retiredmartin

If Mondays are quiet times for pubs, Sundays aren’t much better outside the dreaded family roast rush.

Sunday saw the arrival of thousands of international visitors for graduation ceremonies in Cambridge, not many of them headed for the town’s famed ale houses in their Ede & Ravenscroft gear.

In fact not many students propping up the bars round Mitchams Corner in the middle of October, so it’s just as well Greene King’s Portland Arms makes such an effort, particularly with only Southampton v Burnley to draw in the football fans.

To my mind it’s one of the best looking traditional pubs in town, and with a more interesting beer range it could compete with Mill Road’s gems. It’s certainly a good place to watch cricket.

The music room doesn’t interfere with proper pub business at all, and Mrs RM and I go there once a month or so for gigs. Sunday saw a free gig with three good original acts, proper sofas to sit on, and a decent cask and keg range for a Sunday.  The sofas and décor were there courtesy of Emmaus, and hopefully were all sold at the end of the evening to raise funds to combat homelessness.

There’s not much to beat an early Sunday evening on a big sofa listening to new music with a pint of Trooper, even if it was the Red’n’Black version.  Mrs RM was the lucky imbiber of that and a pale one from Wharfe Bank.

Again Mrs RM more generous with her scoring than I’d have been, though both were nudging Beer Guide standard. She finished with the can of excellent Nene Valley Big Bang Theory, one of the few craft beers that aren’t from the GK empire.

Amongst mostly local talent, the star was Melody Causton, whose complex acoustic set included the classic intro “I’ve written the set list on the back of my Ibruprofen pack“, and less surprisingly a Green Day cover.

One of Greene King’s most enterprising pubs, and one of the UK’s best live venues.