Trying to access Mobile Gmail will result in an error message, but there's a link below the error message to access the "older version". It's not pretty, but it's functional. I recommend bookmarking it for easy access in the future.
From the "older version", you can also click the link for "basic HTML" which takes you to the full desktop version of Gmail. It's most definitely
not optimized for a 7" screen, but if you find there's something you can't do in the old mobile version you can always use the basic desktop version.
edit: direct link to the "old" version of mobile Gmail:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/x/pmlttwcnxrkk/r/