The Marketside Tavern, Bury

Have to agree with Rob from Camra - micros work well when offering an eclectic/eccentric range of beers that you cannot get elsewhere. The cask selection (Titanic etc) was not too inspiring. Some ciders. Lots of German Keg and bottles. Monday night possibly not the best time to visit - a lack of punters (one other, possibly a mate of the owner).

Facebook page of The Marketside Tavern - www.facebook.com

Facebook page of The Marketside Tavern - www.facebook.com

The Thirsty Fish is a micropub located in a shopping area next to Bury Interchange. The single room was busy on my Saturday afternoon visit, with just one table remaining, which I duly took. The table was just adjacent to the bar and next to a significant list of ciders, none of which I'd had. Although, I was soon brought back down to earth, by being told that the only cider available was Mortimer's Orchard. Somebody else came in shortly after me and also tried to order one of the ciders. It seems a little short-sighted not to have any real cider on at all. The 2 regular ales are both from Beartown. One is labelled as Thirsty Fish, which is in fact Golden Fish. The other is Crème Bearlee. 3 guests were Welbeck Abbey Henrietta, Milestone Shine On & Brewsmith Nelson Sauvin. Customers were mainly middle-aged or elderly, with the Eastern European barman being the youngest present. Whilst this was my favourite pub of the day in the Bury area, it still fell short of my expectations.

I don't know were they got the name Thirsty Fish from as this was previously a Milkshake bar. This micro pub opened last summer and has a constant steam of drinkers visiting from near and far. The beer board situated near the rear bar had a choice of eight ales and beside each beer was written the distance of the brewery from this micro. All the walls were cladded in rough cut pine apart from a wall mural of the Beatles crossing Abbey road. We went for the Manning Brewers Woah Man and Deeply Vale Ripper, both which were good beers and reasonably priced at £3 a pint. The barmaid was very trendy and was quite punky in her style.