Clock wise

9:28am Tuesday 12th February 2008

Once one of the great venues of choice, the George in Piercebridge has recently fallen on hard times, something new owners want to reverse

IT was National Yorkshire Pudding Day, the Guardian in one of its more Grandma Batty moments devoting a leader - "In praise of yorkshire puddings" - to the English chieftain.

The greater mystery in this house - or, at least, the greater debate - was that yorkshire had a small y'. The Boss supported their lower case. What about eccles cakes, she said, or peach melba, or battenberg?

What, though, of Irish stew and (more pertinently in her case) Welsh rarebit? At the risk of incurring capital gains tax, Yorkshire pudding remains an upper-case case around here.

We lunched at the 16th Century George in Piercebridge, which may not be Yorkshire's most northerly redoubt before falling into the hands of the Prince Bishops but is close enough to the swollen Tees for owners to have cast anxious eyes on the swell.

Best known for the clock that stopped, short, never to go again, the George was once one of the great venues of choice - hunt balls to pub crawls - for many a mile around Darlington.

Latterly, however, the hotel itself has had a stop-start existence which in no particular chronological order has sometimes seemed close to gumming up the works completely.

Recent visits have found the place so baleful, so almost completely lacking in customers, in the housekeeper's basic craft or in any kind of embrace, that it was easy to wonder if the next chime might simply be the death knell.

The clock really was ticking on the south bank of the Tees.

It did close at least once, again changed hands last May and was taken over just two weeks ago - we didn't know when we went - by Paul Hutchinson, originally a Seaham Harbour lad who already runs the Red Well and the Old Well, both in Barnard Castle.

Sunday lunch on Yorkshire Pudding day again found the fires bright blazing, the staff attentive and friendly, the old place cared for - and about - once more. Someone was rising to the occasion, anyway.

It's still early days, of course, still only a dozen or so in that attractive riverside restaurant and a chap on the next table reading Thomas the Tank Engine - the one about the diseasel - to his little lad.

By the standards of that unfortunate engine's egregious owners, he may soon have to go on a course before being allowed to proceed to the next chapter.

A carvery lunch was £7.50, two courses £9.50, three £11.50. That's entirely reasonable, though there were just three choices - plus vegetarian - and they'd run out of pork and, subsequently, strawberry cheesecake before we got to it.

A pint of Black Sheep was an absurd £2.80, a price apparently inherited. "My manager said he was embarrassed to charge it," said Paul later, and has vowed to tweak tails.

I'd begun with a pretty insipid prawn cocktail, she with mussels in a red wine sauce which she reckoned fine.

Both beef and pork had much more flavour than is usual from carveries, the vegetables weren't bad at all, the left-over crackling excellent.

The Yorkshires on their great day had survived the carvery pretty well, too, pleasantly soft within. The chocolate mousse and ice cream which followed was perfectly okay.

Paul admitted afterwards that the poor old George has been "a bit down and out".

He plans to invest hundreds of thousands, not least on the ballroom and bedrooms. "I want it back to where it was 15-20 years ago," he said.

For the first time in years - and there have been some visits so gruesome it seemed unfair to kick old Geordie when he was down - it's now possible to recommend that readers once again see for themselves.

Whatever the day of the year, you know what they say about the proof of the pudding, don't you?

LAST week's column recalled racehorse trainer Arthur Stephenson's celebrated aphorism about little fish being sweet - most famously employed, recalls Billy Neilson in Bishop Auckland, when his horse The Thinker won the Gold Cup at a snowy Cheltenham in 1987. Stabled at Leasingthorne, near Bishop Auckland, Arthur was 250 miles away, winning a seller at Hexham. It was a catch-all philosophy which brought him 2,988 winners between 1946 and his death in 1992, a record overtaken by Martin Pipe, eight years later.

ON a snowy day in Osmotherley, the elder bairn and his young lady joined us for lunch at the Golden Lion. It was a chance to tell them about the Lyke Wake Walk, about its funereal imagery and how - by virtue of having completed the 42-mile crossing at least twice in one direction and once in t'other - I was officially a Master of Misery.

For some reason they didn't seem a bit surprised.

Ossie's east of Northallerton, foot of the North Yorks moors. Weather notwithstanding, there was a sprinkling of walkers, too. Some sheltered in the pub, where the vertiginous ascent to the netty may make for good practice but the "Walking Shop" next door is for sale.

There are bare boards, whitewashed walls, lots of mirrors. The Good Beer Guide supposes this to create a romantic atmosphere, though some of us find it hard to understand what people see in mirrors at all.

The Golden Lion's one of three highly rated pubs within 50 yards of the village cross, and may be the most warmly embracing.

An extensive menu is augmented by a specials board that included cullen skink, the Scottish smoked haddock and potato soup that in this house serves always as a reminder of a piscine hotel in Mallaig, at the end of the West Highland Railway.

The line, even when the lads from the North-East Locomotive Preservation Group aren't rattling along on their puffing billy, is one of the great wonders of the world. Mallaig may not be, though personally I'd haste back much more often.

The cullen skink was fine, as it should have been for £4.50, the lamb burger not only followed the commendable practice of being locally sourced - mint sourced, as it were - but was identified as from Low Cote farm, Snilesworth, just a few miles across the moor.

It was a proper burger, and very enjoyable. Chips so-so, but soon devoured.

The Boss thought her sardines succulent, her fish cakes "wonderful". The bairn rated highly his chorizo and black pudding risotto. The young lady's vegetarian, or if she isn't, appeared to be.

Two courses for four, plus a pint of Timothy Taylor's bitter - a welcome visitor - a pint of lager and a couple of glasses of house red were £71. Efficient, amiable, aproned service; relaxing atmosphere.

Still it snowed, still it remained busy, even in bleak mid-winter. Those who feel guilty about seeing so many healthy walkers can take comfort: Osmotherley's so popular and so pushed for space, it'll still be a fair hike back to the car.

CAMRA's Pubs in the Community week runs nationally from Saturday. Next Sunday afternoon at the Tut and Shive in Bishop Auckland main street there's a free beer tasting from local breweries like Wear Valley and the Durham-based Hill Island plus rarely encountered pub games like shove ha'penny, bagatelle and ninespot dominoes. "It's open," says Wear Valley CAMRA press secretary Paul Dobson, "to anyone interested in what a proper pub is all about."

and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what a fjord was. A Norwegian motor car, of course.

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