A new city for me to visit & tour the local pubs: Cambridge.   Bicycles & students everywhere & very busy in the centre with cars, luckily its not a big city at all & can be navigated on foot easily.   It is an expensive city for beer with some pints costing £3.20, but we did find one great beer for £2.00.

On the way over with Andrew & Matt from Milton Keynesⁱ on Friday we stopped for lunch in the Rivermill Tavern near St Neots, Cambridgeshire.   They had a reasonable selection of real ale for the other two to try but I was driving & had to give these a miss.   Clearly a live music venue, with life size statues of the Blue Brothers, large speakers & lights set up upstairs.   Reasonable food at reasonalbe prices & likewise with the beer.   An Elgood Cambridge Bitter for Matt & a Greene King St Edmunds for Andrew.

Onwards to Cambridge where we met up with Al from Sunderland at our hotel & walked into the city.

Firstly to The Empress in Romsey Town, which was closed.   This pub doesn't open until 16.00 in the week.   We could have checked this easily but hadn't - lesson learnt.

Onto the Kingston Arms, just on the other side of the railway tracks going into the city.   In a residential area off the main road, this was the best pub of the weekend.   With recession buster deals on some food & beer, you can enjoy yourself very cheaply in here.   The very friendly chap behind the bar says he can only keep 10 real ales in tip top condition with the throughflow he has.   A traditional pub with an outside drinking area & a pub cat.

Oakham JHB for Matt, Oakham Ahkenaten (an amber ale with a peachy-like fruitiness & £2) for Andrew, Crouch Vale Brewers Gold for Al & a Buntingford Polar Star (extremely pale ale with a good hoppiness & bitterness) for myself.

A very short walk through the residential streets to The Cambridge Blue where we were greeted with a big fridge full of exotic beers in a fridge as you walk in the door.   Oars adorn the ceiling & brewerania on the walls in this traditional pub.   Plenty of wooden benches & chairs to sit on.

West Berkshire Maggs' Mild (a very dark, full bodied & flavoursome mild) for Andrew & myself, Hoggley's Pump Fiction for Al & a Nethergate Cambridge Blue Dewdrop for Matt.   Follwed by a Titanic Red Ensign for Matt, a West Berks Maggs' Mild for Al, a Saffron Hoppin' Mad for myself & an unrecorded beer for Andrew.

A fair walk now through the city to the river & along it out East & just over the bridge is The Green Dragon.   A fairly ordinary Greene King pub in a traditional dark wood style.   All 5 real ales were Greene King beers (the 2 not labelled GK are from breweries closed by GK & their brands kept on). Here is were Alex joined us.   This pub was heaving, but understandably so for 17.00 on a Friday.

Ridley's Porter (very dark, sweetish, reasonable porter) for Andrew, myself & Alex.   Unrecorded beers for Al & Matt.

A taxi back into town brought us to another GK pub: The Free Press, were we met Mark & Asun.   All 7 of us crammed into the snug & ate - some from the table, some from the plates on our laps.   The food was traditional pub fayre & nice enough for us starving drinkers.   The chap behind the bar was most helpfull with serving food, drinks & passing a stool over the bar (not like that!).

Most of us had a St Austell Proper Job (a flavoursome ale with both good maltiness & hoppiness).   Matt had a Whisky Ale but doesn't record the brewer so a quick search reveals only Traditional Scottish Ales.   A 2nd round saw more St Austell Proper Job's plus a Budweiser Budvar for Mark & myself.

Very close by is The Elm Tree.   A lively pub with large tables to sit at with 8 real ales.   A White Horse Bitter for Al, a Titanic Iceburg (an assertive pale ale with a citrus-Cascadeⁱ type hoppiness) for me, other beers drunk not remembered.   Bags of scratching all round.

A short walk to St Radegund were we packed ourselves into the smallest pub in Cambridge.   5 real ales, 3 from the local Milton brewery.   Only Al & myself have recorded what we drank (due to a combination of standing room only, increasing business of pubs & drunkeness of ourselves) - both with Milton Dionysus.

Another very short walk to the olde worlde style The Champion of the Thames, where St Austell Proper Job was mainly consumed due to the other beers being GK.   Another round of Proper Job followed before we called a taxi to go back to our hotel.