LAST Legging it through Crook, we come across a car with the registration R1PPN, parked in Hope Street.

Whilst it is doubtless owned by someone with roots in that homophonous North Yorkshire city, it is not the thought which occurs to us walkers. As one, we think of Ripping Yarns.

“There’s a Tow Law connection,” it’s at once claimed and so, extraordinarily, there is.

Written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, principally starring Palin, Ripping Yarns embraced just nine episodes between 1976-79. They had titles like Golden Gordon – he of Barnstoneworth United – Roger of the Raj and Across the Andes By Frog.

The second was called The Testing of Eric Olthwaite. That was the Tow Law connection.

Olthwaite was a particularly boring Yorkshireman with a girlfriend called Enid Bag and a fondness for shovels, rain and black pudding. “His mother made black pudding so black that even the white bits were black,” said the synopsis.

Then one day Olthwaite and an associate rob a bank, so astonished at their success that they embark upon a series of daring raids on rainfall records.

Inexplicably, the North Point Hotel in Tow Law was the bank. There was a police chase along Campbell Street (honest) and other scenes at Beamish Museum, Bollihope Common and in off the deep end at High Force.

Some also recalled a jewellery shop being robbed, the story rendered apocryphal by the marked absence of jewellery shops in Tow Law.

Cross country via a herd of llamas – “if we go much further there’ll be giraffes, an’ all,” says Tow Law FC treasurer Kevin McCormick – the Last Legs party finally pitches up at the North Point, where everyone still has a Ripping Yarns tale to tell.

“It was the most exciting thing to happen in Tow Law since we beat Mansfield Town 5-1 in the FA Cup,” says a chap next to the £1-a-go massage chair – and 48 years later, that wasn’t spinning a yarn at all.

TOW Law Town’s horizons may be a little more limited these days, especially since star Brazilian striker Gustavo de Paulo da Nobrega e Silva – a Durham University student known as Gus in order to avoid exhaustion – has left for a team in Valetta. Lawyers secretary Steve Moralee has posted images of the Ironworks Road ground in January and Valetta, slightly more clement, just about any time. “I can’t understand why he’s gone,” says Steve. “I just don’t see the attraction.”

SIMON Clifford was a Loftus lad, not so long ago described in The Times as probably the most important man in British football and in FourFourTwo magazine as England’s new saviour.

He’d befriended Juninho when the Brazilian was at the Boro, borrowed £5,000 from a teachers’ union to fund his own first South American trip, founded Brazilian Soccer Schools and associated coaching clinics in the UK about which folk became very excited indeed. Things didn’t quite work out at Garforth Town, though.

Garforth’s this side of Leeds, its football team known as The Miners. Clifford bought the club in 2003, talked of the Premier League within 20 years, became manager for three years, in which time they did, indeed, win two promotions.

Lee Sharpe, Manchester United and England, briefly added Garforth to his CV. Socrates, the great Brazilian, joined on a month’s contract as player/coach, appeared for just 12 minutes – he was 50, after all – but increased the crowd from an average 100 to 1,385.

Five years ago, Gazza was named as the new player/manager, but inexplicably failed to show up.

In 2012-13, they were relegated back to the Northern Counties East League, having gained just 16 points from 42 games. Only the yellow and blue kit may have suggested that it was remotely just like watching Brazil. Clifford sold up soon afterwards.

On Saturday, they hosted Morpeth Town, Emirates FA Cup extra preliminary round. A pub near the station was called the Lord Gascoigne, though it may have been coincidental. Dear old Paul is not thought to be in line for ennoblement just yet.

Precisely ten seconds had passed before the crowd, back to 100 or so, sang that they were the famous Garforth Town and they were going to Wembley. It seemed a mite optimistic. The ground’s smart, the stand said to resemble a heliport – probably depends on your helicopter – the motto Possum si volo. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

None knew what had happened to the luminary from Loftus, though Wikipedia still supposes Brazilian Soccer Schools to be the world’s biggest football coaching franchise. Clifford’s own internet profile seems altogether lower these days, though those fond of a Tweet reckon that he’s been on that particular social medium three times this month.

His former team still plays in Brazil’s primary colours, still does little to suggest further resemblance. Garforth Town 1 Morpeth Town 4.

AH yes, possum si volo. The Last Legs Challenge continued on Tuesday with a 14-mile walk from Seaburn to South Shields FC, whose ground is about four miles inland.

Remember Tuesday? Suffice that when the mobile phone gave up the ghost halfway through, the cause of death was given as drowning.

It really was quite awful, unremitting rain blown straight into our faces as we headed up the coast. From the deserted Shields sea front, the obvious route was to head up Ocean Road, past the Lorelei that is Colman’s fish and chip restaurant – the North-East’s best – and for a life-saver in the Alum Ale House.

The native guide chose instead to take what on a different day might have been the scenic route, but which, on Tuesday, was simply another shade of grey.

It was probably just as well. We were so wet that had we walked into Colman’s we’d have been served up – large cod – with chips, mushy peas and tartare sauce.

Still there are discoveries, of course. In the area that once was the hammer-and-tongs hub of South Shields shipbuilding, a sign now advertises the Waggy Tail Doggy Day Centre.

So that was Leg 4. Forty to go. None may be as challenging as sunless Shields in mid-August.

AS last week’s column noted, all that is but a stroll around Bents Park boating lake compared to the task set for themselves by Mike Tierney and his mate Leven Brown – rowing the 800k from Scotland to Denmark.

They’re hoping to leave this morning, though things may not be said to be set fair. “I must have offended the weather gods in a previous life,” says Mike, searching for prevailing westerlies.

Like mine, Mike’s charities include the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, in memory of his sister Clare Tierney, a former football referee and secretary of Gateshead FC who died from breast cancer three years ago, aged just 47.

Their progress can be followed at www.facebook.com/northsearow2015.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.