The Perkin Warbeck (JD Wetherspoon), Taunton

The innocuous looking frontage to this one hides a massive Spoons inside, possibly the largest one on a single floor that I've seen. It goes back several hundred yards with the bar roughly in the middle to the left. It's narrow, low ceilinged and rather gloomy but there is a conservatory at the rear where there is another small bar on the left. It was doing quite a fair trade on my Thursday early afternoon visit with shoppers families and others. The small bar at the rear has been turned into a "cider bar" with the four hand pumps just having cider. The main bar has two banks of six hand pumps which had the JDW Trio Of Doom, Great Western Exhibitionist, Exmoor XPA, Butcombe Mendip Spring, Marston's One Is 90, Wood's Shropshire Lad, Bath Barnsey, Daleside Old Legover, Dartmoor Jail Ale and the JDW / Everard's Defender. I went for the XPA (£2.35) which was in very good nick. I thought this was a reasonably good Spoons and certainly preferred it to the Coal Orchard. The JDW directory claims that this is a Lloyds but I could see absolutely no evidence of that.

Very large 2 bar 2 entrance Wetherspoons. Double figure real ales.

Not particularly good - even for a 'spoons! The place needs a bit of a clean, if not a major recoration. Some of the staff could do with a bit of waking up and some extra customer care training. The normal decent selection of well-kept ales and microwaved frozen pre-packed food of the chain. Well below average.