Hurst Arms, Old Town, Eastbourne

Can understand Floyd's comment re the 2 rooms either side of central bar - very much young 'uns and older 'uns, unfortunately I'm falling into the latter category but this place does the mix well. Bar billiards table (they have a league team!) was covered, prob for sat nt, but we settled for a quality Harveys and a chat with the landlord, who steered us toward Quali-seas chippy, back in town, for much needed solids. Good local feel.

Was really looking forward to this one after reading the GBG and a long walk from Willingdon. We entered via the rear door into the smaller of the two bars and were confronted by five Harveys ales. Spoilt for choice, we started picking our poison and it was a distinctly mixed bag – the Dark Mild was good but the Hadlow was poor and had to be taken back; the Armada wasn’t even available, despite the pump being clipped. From the far end we heard the din of the football results being relayed deafeningly loud from a large plasma screen. The clientele were 100% male and it had the air of being a particularly locals local. The interior was fairly tatty in a lot of places and the beer garden was basically a concrete patch with a couple of tables, a black canvas windbreak and a random gents toilet door propped up against the wall. Darts, pool and bar billiards were advertised but the BB table was covered so we couldn’t even get a game on that to pass the time. The female half of the crawl weren’t enamoured with this place and I have to admit I was also not displeased to head on down to hill after the glasses were drained. Disappointing – did I catch it on a bad day? I’d like to think I did.