Yes, I got my CEng before anybody needed an MEng for the academic requirements. I'm personally a bit ambivalent about the more recent requirement for MEng (or BEng + MSc) but it's how it is now.
My instinct is to believe that BEng+MSc is probably the better route because the MSc offers the ability to do a high level specialist course in a direction you want to specialise. That said, for complex reasons it's been clear to me in the 4ish years that I've been teaching on both (only occasionally now, but bits of modules at 3 univerities) that final year MEng students are generally much higher quality students than MSc students.
G