retiredmartin

February 2024. Newton. Cambridgeshire. It looks like this;

The Good Beer Guide is 51 editions old, and in many way I reckon it’s one of the very best (though the omission of those Dutch pubs from the ’80s is a shame). More basic one beer boozers than I can remember, an iconic cover, and genuinely intelligent on the importance of pubs from Bruuuuuce (not that Bruce).

Five pubs in every edition, and for the first time since 2016 I’ll aim to visit them this year, if only to guess which will be the next one to drop out. Those five have been the “last five” for so long I can’t remember what was the sixth longest survivor.

Sheffield Hatter (ITMA) was staying in Cambridge a couple of nights while I popped back to do Mum’s shopping, so I said I’d take him to the Queen’s Head, which despite being practically on my doorstep I hadn’t been to since I was BRAPA’s South Cambs taxi in 2018, which produced one of the great lines;

“The staff & punters had that whiff of superiority about them”  says Simon is his post, and I sort of get that. Pubs like this that scream “unchanged since Kipling was a boy” can irritate you by expecting you to like them with their ‘istree.

Well, I may be getting soft in my impending middle-aged, but I enjoyed the Queen’s Head more than I expected, despite the omnipresent history,

and continuity.

There was already a queue at the door at noon, so I dived for the first table in the public bar,

the bar with the village cricket green on the ceiling I’d never noticed before.

“Just a half of Adnams Bitter” I barked at Will, whose look revealed some concern that the end of the barrel might have been reached with the very first pint of the day,

but the nice lad squeezed a couple of halves out, and they were so good (a rich NBSS 3.5+) you wondered why Adnams have seemingly given up on the Southwold in favour of Ghost Ship and keg and wine shops.

Fantastic seating, a wealth of gorgeousness, and the quiet hum of gentlefolk contemplating the soup menu.

My note says “entirely gentlefolk”, though these days that means the same age as Will and I.

Will resisted the urge to treat us to a medley of Supertramp hits on the piano,

much to the disappointment of the resident pelican.

Still a classic.