Not since 1972 when a hardy bunch of CAMRAs travelled the A604 drinking halves of Manns to get entries for the first Beer Guide has anyone focused on Huntingdonshire pubs as much as I have this Lockdown.
For folk who like to live in the past, here’s the county’s 7 entries in the first official Guide of ’74. Some interesting omissions there.
The new A14 has had some interesting impacts on your favourite road.
Travelling home, Brampton Hut Services signalled the start of queues, delays and frayed tempers.
No longer.
Your new route bypasses the Premier Inn/McDonalds combo of your nightmares, unless you follow the Mr & Mrs RM route and follow the signs to Huntingdon Racecourse, where I once saw a football mascot race cause a betting riot.
Brampton is a Waterbeach size village, famous for golf, Pepys and Geoff Capes, though not at the same time.
We walked through the rave fields leading to Hinchingbrooke Country Park,
where we bought overpriced Magnums (note to US readers – not the guns) and helped bring the economy back to life,
then took the path down to the Great Ouse and a rare bit of Cambs I hadn’t walked before.
A great sunny weekend for the M & B’s Brampton Mill to be open, but it wasn’t, so the youngsters were drinking their Old Mout (bought from the Co-op) on the tables outside.
Well, I know my horizons have been narrowed a bit in Lockdown but this is a gorgeous little stretch of river and wood, arcing round the golf course and the enticing quicksand.
Pleasingly, all the pubs have been laid out in a mile for you from the golf club to the village green. All except the Brampton Hut itself, about which the less said the better.
Regular readers will remember Brampton as the village where I awaited the arrival of BRAPA’s royal train in 2018. The traumatised Dragoon appears to have closed soon after.
Not a lot in the High Street bar the obligatory Co-op, craft shop and thatch.
Sadly, I missed out the Hare on the Green as Mrs RM was by now desperate to get back to the campervan, but here’s a picture of a rose to compensate.
The Brampton Doom Bar crawl ? I’m up for that.
retiredmartin 
Note for English readers, Magnum is actually a brand of condoms not just a gun type. Two subjects often intertwined on this side of the ocean. The reception sign is like something out of League of Gentleman.
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Does this linguistic confusion explain why gun ownership is so high in Amurica 🙄
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Then there is the Magnum ice cream company to add more confusion to the linguistic ignorance in Merika.
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Mrs RM just had the double smooth Magnum in Ely.
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Do you have a copy of the first Beer Guide? Must’ve been a rather humble thing compared to today. But who knows what this next edition will be like? We are in uncharted territory, surely GBG-wise!
I reckon Pepys would’ve been a big fan of Doom Bar, but his duties would have compelled him to instead record Samuel Johnson’s witty but slightly-too-wordy dismissal. 😉
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There was a short list in 72, I’ve got a reproduction from 74, the first official one. It’s the only one I’ve kept.
Simon is the modern Pepys, don’t you think?
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