The Seven Stars, Rugby

Excellent real ale pub in the back streets of Rugby and due to the recent demise of the Wheeltapper, is now the nearest pub to Rugby Train Station. As mentioned below its an interesting layout with two room sections either side of the main serving area and a separate room off one of these down a couple of steps. There is a small, enclosed courtyard area with plastic tables and chairs, accessed through a corridor festooned with framed signed international and club rugby shirts. In fact, there’s very much a rugby (the funny shaped ball game, not the place) theme throughout the pub, as the current guvnor’ is an avid Leicester Tigers fan and arranges coach trips from the pub to the Tigers home game, and there is an interesting collection of signed shirts throughout. If I could pick a fault, it would be that I could not find a signed Saracens RFC shirt on display, but I guess that is as a result of the continued animosity of the original Midland RU sides to the upstarts from North London. However, that can easily be forgiven for the range of well-kept ales and ciders available. There are several pumps spread out on all three sections of the bar and the available beers and ciders are displayed on a chalk board in the back bar. For our visit there were eight ales and four ciders on the go on the pumps. For the ales, alongside Everard’s tiger, which is a permanent ale due to the tie up with the Leicester brewery, there was Byatts Platinum Blonde and Colonel Cocoa Dark Ale, Broadtown Line of Sight IPA and Black Llama Baltic Porter and Castle Rock Time Traveller, along with two other Everard’s brews in the form of Signal Session Pale Ale and Old Original Ruby Ale. All the ones we tried were in excellent condition. A great way to start or end (or in our case both) any crawl of Rugby’s best real ale pubs.