The Amber Rooms (JD Wetherspoon), Loughborough

Spoons in an uber modern building over two floors. It’s a square room but pillars, raised areas and walls give it a cosier feel than some barn like outlets, it’s not big by spoons standards, it is rather dark inside however. Usual mix of high and low seating shortening as you move away from the long counter on the left. Six plus six pulls interspersed with the usual T-Bars, Ruddles and Abbott doubled up but the others were all different apart from an Oakham beer. The upper floor is a mezzanine leaving the middle of the pub double height, naturally the toilets are upstairs and there is another counter just with T-Bars. It has a garden at the rear backing on to the Rushes Shopping Centre. Visited a couple of times and the beer is fine and the staff excellent.

This is a basic modern branch of Wetherspoons located right next to the town’s main central shopping mall. The pub has a single room layout, carpeted throughout, with the servery running down the left-hand wall. The bar has a rather plain counter with a metal grill on the front, a large, mirrored bar back and some fancy looking pot shelves above. The walls have low panelling below plain upper sections decorated with a few items of local interest, a number of plain mirrors and the usual TV screens showing muted news channels, but despite all of this, the place still felt pretty bland and uninteresting. A couple of rows of pillars break the room up quite nicely and there’s a raised seating section to the right which almost feels like a separate room. Seating comes mostly in the form of basic tables and chairs, with a few high tables and stools closer to the entrance and through the space directly opposite the bar. Doors to the rear lead out to a smart looking patio garden full of simple garden furniture and with a few sheltered spots. There were six cask ales available at the bar, split evenly between three ‘Spoons regulars and three guest beers. I was in here early on a Friday morning for breakfast, so swerved the ale in favour of a fry-up and mug of tea, so I can’t comment on the beer quality, but the three guests were at least all interesting brews you might not otherwise chance upon. My breakfast was pretty good and I think something went wrong with the plating up, as I seemed to have double of everything listed on the menu. This felt like a pretty run of the mill ‘Spoons with nothing particularly memorable about it aside from the jumbo breakfast. I can imagine calling in here to try some of the guest beers, but Loughborough has plenty of other better pubs (including another marginally better Wetherspoons), so it probably only merits a wildcard visit on any crawl around town.

Modern Spoons (well, 2003) with an industrial feel over two floors with a bar on each though just the lower one open on my 11.30am visit. Blue and steel grey are the colours and you enter through a hefty UPVC door that looks like it could withstand a few pounds of semtex. Three guest ales, my Mad Giant Autumn from the JDW festival list was in decent shape (NBSS 3). Perfunctory staff but the pub itself is smart and is close to the station. 6.5