Devonshire Arms, Cambridge

Nice traditional, fairly basic pub, owned by Milton Brewery with ten handpumps offering six of their beers on the day, my choice of Sparta was a decent drop and indeed the pub is well worth dropping in.

Side-street pub handily placed for the station. The slightly odd, low end-of-terrace building is bigger than it initially looks, not only from the street but also as you enter the bar, with a larger room at the back - both parts quite dark and traditionally furnished. As a Milton Brewery house, six of its cask ales were available from a total of ten handpumps, including the Minotaur dark mild (£4.60).

A return visit as part of the recent PuG crawl of Cambridge and the first venue due to its proximity to Cambridge Train Station. Its now painted a dark terracotta red to distinguish itself from the adjoining houses, so you now get the true view of how small it looks from the outside. Inside it fortunately is a lot bigger than it appears from the front, being two rooms with the smaller bar room as you enter and then a larger wooden floored lounge area with its log burning fire beyond. Eight hand pumps on the long bar section and two additional ones on the short section which I believe are additional to my previous visit. However, these were unbadged and two were reverse clipped, leaving five Milton Ales and a cider on the other six. The breweries Marcus Aurelius, Pegasus, Justinian, Nero and Sparta were the available ales and the Stout I went for was a good ale to start the crawl. However, the ale pumps are now fronted by multiple clips and cards for the range of Ciders and Perrys (some 14 of them) that the Dev is now getting a reputation for. So much so that it had been awarded the local Cambridge and District CAMRA branch 2024 Cider POTY award a couple of weeks prior to our visit. This is still a very good pub and should be included in any crawl of Cambridge, especially when disembarking from the nearby train station.

Official site of Devonshire Arms - www.instagram.com

Official site of Devonshire Arms - www.instagram.com

I somehow managed to visit this pub twice while I was in Cambridge recently without making any notes for a review. On the first occasion I photographed the pump clips (seven from Milton Brewery and one guest from Tydd Steam) and the plethora of cider equivalents displayed along the front in meticulous ascending order of abv%. I had a half of Justinian, which I had tasted for the first time in another pub the previous day and wanted to try again (it was NBSS 3.5, not quite as good as at the Haymakers in Chesterton). And then suddenly everyone was talking around the bar and I got sucked into a conversation among two or three other customers and the very friendly woman who runs the pub, and lost all sense of my purpose in life, which is of course to write reviews for Pubs Galore. The next day I returned to this, my last pub in Cambridge on my way to the station. I had another Justinian (it was NBSS 4 today) and also Nike, another beer from Milton (NBSS 3.5), a 4.7% premium bitter which was very much to my taste but very different from the Justinian in style. I'm going to have to try some more of this brewery's beers (though I wasn't so keen on their Pegasus in the Queen Edith). Somewhere along the way I once again failed to make any notes for a review, concentrating instead on making sure I had my tickets for the return journey, perhaps. In lieu of a more informative description of the pub from me, I'm sure there will be several others within just a few days. Date of visit: 29th February 2024