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.