rescuing your severed extremities which were removed by the plate glass door you just went through.

[Barry]

I could never see the point of pub crawls. Just get yourself settled in a decent pub and get 'slewed' in comfort.

And the reason Wetherspoons prices are cheaper than most, is because the beer is crap.