The Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough

Pub SignMan left this review about The Swan in the Rushes

This is a nice traditional two bar pub opposite the town’s main shopping centre. You enter via a porch with some beer engines mounted to the rear and doors for each bar on either side, each with etched glass panes with a swan in rushes motif. The doors lead into roughly equal sized rooms on either side of the centrally positioned servery, with fixed bench seating around the perimeter and plenty of chairs in support. The walls are painted in plain colours, with large bay windows to the front with Castle Rock branded panes, and scuffed parquet flooring throughout. The walls have been decorated with some nice arty photos of the local area, a few framed certificates, well stocked bookshelves, and plenty of blackboards listing the beers, ciders and snacks on offer. A nice fireplace in the left-hand room looks like it gets plenty of use in the colder months, with large buckets of old newspapers stood on the hearth. The right-hand room has a decent juke box judging by the tunes that periodically became audible from that side of the pub, and I spotted a few TV screens here and there, although none were in use at the time of my visit. The servery spans both rooms and has a modern timber fronted counter and somewhat chopped out bar back. A door to the rear leads through to a games room, dominated by a centrally positioned pool table.
Castle Rock beers accounted for most of the cask range, with Harvest pale, Preservation, Elsie Mo and Our House available alongside Charnwood Black Fox and Salvation plus one from Nene Valley, the name of which I didn’t catch. There were also a few real cider options and the friendly, if somewhat bored looking, barman poured me a good pint of the Preservation, which I enjoyed supping in near isolation, with just one other customer on my side of the bar.
I thought this was a decent enough Castel Rock pub which perhaps doesn’t quite measure up to some of the brewery’s best houses, but was a decent enough place to start my crawl from. The interesting beer selection and pleasant two bar layout were big plus points for me and perhaps I’d have felt even more favourably towards the place had I caught it at a busier time.

On 9^th May 2023 - rating: 7
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