retiredmartin

Part II of the Impington v Histon special, and more pictures of closed pubs and Spring.  At least this is NEW material.

You left me at the Railway Vue, with 37 minutes to complete my hour’s exercise and buy eggs and rosemary, which sounds like a Leonard Cohen lyric c.1967.

What could be more useful than recording for posterity the five remaining boozers in Histon.

Not many other folk out exercising, bar the odd toddler on a trike pursued by out-of-shape parents.  Plenty of time to admire a picturesque but busy village.

I said five boozers, but first up is The Boot, a “pub brasserie” of the type that gets Guardian readers and Mumsnet extolling the virtues of the cooking in their “boozer”.

And behind that the Barley Mow is one of those Thai pubs that invaded Cambridge en masse 20 years ago, though like the Wrestlers this is quite an informal one.

The other week I wrote about Milton with its four pubs in a row.  Pretty similar pickings in Histon, with the Red Lion the pick of the bunch.

Lacons, Bass and, er, Grimsby Town livery, 372 consecutive years in the GBG, and even an Audit Ale tasting with Roger Protz that left Mrs RM a bit worse for wear.

And that’s the point in the walk I thought “This is a bit sad“.  The sight of closed Indian restaurant, Chinese takeaway (and betting shop) didn’t lift my spirits.

But you can hear birdsong and smell the plants and note the lack of litter and fumes.

So I pressed on past the beams,

pausing to admire the King William IV, once THE pub for Friday lunchtime drinking (kids – ask your parents).

Eggs but no rosemary in the Tesco metro, so I had to make do with those M & M chocolate bars.

I paused at the village gravity dispense point,

and remembered the posh Phoenix Chinese Restaurant was now a bistro/bar with a Milton handpump.  One of those rare villages, like Milton, to see an increase in pub numbers if it can survive lockdown.

So a six pub crawl, perhaps not one on the top of the Old Codgers list, but the Rose & Crown is the ideal place to finish with a pint of Everards whatever and a pointless discussion over where it’s brewed this week.

But it’s my own Sun I’ll be heading back to first when we come out the other side.