August 2026. Cambridge.
I drove down to Waterbeach yesterday to see Dad. The back pain is worse than the pain from lack of recognition now, and I at least got to watch “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
Having sold Sunnyside I’ve got to find somewhere cheap to stay overnight to break the journey, and Whittlesford opposite Duxford War Museum might well have my default budget hotel for trips “home”.
A modern motel, previously a Holiday Inn Express and now improved by B & B Hotels, with view of rail track on one side, and the ancient Rose & Crown to the other,
Oh, and a 13th Century chapel behind that, though in all honesty the McDonalds over the road has more architectural merit.
The world is your oyster from a Whittlesford Parkway base. Liverpool Street an hour away, Bishops Stortford half that. But all I wanted after a 3 hour drive and 2 hours in a care home was a pint of Bass close to Cambridge Station.
Cambridge’s only regular, guaranteed outlet for Bass, the Kingston Arms gets better by the visit, and now you get your Bass in the authentic glass which would add 0.25 to your beer score (3.5) if CAMRA hadn’t banned numbers. YES, they’ve actually banned numbers, Dick !
This blog prides itself on the inaccuracies that make it human, reassuring you that it’s not produced by infallible A.I.
But I cannot lie about beer quality, and the Bass here isn’t my favourite, compared to the headless stuff in the Star or the Coopers. But is that just a personal preference ?
I don’t always like pubs overflowing with breweriana* either, but I do like the mix of tat in the Kingston,
and the range of custom. Like the Shakespeare in Sheffield, it’s an easily recommendable Cambridge pub.
I needed a Chinese takeaway recommendation for a Sunday evening, with the two student stalwarts both closed. Chat GPT suggested restaurants. Oh dear.
Draining my Bass, I placed an on-line order (“cash please”) with Joy Cromwell, which sounds like an Olivia Rodrigo deep cut.
Joy lies over the bridge in Romsey Town, and the best way I can describe it is “where that ridiculous tight squeeze is you have to go though to get to Mill Road“.
The chap (who calls me “bud”) phones me as I leave the Kingston to tell me I’ve placed the order twice, did I mean to ? Well, possibly, it was that good (NCTSS 4).
I run, bag of crispy beef swinging, for the 18:18 to Whittlesford, arriving back at half past six where a foaming pint of Adnams awaits in the Red Lion. Or it would, were it not already closed.
*Someone just spelt this “breweryanna” and now I doubt myself.
retiredmartin 