retiredmartin

November 2024. Histon.

So far in November, it’s been 20 days in Waterbeach, 2 in Rye with Mrs RM, and a single night in Sheffield, marked laughably as “Home” on my Google map.

At least I get to see Dad in his care home in the ‘Beach,

and he’d only recently been reminiscing about the times as a lad he was naughty and had to walk back from school in Impington to Waterbeach.

It may come as a shock on Mumsnet to know that schoolchildren in the late 1940s were capable of being “naughty”, as the common belief is that “kids” these days are uncontrollable.

Feeling trapped on Saturday, I recreated that walk, taking in the Roman Road from Landbeach,

whose thatched tithe barn has yet to reach its full potential as a micropub in a dry village.

Folk struggle to understand my difficulty with being stuck in the same place for more than a day, and redoing Fenland walks has almost zero appeal, BUT I was pleased to see that the old Roman Way through the soft fruit farms betwixt Milton and Impington has just been concreted,

and that footpath/cycle route is now the best road in the whole of South Cambridgeshire.

1:27 hours says Google, took me 58 minutes, including stops near Dad’s old college (I went to the post-war Cottenham up the road) to take photos of, er, stuff.

I don’t know where Impington stops and Histon starts, and don’t care.

The Rose & Crown is Histon as far as I’m concerned,

and had just that week been taken on by the estimable Milton Brewery (of Waterbeach, keep up) after closure by Everards. The chap on the bike in my photo is brewery founder Richard, often found in his own pubs and presumably cycling home having dropped off a barrel of Marcus Aurelius.

Oh well, no 7.5% Marcus (on cask, anyway) at the end of my walk, but a couple at 6% and 7% as Milton’s commitment to proper beer strengths is on full display.

I start with the bellwether Pegasus, though, which is good enough (NBSS 3) but could do with a few more pints pulled.

There’s a few couples in on Saturday afternoon, but you sense the Rose & Crown will really comes to life with the installation of the pizza oven and the food and beer trade that drives Milton’s Haymakers a couple of miles east.

The cheery young barman gives me a tour of a gorgeous looking pub,

Milton have made a simple but effective refurbishment job of it,

and will soon attract the sort of polite Histon folk who talk about Gorilla tape and trips to Florence where they “stumble on Old Speckled Hen“.

The soundtrack persuades me to stay for a second pint,

a wise/stupid pint of the 6% Prometheus, possibly the pint of the month.

Cool, rich, chewy, NBSS 4.

But what next ?