The Three Fishes (Lloyds No. 1), Worthing

Old style interior with a further lounge area upstairs, lots of photos of Worthing Pier and sea front around the place. Ten Handpumps with the usual suspects and three guests ales, Jaipur, Daleside Monkey Wrench and Mauldons Black Adder.

With the Timothy Shelley over the road having closed, this is now Worthing's only Wetherspoons venue, occupying the former showroom of the Worthing Corporation Electricity Board, whose three fishes emblem can still be seen on the front of the building. This is technically a Lloyds Bar, but visiting on a Sunday afternoon there was nothing much to alert you to the fact. It's a fairly compact pub by Wetherspoons' usual expansive standards, with a simple rectangular ground floor room operating as the main bar. The servery runs along the right hand wall and there is a mix of standard tables and chairs and high tables and stools in the front section under the large front windows. The room has been carpeted throughout with lots of nice labelled black and white photos depicting local scenes around the walls, alongside a few elaborately framed plain mirrors. A staircase opposite the bar leads up to a first floor seating area with plenty more tables although I only gave the area a cursory glance. Beyond the stairs there is a sizeable space under some fancy modern light shades with half panelled walls and a DJ booth to the rear left - perhaps the only obvious indication of the pub's Lloyds Bar status. TV screens were showing Wetherspoons promotional material rather than the usual rolling news channels and there was no music playing, which is in contrast to when I once popped my head in here back in the days when the Timothy Shelley was still open. A door to the rear leads out to a decent sized patio garden which was fairly unremarkable beyond the fact that Wetherspoons beer gardens are a reasonably rare feature. An initial glance at the hand pumps was rather discouraging thanks to three 'Spoons regulars (doubled up) dominating the handles, but closer inspection revealed four guest ales, from which I sampled the Banks and Taylor Dragon Slayer. I'm afraid to say that this was easily the worst pint I had on my seven pub crawl around Worthing, but having stopped off for a bite to eat too, I was relieved to find the grub was up to the usual reliable, unfussy standard. I'm not really sure how Wetherspoons decide which pubs to keep and which to discard, but I find it difficult to understand why in this instance they chopped the far better Timothy Shelley and kept this rather sub-par place. There is very little here that you won't have seen done better elsewhere and with a question mark over their beer quality, those looking for a decent pint of ale would do well to stick to micropubs and established ale houses, of which Worthing has plenty of each.

Unremarkable Lloyds No 1, with quite a dark, rectangular bar extending back some way. Also has an extra seating area upstairs and a patio area to the rear. Not a bad selection from the two banks of five handpumps, with several local ales including the Langham Best Bitter (£2.35).

This is the more modern (March 2010) of the two Worthing Spoons and with its chandeliers and less formulaic decor seems a bit more refined than across the road. On my pre-noon Saturday visit it was mostly older folk eating in here. There is an upstairs area that I didn't bother to investigate. Although it is a Lloyds No. 1 and the JDW web site advertises evening music it's hard to envisage this place becoming a night club late on a Friday or Saturday night. I suppose there must be SOME people in Worthing under the age of thirty. The bar had two banks of five pumps but sadly the GK Ruddles & Abbot and Doom Bore were all doubled up. This just left Caledonian Harpoon The Long Thaw, Goldmark Liquid Gold, Oakham JHB and a beer called Admiral Herkules. I went for the Goldmark Liquid Gold which it turned out was the end of the cask and cloudy so switched to the Admiral Herkules (£2.20) which I later discovered was a Banks's beer. It was also a low ABV golden ale in very good nick. If you like staring at chandeliers then this is the Spoons to go for but personally I would rather slum it with the daytime brigade over the road and have a much better choice of beers.