The Monkey Walk (JD Wetherspoon), Coalville

Official site of The Monkey Walk (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of The Monkey Walk (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Small 'spoons housed in an old Coalville Working Men’s Co-operative Society building. Little of distinction inside the rectangular bar, but the numerous local history panels are interesting. Just Ruddles, Doom Bar and Abbot plus Sambrook's Pumphouse Pale and Secret Kingdom from Hadrian Border (£2.20) available from the two banks of five handpumps.

Mildly interesting exterior. Fairly broken-up inside, somewhat unusual for a JDW – I suppose structural integrity played a part here. Struggling a bit to keep on top of the Saturday lunchtime trade, with a few long-uncleared tables. I went for a Spoons fest beer (Birra Perugia Chocolate Porter) which came out well enough (NBSS 3.5).

This is a wedge shaped red brick building. The interior is constrained by the shape of the building with some nice bench seating around the walls and the rest being fairly typical. Like the previous correspondent found nearly four years ago the beer choice lets this place down badly. On my visit they had the IPA variant of the JDW Trio Of Doom and Pedigree doubled up leaving a mainstream and totally uninspiring choice of Spitfire or Hobgoblin. After seeing this I ordered a Devils Backbone which I was told they had stopped selling despite being listed on the brand new menu. I ended up with a couple of cans of Sixpoint Bengali IPA which I drank and then left to get the bus back to Loughborough. I have to say that waiting for a bus in the rain is a better experience than drinking in this useless JDW. It only avoids the Score of Shame as there were no Available Soon offerings.