The Foot Of The Walk

Oh dear. We arranged to meet friends on a Friday night, well prepared to have the usual full to the brim, no seats Wetherspoons we all love to hate. The total polar opposite was true, it was so quiet I could swing at least 30 cats end to end around*.
The atmosphere sucked.
I think the music sucked (I can’t even remember if there was music).
The staff were fed up and bored.
Regulars were not very jolly and did not seem to appreciate me even glancing in their direction.
My only plus point is that it was cheap, but then again its even cheaper to get a bottle of wine and sit on my own sofa.
*I would never swing an actual cat, I love them too darn much.

The Foot of the Walk is a standard Wetherspoons establishment in Leith. I’ve only been for drinks, so can’t comment on the food, but the drinks selection is impressive. Regularly-​changing guest ales are a big positive in my books, and this place delivers on that front. The prices are great too; I can usually get a good pint of ale for around the £2 mark. I can’t seem to beat that anywhere else in Edinburgh, even in the students’ union!

Here I sit on a Sunday afternoon at 13:27.Been coming here many years. It’s Leith it’s What you get? down to Earth folk. It’s just missing the sawdust on the floor. Families with children (running about like drunk goats) Goats? Ehh?
lots of older regulars meet daily. I actually Don’t mind the place. Lots of characters. Most staff pleasant but a couple standing there curdling milk with the stair of their faces.
Just looking now a few rough diamionds, reminding me of the Baha Men song «Who Let the dogs out»
Ahem. Enough said.
Still I like the place, more characters then alphabet spaghetti.
Beer cheap of course being a Wetherspoons. Will I come back? Don’t be silly, of course I will.
Hey ho! Away to go!

The entrance to the Foot of the Walk looks quite impressive but I am afraid that’s where it ends.
You can’t really go wrong with a Wetherspoons, but this one was particularly sticky-​carpeted and I had to send back a glass of wine because there was a lippy mark on the rim of the glass. I’m pretty sure it got wiped off with a towel and given back to me.
It’s cheap, but cheerful? Hmm, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

I cannot make up my mind about Wetherspoons pubs.
I don’t hate them — they are really cheap, so you can’t argue with that. But I don’t get totally psyched at the thought of meeting in them either. The lack of music can be grim i (it’s eerily quiet), the meals are often microwave chewy, and the pints can be flat.
This Wetherspoons, like most of them, is massive. There is a lot of floorspace and it’s not as rundown inside as its shoddy exterior suggests. The outside looks sadly shabby, like the building is forlorn. And there’s nothing that makes me sadder than a beautiful building being wasted. Well, truth be told there’s a lot more that you can spend energy on being sad about, but I am regretful that the sign for this establishment was obstructed by a poster for Streetdance 3D when I was here.
Thinking it would be a nicer place to visit, it had the lacklustre but functional setting of most pubs from this chain, but an added air of sorrow. I can’t explain it and it’s a bit dramatic of me to say, but they could do so much more with this building. It is, largely, a bit of a downtrodden part of Leith and although Wetherspoons is the best of a bad bunch it’s not particularly enticing. Bless them for trying, but there’s something a bit seedy about this place.
After Stuart’s review I was quite sad I couldn’t visit the urinals. Never thought I’d say that sentence but they are incredibly 80s if their website picture is to be taken at face value. I am half expecting George Michael to pop out from behind a partition and start singing «I want your sex». Guys, you should be so lucky, eh?
The whole affair is a wee bit 80s, but maybe that’s where the air of misery comes in — it’s all a bit Thatcher tainted.