Garden Bar, Sovereign Harbour, Eastbourne

An awful moron magnet on the first floor of the marina commercial complex, reached by staggering up fag-end paved metal stairs to a balcony entrance. Bouncers on door make it feel less than welcoming and foretell what you will find inside. Traipsing across broken glass and spilled beer, you approach the bar to find Holt's Two Hoots on draft plus some exotic lagers. The ale was in very poor condition, barely drinkable. There is a pool table in an area fenced off from children. The bar staff were nearly as unpleasant as the bouncers. Conversation was almost impossible due to the profane din from the sound system and the Neanderthal grunting of the drunken louts wasting the oxygen in here while waiting for Jeremy Kyle to call them. Every garden has a compost heap.

Garden Bar is located up a flight of stairs on the first (top) floor of the bar and restaurant development on the waterfront at Sovereign Harbour. I’m not sure why it is called The Garden Bar as there are no gardens within half a mile and those are in at the rear of local houses. There is some seating at the top of the stairs with a limited view over the harbour and the entrance to this place is shared with the adjacent Ganges Indian restaurant, but a swift turn to the left gains access to the bar. The bar is located on the left hand wall and it supports two hand pumps, one of which was unused leaving Harveys Best as the only available ale. There is also a standard draught selection and Sagres is also available. Floor to ceiling windows line the back wall and there are some great views over the harbour, it’s a shame that the outside seating doesn’t afford the same sort of views. To the far right of the entrance is a raised over eighteens area that houses a pool table and two dartboards complete with electronic scorers. There are a couple of plasma screens that show Sky Sports and some sporting memorabilia is up on the walls including boxing gloves/shorts, something to do with Tim Henman and a signed Spurs shirt that seemed to take pride of place – Boo hiss! I wasn’t that impressed with the rap music that was playing in the background, but to be fair it wasn’t very loud. There are two quiz machines and two fruit machines and I thought the seating to be minimal, but this place has live music and DJs every Friday and Saturday so I’d imagine that standing room is most in demand. These music nights are over 21s and smart dress code so expect a late license with bouncer in tow. I though that the girl behind the bar was very friendly, but I wasn’t overly impressed with the Guinness – although I will say that it had a detergent taste rather than bad beer taste so I think that I must have been unlucky with the glass. I would have taken it back but I had drunk half of it before I noticed due to thirst after trying to walk to the harbour from the A259, which is no easy feat. I wouldn’t go rushing back to this place, but out of the options available in Sovereign Harbour this was my favourite as I like football, pool and darts.