The Castle, Cambridge

A small single-room student bar with no atmosphere, idle staff, no real ale and nothing to make me reinvest. Overpriced cocktails are still available and there is always the possibility of a bitch-slapping from one of the over-entitled, self-proclaimed intelligentsia if you disagree with their cloud-cuckoo fantasies and that’s your thing. Not mine, so I shall keep away.

A once traditional pub on Cambridge’s party street which has now been turned into a trendy bar and nightclub, presumably because the enormous Wetherspoons next door took all the traditional pub traffic. Modern decor and comfy seating with lots of chrome on the bar top including a solitary out of place GK IPA tap. I did pop in on the lunchtime on Saturday, but the place was empty and I took one look at the price list and went next door to the spoons. That wouldn’t bother them as I am hardly the target demographic and I guess this bar survives on selling overpriced cocktails after dark to students with bigger grant cheques than sense. And that certainly seemed to be the case when I walked past it again around midnight when it was heaving with bodies and loud sounds being pumped out of the open windows.