retiredmartin

March 2020

Day 3 of The Distancing.

As part of my public service responsibility I’ve created a hand-washing guide you can use to the accompaniment of Julia Jacklin‘s paean to avoiding bodily contact.

Go to https://washyourlyrics.com/ if you’d rather wash to “Aqualung” or “God Save The Queen” or “Subterranean Homesick Blues“.

The blog is just about keeping me sane, but I’m not feeling up to any drives outside the county, even if they are still allowed.

I’ll persevere with the Fens, even though I must have walked every inch of public footpath over the years.

Who knows, this may be the last (or only) blog post on Wilburton you ever read.

One of the very few places you’ll read about Wilburton is on BRAPA, but even then he forgets what the village is called, though he does have a pic of Michaela Strachan.

Michaela Strachan has never taken the Ely Zipper, I’ll wager that.

A weird agricultural village of 1,348, all patiently waiting for the next bus to Ely (it’s next Tuesday).

Some gorgeous large houses out of character with your typical Fen Edge village.

The ONLY reason you’ll have heard of Wilburton, even if you live there, is because they hold one of the county’s largest non-CAMRA beer festivals, next to this wonderfully simple play area.

I did my usual two hours exercise, taking in the weird,

the wonderful,

and the wide spaces.

A lady on the other side of the street shouted “Hello” at me, caught my attention, and waved. Unless she was my sister (you can never be too sure in the Fens) I think it shows how friendly people are being at the moment.

Two dogs chased me up Mill Field Lane as I approached an isolated farm, and I emerged on Twenty Pence Lane to what passes as civilisation round here.

Fen folk have an obsession with keeping red phone boxes. Perhaps they intend to turn them into micropubs when all the Proper Pubs have gone.

Behind the phone box (above) you’ll see the King’s Head, which seems to have finally bitten the dust.

Perhaps the most mysterious of UK pubs*, as Si said back in 2018.

I must have driven past here 30 times in the last 20 years at different times of the week, and NEVER seen it open.

It even had a year in the GBG back in the ’90s, a dull locals pub with Adnams Bitter and a sense that even though I’d only come from 5 miles away it wasn’t a pub for me.

This is the extent of what the internet has to say about the King’s Head.

Nothing. Zilch. Not a bean. Unless you were at the WTG Lip Sync Battle.

There is one clue. A 2009 post from Drunken Bunny (here) who we really ought to find out more about.

2009 was about the last time I saw these City of Cambridge beers, now produced in Attleborough and ambitiously priced at £16.99 for a four pack at Wilburton’s legendary Garden Centre. I’d save your money for toilet rolls.

*Though the Blue Horse at Great Ponton near Grantham might have run it close.