Just tidying up some posts last night* I noticed my pub photos post lacked anything from Pints and Pubs, a heinous crime.
P&P, as his mates call him, has produced the essential body of work on all the Cambridge pubs over the last year, finishing with the venerable Free Press. So here’s a photo from that post combining a warm fuzzy pub atmosphere and the sticker from my first Beer Guide (1994).
The day after touching down at Gatwick, I fancied a pub. Not so much beer, just a warm pub on a dark Wednesday afternoon.
Plenty of proper pubs in town, but few open all day, so here’s my contribution to taming Dryanuary in Cambridge.
The well-off residents of Prospect Row have a choice of 4 decent pubs within a minutes’ walk, so there’s really no excuse for sobriety (or drinking Prosecco at home).
I made my first tentative steps into the mysterious world of real ale here with pints of IPA while studying Accountancy on East Road in the late ’80s, though I spent 3 years believing it was called, and asking for “Ipper“.
The pub has barely changed since then, bar the death of the white rabbits in the “garden” that Mrs RM and I grew attached to.
Nothing greets you better than drip mats, newspapers on the bar, old handpumps and a wicker waste paper basket.
In a rare outlet for the dark Mild, I obviously went for the IPA, sporting the same pumpclip I remember from New Year’s Eve 1989.
At 4pm there was a table of Post Grad students in the right-hand room. There are always 20-something Post Grads in the Free Press, and some of them will always be American. They tend to sit in the corner and leave the Old Boys to their regular seats at the bar.
I’ll say this for Americans; they love English pubs and give great banter.
“Christian – that’s still Chris isn’t it ?”
“He’s a small time dealer but marijuana is legal in California now, isn’t it ?”
“Ah, the perils of being 30” (Don’t rub it in you youngsters).
And lots of stuff about ABBA, “salty and peppery hair” and setting up a coffee/bike match-up.
It was great. They were there the hour that I was and didn’t go beyond their lone beers (Harviestoun Engine Oil out of the bottle, oddly).
My IPA was greater.
Now some of you will say that Greene King IPA can’t be scored NBSS 4, but I just have. A beer to savour (it took me 20 minutes) with a gorgeous foamy head and lovely lacings. It was as good a beer as it was on the last day that Chris and Debbie Lloyd left for the Cambridge Blue, which is saying something.
Despite a soundtrack of Coldplay and Paul Simon’s “You can call me Al“, I stayed for a second pint.
By this time the regulars had turned up, joining a schoolboy doing his homework at the bar, which I confess I love to see in pubs.
I went for the Dizzy Blonde, though being non-sexist and so as not to upset Mrs RM I only asked for a “Blonde“. It was just as good; cool, complex, full-bodied (in a beery way).
I’d forgot how enjoyable it was to read the Daily Telegraph in a pub.
I’d now spent nearly an hour here, and a third pint called, but I resisted.
A young couple, one of them in corduroy, came to the bar. She asked for a non-alcoholic beer. No go. “Pint of Greedy Goose then“. And just like that, her Dryanuary spell was broken.
No rabbits, but still a properly basic outdoor area and toilets to rival the Sun.
In fact, this is a Top 100 pub for virtually anybody but the Greene King hater, with only one flaw I can see;
If I missed places like this in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, do let me know.
*Actually 2am as jetlag has kicked in.
retiredmartin 
“Ipper” of course originally used as a derogatory term for the local Lacon beers of Great Yarmouth as a point of contention as to whether the brewery or the naval bombardment of Admiral Hipper’s raid had dispatched more of the locals.
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Oh, right, thanks Scott. 28 years too late.
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You did not miss places like that in LA or Las Vegas. You’re a lucky man to live near it. It is interesting to drink bottled beer with those taps on. Makes you wonder why.
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Bottles have a certain appeal, I notice. Not sure how anyone decides they want a Harviestoun Engine Oil though (fine as it is). Smaller size ?
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Cask always trumps the bottle for me!
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“Paris liberated after four years under Nazis”. That’s going to warm the cockles of your heart isn’t it ?
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I think you overestimate my eyesight, Bill. I can just make out “Daily Telegraph” and One Penny.
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One Penny?!?! Have Sam’s bought it?
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GK IPA is good…glad to see how weak willed people are re dryanuary!!! Only possible blemish is lack of mats but can be overlooked as clearly a top boozer
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Boozer may be a step too far, the Free Press definitely feels more Gown than Town. Students used to gravitate to it as quite civilised and one of first pubs to ban smoking in the country.
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Ok I’ll concede a civilised pub instead 👍
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“re dryanuary”
I prefer the Tryanuary I saw on your blog. 🙂
Cheers
Russ
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An especially delightful read, this one, and I’m not just saying that because of the kind words about Americans. 😉 It pleases me to see Greene King IPA get a good review from you, Martin, as I do fear such brands get roundly dismissed by an awful lot of beer enthusiasts, as they dash off for the latest extra-hoppy thing.
I love solo Paul Simon, but I never completely fell for “Call Me Al.” Boy, was it all over the radio back when it first came out, though.
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A fine looking pub Martin, and good to see those vintage porcelain, GK pump-clips are still around.
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Great pumps aren’t they.
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You’re not alone with your ‘Ipper’ experience, nor is it an historic thing. I was in Weatherspoons a short while ago and heard a customer ask for a pint of ‘aye-ar-appa-ho’ for a Langham Brewery beer called Arapaho it was the capital APA in the middle of their pump clip design (referring to american pale ale – the clue’s in the name as Langhams say) that probably caused the pronunciation problem. Possibly also that he’d never heard of a certain American indian tribe!
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You should hear folk try and pronounce Jaipur !
Or Doom Bar in Norfolk, come to that 😱
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“though I spent 3 years believing it was called, and asking for “Ipper“.”
This is where having a Canadian accents comes in handy as we would have said “I’ll have an eye pee, eh”. 🙂
Cheers
Russ
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“cool, complex, full-bodied (in a beery way).”
Darnit! I was all set to try and type a witty remark until you cut me off at the pass with the brackety bit at the end. 🙂
Cheers
Russ
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I preferred Russ to Someone.
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Ok, maybe now that it’s 2018 I can post under my name again.
Test 🙂
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I think you can now that I’m back from the States and Canadians aren’t being spied on.
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Woot!
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What! You dragged me out of a bar selling the best beer I had in the whole of Leicester, denying me a second pint. And then you have a second pint of GK IPA in a trendy academical pseudo pub amongst the gilded spires and quaint quadrangles of Cambridge. You are a hippogryph Sir!
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