Needle & Pin, Loughborough

This is a compact shop converted micro pub with an excellent town centre location, handy for the shopping centre. The ground floor room has a brick tile floor through a fairly narrow space, made even more narrow by the positioning of a staircase along the right-hand wall. Seating is limited to a small row of high tables, but with no stools in support, which means everyone sits along the same side of the table, all facing the same direction. The bar is located in the slightly raised rear part of the room, with a tidy brick counter and basic bar back squeezed into the left-hand corner. A few fridges stand opposite and are full of bottles and cans should the cask range not be to your liking. The walls have been decorated with various railway themed items, despite the station being quite some distance from this part of town, whilst each table has an old spirit bottle on it, with fairy lights inside. The aforementioned staircase leads up to an overspill seating area on the first floor, but there was no need to explore with only one other couple in on my early evening visit. A sign outside explained that the upper room can also be hired for private functions of between 18-30 people and that the room has a record player with over 400 albums to pick from. On the bar, three of the four handpulls were in action, dispensing North Riding Phoenix Mild and Walker Down The Aisle, plus Thornbridge Lord Marples. I was served by a very friendly barmaid who took time to chat to all her customers, and the Mild was in excellent condition. This place had a bit of character to it, which isn’t always a given for such shop converted operations. It felt a bit odd having everyone face the same direction, but perhaps the upper room would have had a better layout. I liked this one and thought it was a sound addition to the town’s pub scene.

The Needle & Pin is a Micro pub that i walked past without knowing it was a pub. Once inside there is a small oblong shaped room which runs to the rear,the bar is to the rear and up two steps,there is a stone floor,the seating is bench seating on the left side and tall tables and chairs on the right side,there is also a room upstairs. There were four real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Stancill Barnsley Bitter,which was a very nice drink,the other real ales were Slightly Foxed Urban Fox,Milk Street Stout and Stardust PK3. Pretty similar to most Micro Pubs i have been in and almost empty on my Saturday dinner visit. Pub visited 1/7/2017

Good micropub which, unsurprisingly, was quite full. The barman was attentive and I would return to this place.

I did wonder if there was any connection between the name of this pub and the Searchers and the previous review gives me the answer. I'm old enough to remember the Mersey Beat group and a track called Needles and Pins was their second number one single. If the owner is the older of the two blokes who were there when I arrived then he is way too young to know about the Searchers! The previous review also describes the place well. I didn't venture upstairs but downstairs just seemed to have three tables alongside the bench on the wall. The three hand pumps had Thornbridge Lord Marples & McConnells Vanilla Stout and Scarborough Sealord. I went for the Mc Connells which was excellent. Although it was priced on the blackboard at £3.60 I was charged £3.40 so assume they thought I was a CAMRA member (is it that obvious?). I thought this was a good micropub and with the Swan in the Rushes only a few doors away makes this side of town well worth a look.