Pickerel Inn, Cambridge

The Pickerel is a bare boarded aged pub with a front bar area where high tables sit in the front windows and a bar counter is found on the right-hand wall. This counter runs up the right to a low ceilinged cosy bar area with more high tables. Seating runs up the left-hand wall from the front to a dining area at the rear that is looked upon by an exposed brick inglenook with burner in the rear wall. The front bar counter supports six hand pumps that were drawing Greene King IPA, Wantsum Brewery’s Heart of Darkness and Miller’s Mirth, Oakham’s Pickerel, Woodforde’s Wherry and the house 1608 Best Bitter. Four more hand pumps are found on the rear bar counter with the addition of GK Future Brewers Spring Break. Premium and craft keg is also available across the two bars. I went for the Pickerel which I didn’t rate. The location of this pub next to the River Cam and a boating/punting quay means that it has to accommodate the tourist crowd, which isn’t great, but people gotta pay the bills. In any other place this pub would be a revisit, but with so many decent boozers around here I think I’ll be walking past when next in the area.

A nice old coaching inn - they use the date 1608 for their menu boxes and as the name of their house beer, but as mentioned by a previous reviewer, the frontage is a lot later than that. A corner of the bar counter is in the front room, but some of the beers are on a further section in another room towards the rear. There were eight beers on at the time of my visit - I went for Wantsum Imperium, a pretty good Kentish bitter (NBSS 3.5); see photo for others available. This is a Greene King pub, but only one beer was theirs. I liked it here, though the background music was a bit irritating. Date of visit: 1st March 2024