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A Top Five of pubs in Cambridge

Here is a Top 5 of pubs in Cambridge:
(the order is how I like them-ish, though it’s hard to really rank them as they have different qualities)


  1. The Red Lion, Histon
    This is probably my favourite pub in the whole world 🙂 It’s got Tring Blonde on all the time, which is a very nice beer, and also Mighty Oak’s Oscar Wilde which is one of my highest ranked non-Tring non-Welsh beers 😛 (I don’t actually have a beer rank. There’s just too many of them and they’re way too different to rank). The staff is very friendly and the landlord (Mark Donachy) is a real character 🙂 ). Only downside is the lack of food in the evening, but then there’s a pub just next door with nice Thai food (Barley Mow), so it’s easy to just pop over there for tea 🙂 The Red Lion has two beer festivals a year: One at Easter and one at Autumn. During the beer festival more food is available.
  2. Kingston Arms, Kingston Street
    This is one of my “old pubs” that I used to frequent particularly much when I lived on only a couple of minutes walk away. It’s got a very wide selection of real ales, and normally at least a few real ciders as well. It’s got a small quiet garden and very nice food. It’s also a friendly place, and you’re always very welcome to taste all the ales before deciding what to go for 😉
  3. The Cambridge Blue, Gwydir Street
    This is another of my “old regulars” in the same area as The Kingston Arms. It also has a wide real ale selection and a web cam where you can almost see which beers they have on just now (and if there’s a lot of people queuing) 🙂 The food is nice, and there’s a lovely large garden with plenty of benches and view over a stone wall of the pretty, idyllic Mill Road Cemetary.
  4. The Live and Let Live, Mawson Road
    This is a newer discovery for me. Even though it’s in the same area as the previous two, it’s on the other side of Mill Road, which caused it to remain hidden to me until this year (or maybe it was a year ago, but still…). The reason I found it was because I was flicking through the Good Beer Guide looking for pubs in Cambridge with Tring regulars, and apart from The Red Lion, this was the only one. It’s got the Jack O’Legs on regularly, though they sometimes run out. Also, they seem to sometimes be shut at random times, but then fortunately the above two pubs aren’t too far away 😉
  5. The Devonshire Arms, Devonshire Road
    There were many pubs contending for this last spot in the top 5. One of the reasons for this one winning, is that it’s the pub of Cambridge’s only really local brewery, Milton Brewery who brew several lovely brews. It’s got a wide selection of those, but also several other small brewery beers on at all times. It’s one of the newest pubs in Cambridge (only a year and a half old) and it’s very nice. My only regret is that I’ve only been there two or three times, and I don’t even know what the food is like… but there’s still time to change both of those 😉

So, that was my top 5 of Cambridge pubs… I might just post some reviews now and again of other pubs I like, since it’s really not fair to rank them, and I’m not completely sure that the order above means very much…

Enjoy! (Please drink responsively!)