Despite the fact that I have drunk in Peterborough on a number of occasions, I have never really written about the pubs. An opportunity to provide documentary evidence arose when Dave Wacey and I went to Peterborough to load Avril's things into a van and put them into storage. Being a hot day involving manual labour, we decided to reward ourselves with some ale.

On the way to Peterborough, we made a stop at the Old Cherry Tree in Great Houghton, tucked down a side road in the village. This was a pretty good start to the day with as I recall, 6 months after the event, some sort of quite nice Charles Wells products on tap, as well as a few guests. We sat in an area where people might dine although at the time this part was empty, there rest of the pub having a few middle aged people drinking and generally cluttering the place up.

After loading up a few things into the van, we then decided to take the mattress to the tip before it closed. This allowed us to visit a couple of country pubs that were not quite as accessible by bike. The first was the Blue Bell at Maxey which is one of the quainter ones around with low beams, stuffed animals and assorted paraphernalia dotted around the place. The pub however is excellent, and they have about 5-6 beers on, all of which are excellently kept, plus a good assortment of snacks. There is a main bar as well as a side room, although being a warm day we sat outside and consumed our ales very quickly. The landlord is a jovial sort too.

Annoyingly for a summer Saturday, the rather wonderful Golden Pheasant at Etton was closed which necessitated a trip to the Exeter Arms at Helpston. This was nothing in particular to write home about, and I think we had something very pedestrian like draftflow Tetleys in there. Anyway, I'd had a couple of halves, so we couldn't do much more driving. We headed back to Werrington, via a chavvy Co-op to stock up with some food for later. I had to make telephone calls to Avril and the man from whom we were to rent a honeymoon apartment, and then it was off to town by bike! The pub action in Peterborough is pretty good, but you do have to travel a little way from Werrington to find it and it was a good 10-15 minutes later before we reached the Royal Oak at Walton. This pub has now sadly closed which is a great shame. It was quite a basic boozer, being a a single wooden room with a couple of pillars, a dartboard and some peripheral wooden seats. The bar was also quite spartan, with about four pumps dispensing pretty bloody good ale from them. There was a splendid array of snacks too.

This pub has apparently made way for some sort of shite yuppie flat development or other, so well done the local council/government, you have contributed to destroying a little bit more of the traditional English way of life much more effectively than any terrorist could do.

Rant over! Another hidden gem that I discovered only a few weeks previously is the Hand and Heart down a back street about a mile north of the centre and far enough from the Royal Oak for us to have worked up a thirst. The barmaid ignored us for a while, but we did finally manage to get served, although the beer choice on this occasion was not overly special. This pub is also a decent old fashioned boozer and front and back bar and maybe an outside too! We preferred the back room which has circumferential seats and a hatchway as opposed to a full bar. I liked this room as it was just that bit more comfortable than the front one.

Cycling a little further we arrived at the back end of the coach park and to the Brewery Tap. Dave particularly liked this pub. They have a great many beers on, I'd say around a dozen, and they were pretty well priced too. Most products were Oakhams as this is their 'Brewery Tap', but there are a good number of other brews on including some milds which I made the most of. For somewhere that no doubt fills with people in the evenings, the mix between liveliness and good ale has been hit very successfully and it is a wonder that so few other pubs actually manage to get this sorted out themselves. Rumour has it that this place might get closed down too, this time to make way for some shopping development shit or other.

An even cheaper beer was had a short distance away at the Wortley Almshouse. This is a very rustic looking Sam Smith's pub very close to the centre of town. The layout is interesting as it is a long thin pub with two branches from a central doorway; probably a nightmare when busy. We got a couple of halves and there was much mirth when the total bill came to the sum of £1.32 or something. Pleasingly they have a few proper hand pumps although my personal selection was mild which I had to have dispensed via piss flow. Still it was very nice.

Yet more cheap beer was consumed at the Drapers Arms, a branch of Wetherspoons in the middle of Peterborough. A bog standard Wetherspoons, nothing really special to write home about but a pleasingly extensive but not expensive selection of beers nonetheless.

Cycling over the River Nene and to the next pub, the rather unique Charters. This is a very large Dutch barge with a bar in it selling a wonderful array of ales - a dozen according to the website. Many Oakham products are available. Dave decreed that this was the best pub of the evening. It was lively and people were gearing up for some sort of band performance. The set up in there is not too bad, despite it being upon the water. Very friendly pub and not the sort of place where chav lowlife tends to congregate, perhaps because they don't emphasise lager. It's not that badly priced either.

The Cherry Tree on Oundle Road is a favourite although not top of it's class. It's a good solid boozer selling about four or five pretty good ales from a nicely set up central bar. I think we had something like Adnam's Broadside or Marston's Pedigree in here although there is frequently something a bit more adventurous on. The quality of the ale was, however, excellent, if not outstanding. A fairly quiet place too, apart from on football match days, and well worth a repeat visit.

A brief pause was called for as we stopped at the fish and chip shop on Oundle Road for an extremely good fish and chip supper, complete with plastic fork for consumption. This geared us up well for the final push and a few doors down we entered the Palmerston Arms. This pub is very highly rated in general by all those beardy folk at CAMRA - and you can see why - although Dave wasn't as impressed by it. Their beers are dispensed by gravity from barrels in a back room and the pub itself is like someone's front room. An extensive array of foreign bottles are also available. The toilets also show great character. One of the problems is though is that it is a bit too CAMRA, and there were a number of these kinds of people in there that don't quite give the pub the universal friendliness points that maybe it could have earned. Still, it is a gem amongst the boozers of Peterborough.

Dave actually preferred the Coalheavers Arms which we visited next. This has a somewhat spartan interior, but seems to have a less select clientele. They have about 6 to 8 beers on (appropriately one is Milton Sparta) and also a range of interesting Belgian bottles ales including Ninkeberry which is always popular. In the end we didn't stay that long as we had to make haste back to Somerville (especially because I had yet another slow puncture) to sit down and have some Leffe whilst watching Match of the Day during which we evaluated our respective Fantasy Teams in a most constructive way.

The following day we had a drive back from Peterborough to the storage depot at Banbury. Shit food was taken at McDonalds at Raunds, but after our unpacking session in Banbury, it was liquids that we were in search of and so popped into the Coach and Horses in Adderbury to slake our thirst. A slightly annoying pub containing a large number of kids and the like, with middle class people wearing 'Sunday sweaters', but the beer that we wisely decided to enjoy outside, was very good.