The Alexandra Arms, Cambridge

Solid, side-street pub with a modernised (but not excessively so) interior. Although a Greene King house, none of its beers was available, with Wolf Brewery's Mad Wolf (£2.45, half) being one of four cask ales and a cider being poured from a total of eight handpumps.

First time to visit for me as I usually restrict myself to one GK pub maximum a day and that would be the nearby Free Press. However, on the PuG crawl running list it was so I dutifully entered my, god forbid, third Greene King pub of the day. Fortunately, in keeping with the others, another of the GK stable in Cambridge that supports a decent guest ale offering as detailed by the reviewer below and my Three Blind Mice Porter was very decent. A nice looking pub from the outside but I wasn’t so keen on this one inside and the modern bare boarded space wasn’t really to my liking, especially the area with the bench seating which sported a wall papered wall that was conducive to headaches. And I’m not a great fan of being able to see the workers in the kitchen whilst I’m sitting there drinking. However, what I was very impressed with was the outside courtyard area at the back which was largely undercover and extremely well designed and laid out. If there was anything resembling a silver lining from the Pandemic it is that a lot of pubs now that their outside spaces as a feature rather than an afterthought. Still don’t think I would rush back to this one, given what lurks nearby.

I popped into the Alexandra Arms for a quick half after catching up with the main body of the Friday Pubs Galore crawl around Cambridge. All is still pretty much the same as my previous visit in 2021, although on this visit I paid more attention to the beers that were on offer from two banks of four hand pumps. One was unused, one was being used to hold up the food menu and another was advertising a sparkling margarita jug for £10. More interestingly the remaining five pumps were drawing Wolf Brewery’s Mad Wolf, Milestone’s Cushty Peeve, GK Future Brewers’ Spring Break, Three Blind Mice Brewery’s Porterhouse Blues and Weston’s Rosie’s Pig Cloudy Cider. I went for the Cushty which was good and served with a smile. This place is still worth a look if passing.

Another modernised backstreet pub. With four on cask, I plumped for a half of the Tom Sharp-inspired Three Blind Mice Porterhouse Blues which was nice. Worth including on a crawl.

I've really got to come back to this pub some time, as my recent visit was towards the end of a busy day and I was all pubbed out. Looking at my notebook, I can read the name of the beer I drank perfectly well, it was Oakham Slovenian Wolf, and I took a photo of its pump clip and of the other beers, but I didn't write down my impressions of the pub, so all I can tell you is that it was NBSS 3.5, I paid £5.10 for two halves - one for me and one for my drinking companion, whose name I do remember, thank you very much - and I needed my dinner. Date of visit: 29th February 2024

Official site of The Alexandra Arms - www.thealexcambridge.com