The Amber Rooms (Lloyds No1), Loughborough

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

The Amber Rooms is a Wetherspoons pub. Once inside there is a decent sized square shaped room with the bar on the left side,the room is carpeted and the seating a mix of normal tables and chairs and tall tables and chairs,there is also a decent sized room upstairs which has an outside balcony to watch the traffic go by. There was a decent choice of real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Trumans Lazarus,which went down well,the other beers noted were Elgoods Greyhound,Robinsons Trooper,Ringwood Forty Niner,the Spoons regulars were Ruddles Best and GK Abbot. I thought this was a decent Wetherspoons to have a drink in. Pub visited 1/7/2017

Far superior to the other Spoons and a far better selection of ales. With the Needle and Pin and the Swan this is a good area of Loughborough for drinking and as I was staying at the Travelodge about fifty yards away, these place are where I finished up.

This Lloyds is housed in a very futuristic looking building, with quite a bizarre looking roof canopy. The modern interior is open plan and industrial looking. The walls were painted in dark greens and burgundy and steel shaped plates were the main features on the walls. The pub was fairly busy on our Tuesday eve visit. Eight handpumps on the bar with a few pumps doubling up, we found three guests beers, so we went for the Elgoods Lazy Dog. Adjacent to the building, on the right hand side is a stairwell leading into a handy cut through back into old Loughborough near the church.

This is a Lloyds No 1 dating from 2003. It has a modern decor and had background music playing on my morning visit. Upstairs there is a small area where one solitary soul was sitting. There was no obvious sign of the Spoons daytime crowd, the customer base being very mixed. On the face of it, the beer selection has improved as there are now eight handpumps, the newer ones being fairly obvious. Sadly the two Greene King beers are doubled up which makes you wonder why they bothered adding them. Happily the remaining four pumps were not wasted with boring national brands but were selling Rooster's Yankee, Brewster's Aromatica, Celt Experience Native Storm and Everard's Terrapin American Ale. I went for the Celt Experience Native Storm (£1.99) whch was in good condition. The price of a standard guest ale here is 36p a pint cheaper than the other Spoons in Loughborough. This is a fairly average sort of Spoons but does have plus points. You don't find many nowadays with guest ales under two quid and if you come by bus from the station you get dropped off outside the doors.