November 2024. Cambridge.
A daily trip to Addenbrookes and back is an invitation to explore lesser known Cambridge,
and I know some of my readers will be absolutely dying to know what a formulaic suburban Greene King local with modest food trade is like in 2024.
Exactly as you’d expect. Bright, clean, dull, cheery.
A quick look on my own blog reveals…nothing, though I know I visited pre-Covid and it probably had the exact same beers and menu.
The thing about Greene King is they try so hard to convince they care about cask, even promoting the guests above the IPA and Abbot.
But not here. With Abbot off, it’s IPA, isn’t it. Is anyone a Yardbird fanboy ?
The young barman doing 3 jobs is a cheery joy, making a joke of the unpronounceability of the “Burger of the Month”.
I head right, to where the locals congregate. From the accents, you could be in E17, and Cherry Hinton Road really is displaced east London.
The IPA looks good, and is unexpectedly cool and foamy, a 3.5 to treasure.
Your soundtrack goes from Olivia Dean to Fleet Foxes, neither modern or ancient, and though it’s never actually comfortable, it’s definitely “pubby”.
Meanwhile, the Burger of the Month is that pleasing combo of meat, gunk and crispy fries.
Smothered in mayo and ketchup, it is EXACTLY what I need after another difficult day.
Will my enthusiastic beer score elevate the Rock to (I think) a first ever GBG entry.
Probably not.
retiredmartin 
I think the only pub of that name I’ve known was at Upper Hulme, near Leek.
It’s now Ye Olde Rock Inn as rocks were formed hundreds of millions of years ago.
There is some new rock though such as
youtube.com/watch?v=idMxZLeE90c
and Brighton Rock from Graham Greene, as in Greene King.
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There was a pub called “Rock Inn ” off the A55 towards Holywell in Flintshire, through the almost nonexistent village of Lloc. Now a private house of the same name (Rock Inn, not Lloc).
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Ah yes, non-existent villages, that only have presence in mapland.
Chunal is one, I’d say.
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There’s a The Rock near Blackwood, Gwent as well (also serving Abbot by the looks of the pictures). https://www.therockblackwood.co.uk/
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And of course there’s Rock in Cornwall where our best selling cask beer is brewed.
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I wasn’t going to mention that…
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Paul, mention should be made of the Rock at Chiddingstone Hoath, a 300 year old, former drover’s inn. It takes its name from one of several, nearby rocky outcrops, which are a feature of this remote corner of Kent. I have known the pub for 30 years plus, and despite its remote location have tried to visit it whenever possible.
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By huge coincidence, I see Mrs RM has taken her parents there this lunchtime for Larkins.
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Paul, well, if we’re digressing that far from “GREENE KING IPA IN CAMBRIDGE. IT WAS GOOD. HONEST !” I could mention the Rock Houses at Kinver Edge which are near Bathams’s Plough and Harrow.
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And while we’ve digressed to Graham Greene I could add than an adaptation of his novel was the 1948 film The Fallen Idol featuring not only Ralph Richardson but also a horse drawn Watneys dray delivering to Belgravia’s Star Tavern where I was drinking a fortnight ago, and that the film is on the Talking Pictures channel today at 2.55pm.
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Sorry, on Film4, not the Talking Pictures channel, today at 2.55pm.
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Greene King’s “pubs” are increasingly a disaster. We stayed in a Chef & Brewer (now of course a GK “concept”) last week with an extended family group in Cheshire and descriptions included ” Fawlty Towers”, ” The Shining” and ” Bates Motel”. On the beer front 4 casks ostensibly, 2 clips turned backwards and the “choice” was IPA and Abbot.
I know that was the choice when I was a lad/ student but the beers then were unrecognisable from the adoyne pap pushed out at ridiculous prices in today’s “hospitality industry “.
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Way back in 1980, during my student days, I lived on Cherry Hinton Road and my nearest boozer was The Rock. I paid it a visit in April on my first return to the city since those days. Forty-odd years ago it struggled to draw me away from the college bar which was managing to give me a pint of very reasonable Abbot for 35p. The Rock seemed a bit pricey for someone in the seemingly permanent state of impecuniosity.
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Heck, I’ve only just realised that I’ve been there. I ate there too, perhaps sixteen years ago.
Sixteen years, sixteen years…
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But why were you there ?
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Well, Martin, everyone’s got to be somewhere, and I was hungry.
I was being paid to do stuff half-a-mile down the road too. You absolutely do know all about that sort of thing, and it’s probably why, like me, you’ve been retired a while?
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“everyone’s got to be somewhere” – The Korgis’ underrated follow-up to their 1980 classic.
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I remember it rather as having been said by Eccles in The Goon Show.
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Are there many other fruit-themed place names like Cherry Hinton?
Grapefruit St Edmunds…Medlar-in-the-Marsh…Greengage-on-Avon…
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There’s always Appledore.
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Next to Snargate, and we know what’s there.
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Yes I had an excellent visit there many years ago.
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I could do a passable impression of a GK IPA Fanboy!
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