retiredmartin

If you’re following my travels from my list of The First 36 Pubs you’ll know that next up it’s another Cambridge favourite.

You’ll find The Haymakers making regular appearances on this blog, which will present some issues when I get round to linking the posts to little pin on my new Blog Map.

One of Milton Brewery‘s trio of pubs, converted from a basic boozer with live music to a bare boards upmarket boozer selling gourmet pizza to groups of 25 year old techies.  You could be in the Pembury Tavern, as indeed Milton were till recently.

Lockdown wasn’t kind to them, and our odd takeaway of a gallon of Saturnalia (NBSS 4) seemed a bit of a token gesture.

But they survived, and in the July Cambridge sunshine their flagship was, er, making hay.

We were first in (through the out door), and my efforts to be served the fourth pint of Pegasus failed. Mrs RM was not at hand to drink a flagon of Marcus Aurelius.

We contemplated the kiosks but, heh, our chances of avoiding the virus are 0.000378% lower on an outside table with a mayo sachet on it.

Cambridge is blessed with decent weather due to some experiments conducted by Isaac Newton during his scholarship at Trinity College.

The car park has been brought into service as an additional garden.

A nice flat Pegasus (NBSS 3+), the best pizza outside the western hills of Naples.

OK, not much banter, but the groups of lads and lasses arriving on a succession of expensive bikes probably aren’t fussed about banter about batter.

It had the feel of a Tour de France refreshment stop, if elite cyclists ate pizza. By 12.30 there were two dozen of them, gearing up/down to run me over on the Green Dragon footbridge later.

Pubs run by small breweries need a good summer; I hope the Haymakers coins it.

We popped over the bridge into central Cambridge to see if the tourists were coming back.  Whichever City fan stuck this,

to the lamp post is a star, but I bet they’re not from Japan or Korea, whose tourists will hopefully flood back when they use my Blog Map and see the quality of those pizzas.

But the punts are back, and if I ply Mrs RM with that Marcus Aurelius she might even be tempted back onto the Cam herself.