This week Mill Road in Cambridge lost out to Northampton’s St Giles St in the Great British High Street Awards. North Parade, home of the craft beer revolution in Bradford, was also shortlisted.
These awards are nice to win, but not as important to Mill Road residents as their inability to stop the inexorable rise of the chain coffee shop and supermarket, with a new Sainsbury Local facing the biggest opposition.
Today’s Winter Fair is a major annual event, a celebration of diversity in a road still most famous for its pubs (rather than my being born and trained as an accountant in it). The much-changed Locomotive (above) is where I spent Christmas Day playing darts once, which says all you need to know about me.
During the day, apart from the best selection of Asian food anywhere, you can go inside many of the historic buildings, including the afore-mentioned maternity hospital, or brave the increasing winds knocking over the many brass bands and carol singers.
I’ve often compared Cambridge unfavourably to North-Western cities like Preston in areas like parks, architecture and museums, but Mill Road, along with it’s side roads like Gwydir St and Mawson Road, is unbeatable.
Today is a good day to visit the area’s pubs, with all the extra customer ensuring decent beer, but they’re never quiet.
We walked through the listed Cemetery to the Cambridge Blue;
Terri and Jethro in the Blue really go the extra mile for events like this, and a good collection of ciders (rhubarb cider excellent), casks and kegs complement the reindeers and Santa well. Hofbrau for me though.
Unlike many Christmas “fayres”, the food today was very cheap (£3 for Thai chicken curry), priced to promote the permanent offerings in this great street.
retiredmartin 
walked into the Locomotive on a Friday night i the late 1970s and shouted out to my mates who were there earlier ‘I’ve just done a load of bikes’ — it was a biker pub then so you can imagine the fast explanations that I meant bicycles. Used to play gigs at the Midland, which had this incredible clientele. The landlord at the time went to court saying a woman had robbed him, what didn’t come out was that he was paying her for a certain act, though my then girlfriend’s landlady was at the Evening News and so I got the dirt. Glad to see Live and Let Live still good.
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Reading that has got me in the mood to go back to Cambridge to ‘tick off’ the rest of the GBG pubs, was certainly one of the stronger places I’ve been to pub n beer wise.
Enjoying your blogs and thanks for the mention!
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Don’t know if that was your only trip, if so you’ve got 4 wonderful pubs – Mill, Blue, Haymakers, Castle + some ok. Go on a quiet day to avoid a bad impression about food dominating, partic the Mill. Regards
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