Survival Of The Fittest (from The Northern Echo)

To buck the trend of pub closures, the Quarry Burn's new approach to pub culture has ensured its survival

Mr Daynes represents the Campaign for Real Ale, an organisation which - like the lady of this house - is wholly admirable but reluctant to admit that there are occasions on which it may be mistaken.

CAMRA had already reported that 57 pubs close permanently each month as the price differential with supermarkets ever widens. The Budget, added the press release, represented "a great big nail whacked ruthlessly into the coffin".

It can hardly be gainsayed. "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice" as they used to say in the Gladiators' Arms.

The recommendation was for the Quarry Burn at Hunwick, between Bishop Auckland and Willington, a pub owned these past five years by Julie Bell and her family.

In 2007, however, they realised how close they were to becoming one of those 57 varieties which met the same melancholy end. "We were just plodding along, going nowhere," says Julie. "If we hadn't done something, the smoking ban would have been the final straw."

Instead they decided on a major refurbishment and extension - it helped that her husband's a builder, but still cost everything they had - and to major on food.

Julie's a Hunwick lass, knew the Quarry Burn when it was called the Wheatsheaf and run briefly by her parents, had seen how much things had changed. "At one time there were lads out every night of the week. Now there's no way we could have survived on drink sales alone."

At the bottom of the menu, there's a line about its having been designed by an outfit called Create a Dream. That's what so many ostensibly worldly wise and sensible people still believe when putting their names over a pub door and, of course, they end up living a nightmare.

The Quarry Burn's wholly changed, and wholly for the better, since last we were there. There's a new restaurant, new floors and furnishing, new approach.

A notice near the bar points out that, because of brewery increases, the price of a pint would have to go up from February 12. Now it'll have to go up again.

Pubs could save themselves a lot of money by having a load of "This month's price increase" posters printed, with a blank space for the latest affront to the economy.

On Budget night, a well-kept pint of Black Sheep was £2.20 and in an inflated age that didn't seem too bad at all.

The menu embraces few surprises, unless there are still those who believe jalapeno to have been Brazil's outside left in the 1958 World Cup finals, but offers good value and (as it transpired) huge portions. Decent vegetarian and children's sections, too.

The room was painted in broad horizontal stripes, a bit like eating inside a Neapolitan ice cream, the service was young and agreeable. The music machine played Sinatra, of whom the Boss is quite fond. It's an acquired taste, to be Frank.

She'd started with the jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese, served with salad, followed (for just £5.50) with manifestly home made courgette and leek bake which she considered "jolly good". For an additional £1.50 she had a bowl of onion rings so vast that, laid end to end, they might have encircled Crook.

I'd begun with a virtual cauldron of home made mushroom soup, with a roll into which wedges for two little packets of butter had been cut. It rather resembled a two-man bob at the Winter Olympics.

The steak and ale pie which followed was home made too - like 95 per cent of the stuff that comes out of the kitchen, says Julie. It was substantial and succulent, with proper chips and more vegetables than we could see off between us.

The banoffee pie was the only disappointment, much too flaccid, though ample compensation came with the bill - just £33, including two pints, a bottle of water and two coffees.

For the Quarry Burn the change of direction has meant that weekends are often fully booked up to a month in advance, with quite often 30-40 in at lunchtime. "It's been fantastic but we're all exhausted," says Julie. At least, thank goodness, they survive.

■ The Quarry Burn, Hunwick, near Bishop Auckland 01388-608336. Open for food seven lunchtimes - special menu - and Monday to Saturday evenings. Well-behaved children welcome.

ON Budget Day, I was a 7.50am guest on Radio 4's flagship Today programme, down-the-line from a studio at Radio Tees. Since the way the BBC treats its guests is with a cup of frothy coffee and nothing else whatever, we adjourned for breakfast to Grubbs Diner, across the road. Full breakfast is just £2.60, full breakfast with chips £3.20, "Greedy man's breakfast" - three of everything - £5.20. Our companion asked for a large gin and tonic. They know him. "Not until nine o'clock," they said.

STILL on the airwaves, we'd cause a couple of columns back to wonder about the song "Little Miss Bouncer loves an announcer, down at the BBC".

It was a hit in 1926. Bill Taylor, Bishop Auckland lad now in Canada, sends lyrics in which "tireless" rhymes with "wireless" and the radio's a crystal set.

"It's the man who announces, with a lot of passion in it/The shipping forecast will follow in a minute." As Bill suggests, they just don't write them like that any more.

The fish and chips at Sea Breeze in Lobster Road were the best that money could buy, she said, and Pacitto's ice cream was in the same league. What's more, they'd had the beach to themselves.

The Sunday lunchtime plan to follow in her footprints was at once blown off course, however. Sea Breeze was shuttered.

Instead, we walked along the Stray to Marske, the sea as flat as a flapjack, the sand scattered with every dog having its day.

A municipal information board recalled Redcar's good old days - bingo with bottle tops - and praised something called the 7-plaice sculpture.

Could it have been a misprint? Did the latest example of modern art represent seven different locations or was it, indeed, a queer kettle of fish? The latter, it turned out.

Properly called 7 Red Plaice, it's an 18ft, £16,000 creation in Redcar's new shopping centre, described by a local councillor as an "abhorrence". They never even caught plaice off Redcar.

In Marske there's a place called La Fez - a "Margarita cantina" - which offered Sunday lunchtime happy hours and all pitchers £6.95. You know what they say about every pitcher; in any case, it was closed.

The Top House Tapas Bar didn't serve food on Sundays either. At Marske United Football club there was cheese and pickled onions. The onions, chilli infused, could have detonated Huntcliff.

Heading back, we'd a sausage sandwich at the Stray Café - the very epitome of cheap and cheerful - where the coffee machine was so noisy that, had wings been fitted, it would have been refused permission to take off on the grounds of noise pollution.

A notice on the counter advised: "I kiss better than I cook." It was not a claim we were able to substantiate.

At last, back in Redcar centre, we had lemon tops (£1.20) from Pacitto's. So ended a three-course Sunday lunch.

and finally, the bairns wondered if we'd heard about the football team who'd never previously met one another.

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