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🍽️ Food & Drink

Bath for Food & Drink Lovers — 3 Days of Stone-Milled Sourdough, Somerset Cheese and Cellar-Distilled Gin

Farmers' market cheese under a Victorian train shed, wood-fired sourdough on Walcot Street, beef-dripping fish and chips and gin distilled beneath the pavement.

📍 Bath, United Kingdom 📅 3-day itinerary

Bath's food story runs from Norman market stalls to a Michelin-starred hotel basement: stone-milled sourdough on Walcot Street, Somerset cheese ripened in city cellars, gin distilled under a Queen Street bar and Cornish day-boat fish fried in beef dripping.

Local Markets & Neighbourhood Food

09:00
🧺 Bath Farmers' Market, Green Park Station

Britain's first modern farmers' market, trading Saturdays 9am–1.30pm since 1997 beneath Green Park Station's 1870 glass train shed. Around 30 producer stalls: Bath Soft Cheese, Somerset apple juice, Wiltshire charcuterie, raw honey.

⏱ 2-3 hours 💶 Free entry; stall items £2–£9
Traders discount unsold bread and cheese from about 12.45, but the Bath Pig charcuterie is gone by 10.30.
12:00
🧀 The Fine Cheese Co., 29-31 Walcot Street

Cheesemonger since 1979, ripening West Country wheels in its own cellars — Bath Blue, Montgomery's cheddar, Cornish Kern, Wyfe of Bath. The adjoining café serves a ploughman's board with house chutney and charcoal crackers.

⏱ 1.5 hours 💶 Ploughman's board around £16; cheese from £5 per 100g
Ask for a taste before buying — the counter cuts slivers of anything on display, and staff vacuum-pack for travel free.
14:30
🏛️ Bath Guildhall Market

Bath's oldest shopping site, trading since Norman times and housed under a domed rotunda rebuilt in 1863. Around twenty stalls sell Somerset cider, pasties, olives and cured meat; the Market Café fries breakfast at a horseshoe counter.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Café breakfast around £7; stall snacks £3–£6
17:00
🍺 The Bell Inn, 103 Walcot Street

Community-owned pub bought outright by more than 500 regulars in 2013. Nine hand pumps pour Abbey Ales Bellringer, brewed a few streets away, alongside Bath Ales and local cider; live music three nights a week in the long back garden.

⏱ 1.5 hours
No food kitchen — you are welcome to carry in cheese and bread bought earlier on Walcot Street and eat it at the garden tables.

Signature Dishes & Restaurants

10:00
🥖 Landrace Bakery, 55 Walcot Street

Bakery and coffee bar that mills its own flour from West Country heritage grain on a stone mill behind the counter. Wood-fired sourdough, kouign-amann and cardamom buns come out in waves and sell out well before closing.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Sourdough loaf £4.80; pastries £3.50–£4.50
The 8am opening is the only reliable way to get a whole loaf; by 11 the shelves hold mostly focaccia slices.
13:00
🐟 The Scallop Shell, 22 Monmouth Place

Fish and chips fried in beef dripping using Cornish day-boat catch landed at Newlyn, plus whole grilled turbot, cockle popcorn and mushy peas. The bar takes walk-ins while the back dining room runs on bookings.

⏱ 1 hour
15:00
🫖 The Bath Bun tearoom, 2 Abbey Green

Tearoom under the plane tree on Abbey Green baking the Bath bun — sweet enriched dough crusted with crushed sugar nibs and a lump of sugar hidden in the base, a smaller, sweeter thing than the city's better-known brioche loaf.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Bath bun around £4.50; full cream tea about £11
18:00
The Olive Tree, Queensberry Hotel, Russel Street

Bath's Michelin-starred kitchen, in the basement of a 1771 townhouse hotel, where Chris Cleghorn builds tasting menus around Cornish fish, Wiltshire lamb and Somerset dairy with a heavy hand for fermentation and koji.

The five-course lunch is roughly half the price of the evening tasting menu and is far easier to book at short notice.

Street Food, Bars & Food Culture

09:30
Colonna & Small's, 6 Chapel Row

Coffee bar founded by three-time UK Barista Champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, pouring three different single-origin espressos at once so you can taste them side by side, plus a rotating filter list brewed to order.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Espresso £3; filter brew £4.50
Ask the bar for the espresso comparison flight — it is not on the menu but staff will pull all three as small servings.
12:30
🌭 Schwartz Bros, Saw Close

Griddle takeaway on Saw Close feeding Bath since 1979, working through burgers, spiced sausages and fried onions at a street hatch. It is the city's late-night standby and the traders' lunch stop in equal measure.

⏱ 1.5 hours
14:30
🍸 Canary Gin Bar, 3 Queen Street

Georgian-fronted bar sitting above the cellar still where Bath Gin is distilled with kaffir lime leaf, coriander and wormwood. Around 200 gins line the shelves and flights arrive as three measures with matched tonics and garnishes.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Gin flight around £14; cocktails £11–£13
17:30
🍷 Beckford Bottle Shop, 5-8 Saville Row

Bottle shop and snug wine bar off the Assembly Rooms with several hundred labels on the wall: pay shop price plus corkage to drink in. The tiny kitchen sends out Bath Pig charcuterie, Westcombe cheddar and anchovy toast.

The corkage supplement is a fixed few pounds per bottle, so trading up to an expensive label costs proportionally far less than ordering by the glass.

📍 Route map

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