The Amber Rooms (JD Wetherspoon), Loughborough

The Amber Rooms is a Wetherspoons where a tile floor surrounded steel serving counter with holes drilled through it runs up the right-hand wall. Two banks of six hand pumps are supported, the usual three cask were available alongside Nottingham Brewery’s Robin Hood, Bendigo and Trent Mild as well as Mad Squirrel Brewery’s Unity, Beermats Brewing’s Format, Jaipur and Vale Brewery’s Red Kite. A row of high tables run opposite the counter up the centre of the pub and standard tables and chairs are found on a raised area up the left-hand wall. Upstairs is more seating that wraps around a hole in the floor that overlooks a bit of the bar below and at the front is some covered balcony seating that overlooks the bus stops outside the front of the pub. A small counter on the left-hand wall supports a few keg products. I didn’t rate the Robin Hood, but the beer’s cheap and the service was polite so I’d pop back in if passing.

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.