Athletic Arms.

Athletic Arms

Forty-two whiskies stand permanently at GBP 2.50 for a 35ml Scots measure, and which forty-two it is keeps changing.1

Why go

That offer began as a one-off promotion and the pub kept it. Behind it the gantry holds over 700 malts on CAMRA's January 2026 branch survey and over 800 on the manager's own count to The Scotsman five months earlier.2 Kevin McGhee signed his first lease here in 2010 after four years managing the place, and has taken the single malt shelf up from 250 bottles since.6 He is a Hibs supporter running the city's best-known Hearts pub, which locals have made their peace with.1 The pub also fills its own casks now, most recently a 14 year old North British single grain out of a Palo Cortado cask bottled by Duncan Taylor, GBP 4.50 for a 35ml pour in the bar or GBP 45 to carry home.1 In August 2025 the Scottish Bar & Pub Awards, run by the trade magazine DRAM, named it Whisky Bar of the Year over The Belfry, The Mother Superior and Glasgow's Pot Still.

The beer is a separate argument and it is nearly as good. Eight Aitken tall founts still work on this bar, fed by two electric air compressors, and CAMRA's branch believes that is the largest surviving bank of them anywhere.2 Air pressure pushes cask up the line without a sparkler working the head, and the pub runs return trays on those founts so nothing spilled is wasted. The house heavy is Diggers 80/-, brewed to order by Stewart at 4.4%, with Deuchars IPA standing alongside it and four more beers turning over. The pub opened in 1897 on the ground floor of an 1889 tenement between two graveyards, and Dalry Cemetery's workers coming off shift are where the name Diggers came from.

Order this / avoid

• Order: whatever is currently on the 42. The manager put the reasoning plainly to The Scotsman: The idea is to get people out of the city centre and give them a really good value drink.1
• Order: the pub's own single grain if you want to taste what the buying is actually doing. A Palo Cortado cask on a 14 year old grain is a sherry finish chosen for a lighter, sweeter spirit, and it costs less here than a cocktail does in the New Town.
• Order: a pie. GBP 3, from a local butcher, in steak, mince, chicken curry or macaroni.1
• Avoid: a Hearts home fixture or a Murrayfield international, unless the crowd is what you came for. Tynecastle is round the corner and the room fills.

What locals & experts say

• Peter Simpson, Deputy Editor, The Skinny (2026), writing about the new Leith sibling and opening on this pub: it is a large, wood-paneled corner bar at the notional boundary between Gorgie and Dalry with an everchanging selection of cask ales and enough whisky to float a medium-sized ship. Oh, and pies. He calls it a canonical 'Hearts pub' down to the various maroon shades around the place. He is writing about the Bernard Street pub, not this one, so none of that praise belongs to this address.3
• CAMRA Edinburgh & South East Scotland, branch survey walked 12 January 2026, is blunt where the press is not: A shadow of its former self is how some local people describe the Diggers. The same record says it is quieter now than in its heyday, though packed when Hearts are at home, and grades the interior Two star, a pub interior of very special national historic interest.2
• The List's Eat & Drink 365 guide (2025) rates it on price and on who is standing at the bar: It has a wonderful whisky offering at great prices and when you see folks in high vis and suits in the same bar, you know you've found a melting pot.4
• Scottish Bar & Pub Awards, Whisky Bar of the Year 2025, winner.5 The body matters. The Scottish Licensed Trade News ran its own whisky-bar category the same year and gave it to the Tipsy Midgie, so an unqualified claim about Scotland's whisky bar of 2025 is wrong about one of the two pubs.7
• Tom Kitchin's head chef, via Kitchin's Relisher interview of August 2026, and the attribution matters: Kitchin calls the man our resident whisky man and hands him the whisky answers rather than giving his own. The pick is this pub, and the reason given is that it has stayed exactly what it is because it has never needed to be anything else, with hundreds of bottles on the gantry, without a trace of stuffiness. The same telling has the gravediggers coming in off a shift at the two cemeteries and propping their spades against the bar, which is the pub's own account of its nickname rather than a documented one.8
• On the service the pub is remembered for, the branch record keeps the mechanism: cask McEwan's 80/- came off eleven founts at speed from up to fifteen red-jacketed barmen, and drinkers raised fingers on the way in so the pints were standing on the counter when they got there. The landlord of the day, Bill Farmer, explained the priority: The person coming into the pub needs a pint more than the person in the bar that's already had a pint!2

Good to know

• Sites: two pubs now trade under the Diggers name. This page is the Angle Park Terrace original. Diggers Leith opened in February 2026 on the corner of Bernard Street and Constitution Street, in the unit Chancho used to hold, and it is a different room with its own beer list.3
• Getting there: about two miles west of the center, on the corner where Gorgie meets Dalry. Tynecastle Park is a two-minute walk and Murrayfield is walkable from the door.
• Booking: none taken. Walk in.
• Children: admitted to the two back rooms until 9pm if they are eating. The larger of the two has the dartboard.
• Hours: neither the pub nor the CAMRA branch record publishes them, so check before you make the trip out.
• Ownership: Heavitree Brewery holds the lease; the pub is run independently, and the range on the gantry is the licensee's call.
• Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 11 February 2019, which is seven and a half years ago. No later inspection is on file. Treat it as missing information.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Whisky bar of the year 2025." He is right, and the body he is remembering is the Scottish Bar & Pub Awards.

Verdict

should-visit — The whisky is deep and cheap at once, which is rare, and it is still a rung below the top. Depth is real: 700 to 800 malts depending on who counted, grown from 250 by a licensee on the lease since 2010, with 42 standing permanently at GBP 2.50 for a 35ml Scots measure and the 42 underneath them changing. That fixed-price rotation is an active buying decision and it is the single best thing about this pub. Scotland's licensed trade voted it Whisky Bar of the Year 2025 over The Pot Still, which is a marquee award and it is current. Two shipped Edinburgh rooms set the line above it. The Bow Bar sits at should-visit on 400 malts, its own single-cask bottling and seven air-pressure founts, in the Old Town. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society sits at should-visit holding a global Whisky Magazine bar-of-the-year title, a bylined Scotsman review, and liquid that exists nowhere outside its own casks. The Athletic Arms clears the first and does not clear the second, so putting it above both would break the ladder. The can't-get-it-elsewhere case also thins on inspection: the eight founts are one more than a pub two miles closer already has, and the Bow Bar fills its own casks too, which leaves the fixed-price 42 as the only format nobody else runs. A price is a lighter thing to build a night around than a career dish. Against it sit real costs: two miles west, pies and toasties as the entire kitchen, no bylined critic anywhere, and CAMRA's own branch recording that some locals call it a shadow of its former self. Send someone here on purpose, on a day Hearts are not at home, and tell them the pull is the pouring and the price.