Outside, it’s a miserable autumn morning with rain coming down like stair rods. Inside, the newly-opened Fox Cub however, it’s warm and comfortable. I leave my coat to drip-dry and nestle down into the leather seating, thinking, if push came to shove, I could stay quite a lot longer than my allotted half an hour, to speak with Andrew Reed of Charnwood Brewery, the owners of the pub.

I’ve looked him up on the company website to see that he is a man who hates titles, but that he nonetheless heads up Sales, Marketing, Finance, Logistics, Planning, and Development, which seem to me like a lot of things to head up – clearly a man for all seasons and the obvious go-to person to get the background behind opening the pub. Intriguingly, it also mentions that he looks after Quality Control, which our conversation doesn’t touch on but sounds like nice work if you can get it.

But back to the pub – the third they have opened after Shepshed and Mountsorrel. Quite a brave thing to do, open a pub in the current climate when there seems to be so much about pubs closing down all over the country? And why in Barrow? Listening to Andrew respond to this, and looking around the pub at the same time, the Fox Cub is very clear what it is and what it isn’t and the idea at Charnwood Brewery is that it offers something that complements what is already here in the village.

To begin with, all of the beer is brewed locally at the company’s brewery in Loughborough, where the operation was set up by Andrea Reed (yes, they’re a couple) who after many years in various workplaces that had nothing to do with beer, put herself through a brewing apprenticeship at a place in Grantham and turned out to be a brewing star. And the awards have flowed nearly as fast as the beer – 30-40 over ten years in fact. Andrea has now stepped back from brewing, which these days is headed up by Andy Hambleton, trained by Andrea of course. So, there’s no doubt that the quality of what’s on offer continues to be everything it needs to be and indeed their Vixen brew has recently won Champion Beer (Bitter) in the East Midlands. There is also a German lager imported from Stuttgart and for those for whom beer isn’t their cup of tea, so to speak, there’s a selection of wines from George Hill in Loughborough as well as a range of gins and rum. And the 0.5% sells well too.

Important as all that is (and it is) there’s also what you might call the feel of the place. The Fox Cub has something of a café feel about it – comfortable, smart, not too ‘pubby’, and with a nice log-burner. A place where women can feel comfortable coming in on their own or in groups, for example. It doesn’t do catering – the village is already well-served for eating out – although there are what Andrew refers to as ‘English tapas’, which I think is rather a nice way of describing things like bite-sized pork pie quarters. Nor does it do music or sports channels. It’s a place for people in couples or groups to come together and talk.

And have they noticed any differences between what the customers in each of their three pubs go for? Interestingly, there is indeed a bit of a pattern. Vixen sells well in Shepshed and they’re fond of Blue Fox in Mountsorrel. And in Barrow? The early indications are that a drop of Salvation goes down well in the village.

Barrow, a village waiting for Salvation.

Who knew?

Guy Silk