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Disappointment of the week with Real Ale Ray
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Detail Pages
The Fox, Caterham
Coulsdon Common
Postal town: Caterham
CR3 5QS
Pub Type
Vintage Inns (Mitchells & Butlers)Reviews (Current Rating Average: 4 of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Nick Davies left this review about The Fox
Half a page of gushing advertorial in the local rag saying that they had spent £130,000 doing this place up meant I had to go back see what M&B had been up to. All I can say is that either £130,000 doesn't go very far these day or the builders saw them coming. The only discernible change is there is even less space for those who just want a pint, and if they do the choice is done to Young's Ordinary or Pride, and on swan necks for crying out loud.
December 2010 review:
It's a Vintage Inn, so M&B's corporate designers' idea of what a traditional village pub is. So you know what to expect - a once interesting building with the heart and soul ripped from it and replaced by fake beams, fake uneven surfaces, fake antique furniture and not an ounce of pubbiness.
There's usually two or three real ales, and M&B do make a bit more effort on that front than they did, but most people are here to consume the reheated food that arrives on a lorry each week.
The one thing that lets this Vintage Inn off the hook is its situation on Coulsdon Common above Farthing Down, with plenty of good walking on its doorstep, including to the far superior Harrow at the other end of Caterham
On 4th December 2011
- rating: 3
[User has posted 567 recommendations about 559 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Pub SignMan left this review about The Fox
After spending a couple of hours walking around the nearby Farthing Downs and through Happy Valley, we decided to stop off at this pub for a bit of liquid refreshment. It's a large Vintage Inns house with what I imagine would have been various rooms now all pretty much opened out with a few pillars and supporting walls creating notional divides. The front of the pub has a mixture of banquettes and comfy chairs with a nice fireplace on the right hand wall and another central fireplace to the left of the bar. The back half of the pub has standard tables and chairs and is set up more for those who want something to eat. Additional seating can be found in an area to the left of the entrance which in turn leads to the large beer garden which has lots of benches and a pretty big decked area.
There is a plaque on the front of the pub which was put up by the Royal air Force Linguists' Association in 2007 to commemorate the Joint Services School for Linguists which was located close to the pub on Coulsdon Common. The inscription reads 'Here linguists were trained for covert work, their vigilance contributing to national security during the Cold War.'
Three ales were available from the bar - Sharp's Doom Bar and Fuller's London Pride and Summer Ale. I tried the Summer Ale and found it was in a lot better shape than I had expected. The bar staff were nice enough if not the chattiest.
This is a fairly charmless place and as mentioned in the review below, it is probably only the good location that makes it worth a look. It gets an extra point for serving up a tidy pint of ale though.
On 18th July 2011
- rating: 5
[User has posted 3114 recommendations about 3114 pubs]