Adnams

Blue Ball, Grantchester, Cambridge.

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As Rupert Brooke memorably wrote, ‘But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There’s peace and holy quiet there,……..Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?’

There may well be a spot of tiffin at the Orchard Tea Garden, but there is also a splendid pint of Adnams Bitter (3.7%,’beautiful copper-coloured beer, late and dry-hopped…’) at the Blue Ball pub on the other side of the village. There are three other pubs in Grantchester that each have their own attractions and do a good job of absorbing the visitors, the numbers increased no doubt by fans of the James Runcie detective books and the TV series based on the stories of a vicar turned sleuth.

The Blue Ball is a small traditional pub, part of a terrace of houses next to the quiet ‘main’ road back to Cambridge. The interior is welcoming and unchanged over the years with pleasant clutter including newspapers, always a good sign. The beer offering is limited but well kept; mainly a reliable selection of brews from Adnams. Food is low key, crisps and nuts and rumours of sandwiches at lunchtime. You can sit on the sunny front terrace or a very well hidden walled garden out back, with an open shelter containing books and grapevines growing along the roof. It is all small and compact inside and outside there is hardly room to park a car or even a bike.
It is a good place to be, on a summer afternoon the pub and village are as timeless as the church clock in the poem.

Walk across the field opposite and you are at Granchester Meadows, a pastoral haven for walking, cycling or punting from Cambridge, immortalised in the title of a Pink Floyd song and the jewel in the crown of the local countryside, recently thankfully saved from the threat of possible developers.

The Fountain, Silver Street, Ely

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Venturing out from Cambridge, from miles away the initial view towards Ely is of an island in the flat fens, dominated by the splendour of the cathedral. Of course it has been like this for centuries, but the image became recognised world wide when framed by two large metallic faces on the cover of the 1994 Pink Floyd album ‘The Division Bell’. So it was no surprise to see a large print of this picture on the wall of this unassuming freehouse,  just out of the centre of this small city.

Adnams beers dominate the bar, including some of their newer ‘craft’ offerings. My beer of choice was the pleasant 3.7% copper coloured Southwold bitter. The pub interior is a mix of old (wooden floor of varying contour) and newer (many framed prints of country scenes, group photos of the neighbouring Kings School, cathedral pictures and much more). You can sit on a choice of church chairs with hymnbook holding sections, 1930s dining chairs and even a dentist chair(!?). There is a newspaper on the bar, board games and relaxed locals with large docile dogs….

It is all very comfortable and calming and the multiple covers showing inclusion of the pub in past CAMRA good beer guides displayed in the window shows that its timeless qualities are well appreciated.

 

https://www.facebook.com/FountainElyPub

The Castle Inn, Castle Street, Cambridge

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The town of Southwold on the Suffolk coast is a relaxing place to visit, one of the special features being the Adnams brewery right in the centre. Some of their excellent beers are available in many East Anglian pubs: The Castle Inn next to the historic Castle Mound in Cambridge is an Adnams pub carrying a large range and seeing the array of taps takes me back to good times spent in Southwold (and its pubs) through my life.

Walk in and you realise that you are in a ‘proper’ pub. Wooden floors and fittings, genuine old features, all a bit dark and timeless. The main bar is in the centre, serving the front traditional area and two more secluded rooms. Don’t despair if it seems full, it is actually quite a large pub, there is an upstairs space too and a substantial terrace with seating outside. Prices are what you might expect in this part of Cambridge just outside the city centre, but for the quality of the beer and the surroundings any slight premium is worth it.

No distractions of fruit machines and TV screens, instead there are books to borrow and occasionally some interesting choices of background music and of course, lively conversations. The menu boards sound tempting, as does the food you see being taken around but I must admit the only meal I have eaten in here was the simple perfection of fish finger sandwiches, sometimes that’s all you need to supplement a quality pint or two….

 

http://thecastleinncambridge.com/