Showing posts with label Cambridgeshire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambridgeshire. Show all posts

Sunday, 5 October 2014

Cambridgeshire


"Why don't you know more of your own birthplaces? You're all in the ends of the earth, it seems to me...you have seen men and cities...(but) you don't know your own lanes and woods and fields."

London is a vacuum, sucking in jobs, tourists, money, and people from the surrounding country, hugging them close and rarely letting them go. Everyone needs a break from the ear splitting noise and stomach churning stress of the City though.


Without sniffing out that rare £8 train to the coast, £30 will see you an hour from the M25 and the green green grass of home. A straight line North, cutting through the Garden Cities of the commuter belt, out to the flat fenland beyond.

This is East Anglia, just. The home of the partridge, horse worshippers, tractor drivers, mockney wide boys who never left home, and Stepford estates built to contain the spillover of humanity from fifty miles down the track.


Here, the internet runs slow, but the weight of the world still squeezes the village green. News of escaped Libyans running to Tesco nestle between line after line of nuisance neighbours and shed burglaries in the local rag. You wouldn't know it though. Trainers on, a run through flat brown fields, out to the quiet unmarked Tarmac and village names of native origin, mispronounced by those foreign visitors from Essex.


The tide here is a slow one, it washes up a new conservatory, a new fence, and a couple of new developments, from time-to-time. A bombshell for the locals. Of no consequence to those three or more miles away. The spinning wheel of pub twister continues. The Hoops on blue, The Belle on red. All switched round by Christmas, with a new coat of paint, and a new curry on a Tuesday. The only significant memories of the past plastered on the wall, the rest, locked in the cupboard of a local museum. Even Robinson shrugged his drink stained nose and left.


Oh, I've travelled boy. He comes Leeds down the motorway in a car. Still, there's no better stop than home.

Saturday, 2 March 2013

Pig and Abbot - Cambridgeshire

The decline in the number of pubs hasn't made the business any easier. Pubs don't just compete with each other, but almost any other form of entertainment you can think of. The one pub town, therefore, doesn't give free licence for profit - you still have to work to draw in the punters.

But how hard can it really be? Good beer, food, and service are the three necessary factors for success, and they're not that difficult to get right. Nail these three and the growth in your reputation is going to bring in customers.

The Pig and Abbot - in the brilliantly named Abington Piggots - is a great example of a pub run well. Nominated for a number of awards and a stalwart of The Good Pub Guide, I drove five miles, past two other pubs, for lamb pie, a log fire, and a pint of Nelson's Revenge (4.5%) from Woodfordes Brewery.

I'm certain they could still make improvements - trimming down the lengthy menu for a start - however, the locals seem to love it and the cars outside suggest that I'm not the only one commuting for my dinner.