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.

I walked into the Hurst Arms through the left hand door last Wednesday and was confronted by a small room with bar that looked like it was more likely to serve up cream teas and scones than quality ales. Thankfully this section isn’t the extent of the pub as the much larger L shaped bar on the right hand side was very busy with locals watching Arsenal play in the Champions League on a plasma at the rear of the pub and some more were watching Man U(re) on the screen located at the front. This side of the bar also houses a dartboard, pool table and bar billiards so there is never a dull moment. The jukebox was obviously switched off, but there is also a quiz machine for those brainier than me. When a pub has all of these distractions I usually end up writing that there is only a standard selection of draught available from the bar, but this is a Harveys pub and pretty much their whole range was available from hand pump (Sussex Old Ale, Armada, Best, Star of Eastbourne, Dark Mild) and Thatchers Gold Cider was also available on draught. The woman working the jump was polite, but I must say that the Guinness I received wasn’t the best – hopefully this was a one off! I didn’t spot any food advertised, but there was a reassuring smell of roast beef flavoured Monster Munch wafting around the pub. There is some seating outside the front of the pub that is covered by two jumbrellas and there is also a beer garden at the rear that has more covered seating. I thought that the locals were a down to earth bunch and I enjoyed the atmosphere so would have no problem returning.