June 2024. Cambridge.
Back “home” last weekend before another Mrs RM raid on the map of Europe, just long enough to admire the view from Sunnyside, Greater Waterbeach‘s top tourist attraction (4.8 on Trip Advisor).
The main purpose of our weekly trips is make life easier for Mum and Dad, so it’s a little exasperating when Mum goes into full-on “Feed the children” mode and won’t let us make her lunch, but I’m not going to complain about octogenarians exercising independence; there’ll be one running America soon.
With a bit of shopping to do we popped into Newmarket Road’s (slightly) out-of-town retail strip and had our annual lunch at The Wrestlers, Cambridge’s most famous pub-cum-Thai restaurant.
Well, if not most famous, certainly busiest, and slightly alarming to find all but one (1) table with a reserved sign on Friday lunchtime.
In the halcyon days of 89-92 when John Beck had Cambridge playing like Barcelona*,
the Wrestlers was a basic pub with pool table, juke box and blokes sitting at the bar with a Pad Thai and pint of Bombardier Guinness, replaced 20 years ago with a low-key dining pub with Wells stalwarts on the bar.
The days of Bombardier in Charlie Wells pubs are long gone, of course, but last year the Wrestlers still had those “meh” Origin beers from Bedford, so it’s a delight to see “beers you’ve heard of” back.
Keg you’ve heard of, too;
Or perhaps not.
That unloved Adnam’s Bitter is off, so it’s Landlord and a hazy Foghorn for Mrs RM.
No pic of the Tim Taylor (it passed the Landlord test, though), but the Pad Thai and Green Beef Curry are, I reckon, the two most consistent pub dishes in the UK.
£9.80 your beef curry and rice in 2016, £13.95 now. Use that as your measure of UK inflation. Worth every penny, as were the arthritis gloves for Mum, greeted with almost as much enthusiasm as Thai and a pint.
*Hope you spotted the famous blogger in that clip ?
retiredmartin 
How can you miss him? When a player is almost twice as fast as the other players on the pitch they really stand out. He could probably still play today I think.
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Fast, but also cultured and stylish.
(let’s see if he reads this),
NB Did you see the bumper crowd of 5,859 ?
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I worked in Cambridge for a couple of months about three years ago I remember going in The Wrestlers, it was pretty close to the premier inn I was staying in, it doesn’t look much from the outside but i was pleasantly surprised with place.
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The Wrestlers is the closest pub to those two chain hotels and the football ground (though easy enough to cut through to the mill road pubs. Doubt many people go in there just to drink though.
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