retiredmartin

January 2025. Cambridge.

The route from Cambridge North station past Haymakers and along the Cam (until you’re stopped by Rowing Club “Keep Out” signs) to the home of the May Beer Festival is a tranquil pleasure,

and the view across to the Fort St George (in England) from the footbridge at Peterhouse RC one of our University city’s most iconic.

This was, of course, the traditional starting point for the annual Cambridge to Oxford Boat Race, until the event rights were bought out by London.

For decades the Fort was one of Cambridge’s most famous pubs along with the Eagle, Blue, and the biggest Spoons in the World (until Ramsgate), and despite/because of being Greene King had a decent enough reputation with the CAMRAs/

But it’s not been in the Guide this century, and I think I last popped in for a wee, so I thought “Why not ?“.

Well, frankly, I was supposed to be in town buying a suit for Mum’s funeral, having binned my work collection a decade ago. Oh well.

It’s just gone three, like in a Rupert Brooke poem, and it’s empty bar two gentlefolk and a chap on a laptop. No sign of lunch debris though, which is a bonus.

I forget to ask for CAMRA Discount, only do it in Spoons to sock it to the Tim, so it’s £5.90 your Abbot, but frankly it’s the only cask you’d trust.

Look ! They don’t even know what cask is !

I’d forgot the Fort, like the Eagle, is such a warren of rooms. I pass through with the pungent smell and say “Nice fire” to the gentlefolk. The chap smiles, the lady looks terrified.

The pub may be more attractive than I remember, but the views across the Cam are rubbish,

and I settle on a table apparently reserved for the future King (top), confident he won’t turn up and if he does I was here first.

That Abbot starts at a cool 3, slips to a biscuity (?) 2.5, though the very last drop is a 3.5, so VAR will have to rule on the overall score.

A couple of undergrads turn up and talk in awe of a place called The North with roast dinners and wood burners and dales and I wish I was there now.

Note the food prices, Dave.

Not bad at all, though the astonishingly terrible version of Edwyn Collins’ “A Girl Like You” by an R’n’B artist with a Barnsley FC hat may be the most traumatic thing I experience in January.

It’s certainly a contender.