Colley Rowe Inn (JD Wetherspoon), Collier Row, Romford

I made my first ever visit here today as part one of a pub crawl to celebrate St David's Day. It's a fairly bog standard shop conversion Spoons and certainly not one of their more attractive pubs. Having said that, it's the people not just the building that make or break a pub. This one is a new entry in the 2012 GBG, so expectations were high. I was pleased to see that St David's Ale from Brains in Cardiff was on offer. I asked the staff member who approached me about the beer and was immediately offered a sample. It tasted fine so I went for a pint of it. It reminded me of Boddingtons bitter before they ruined it and sold out to Whitbread in that it was a very pale beer with masses of hop flavour. Sadly there were two pumps with the Available Soon logos on but looking at the other bank of six pumps they did have the Black Dragon Cider and the Broad Oak Perry on as well as the usual Spoons suspects. Apparently the manager is a CAMRA member, probably why it's in the GBG. I would certainly give it another go probably when the Spring Spoons festival is under way in two weeks time. As a pub I prefer the New Fairlop Oak which is a 15 minute bus ride away, but as I said before it's the people running it that make or break a pub and in this case given the friendly service and fine quality beer at 11:00am I'll give it 9.

Official page of the Colley Rowe Inn - www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk

Official page of the Colley Rowe Inn - www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk

Gone down hill over the last couple of years.Beer selection not so good and has got rough at the edges.