retiredmartin

September 2026. Huntingdon.

I drove back from the in-laws to Waterbeach for a family funeral* on Wednesday morning, leaving Mrs RM to look after her father and then catch up on the train.

Rather than hang about in Cambridge for 3 hours when I couldn’t drink anyway, I suggested Mrs RM just head up the east coast line to Huntingdon, where I was a month too early for the cultural event of the year.

Huntingdon (pop. 26,000 Tory voters) had been bypassed by the new A14, one of the wonders of the modern age for folk like me making a weekly slog north.

Hinchingbrooke, the first NHS hospital to be privatised (by Andy Burnham, in case you wondered) sits next to a lovely country park alongside the A1.

But the rest of the (historic) county town has always been a surprisingly scruffy thing, a cross between East Grinstead and Burgess Hill.

You can make any town in England look OK from the right angle,

but the empty market square (on market day) and general distressed demeanour tell a tale.

Best known for a Prime Minister (Major) and a Lord Protector (Cromwell), though it’s King Charles I who gets the memorial outside the rambling George Hotel.

I popped in the old Grammar School attended by Pepys (an 18th century BRAPA) and Cromwell,

now a museum rather brilliantly explaining Oliver’s life and his hat.

And by brilliant, I mean a masterpiece of design, as frankly I’ve no interest in history.

I wonder why there’s no statue of the great/terrible/complex** man. Apparently it’s in nearby St.Ives,

along with the Huntingdonshire local history museum, which I feel I must now visit.

But first, let’s look at the pubs…

*By common consent everyone in the Fen Edge is “family.

**Delete as appropriate on politics and birthplace