Eating Owt: Apple appeal

THE second agricultural revolution having replaced tatie picking week homogenously with half term, we spent it, semi-detached, on the North Yorkshire Moors around Pickering. The weather was wonderful, the vestigial summer wine a memorable vintage.

The Good Pub Guide, not easily impressed, has four or five enthusiastic entries within a few miles, among them the Fox and Hounds at Sinnington, where the bar had four dogs and at least two people smoking between courses.

They had, to be fair, asked their neighbours if they'd mind. The Eating Owt Book of Etiquette recommends the appropriate answer in such circumstances to be: "Not at all, so long as you don't mind my breaking wind."

We'd not booked, and they couldn't accommodate us. We headed instead for the nearby Moors Inn at Appleton-le-Moors, also in the 2005 Good Pub Guide, and were entranced by its simple and inexpensive excellence.

Originally a 12th century estate village, Appleton-le-Moors is one of several similarly named places in North Yorkshire - Appleton Wiske, Appleton Roebuck, Appleton-le-Street.

If it's reasonable to assume they once had a good orchard thereabouts, what on earth went on in Sinnington?

Appleton-le-Moors has a wide and timeless street along which sheep maunder like they lived there, a tiny wooden reading room outside which a belated notice said simply "Franz Schubert, October 15", a magnificent and gloriously improbable French Gothic church built in 1865 and a Grade II listed village hall, once the school and master's house, which may be the grandest in all England.

Its benefactor was Joseph Shepherd, a 19th century ship owner who - according to Margaret Allison's 250 page village history, published last year - made his fortune from guano, yet further evidence of the adage about muck and money.

An 1844 newspaper article, the book notes, recorded that 300 Liverpool ships alone were engaged in the guano trade with West Africa and that "a spoonful of guano turned a sandbank into corn".

It was a Victorian enterprise, adds Mrs Allison, as grim in its exploitation as the cotton and sugar plantations in theirs.

There's also somewhere called McDougall House, said once to have been owned by the family which made their dough from graded grains, though Mrs Atkinson's history doesn't acknowledge the connection.

The barmaid was delightful, said that the restaurant might be full but returned with better news. All but the games room are strictly non-smoking, a couple of local lads sitting puffing away in the corner and only two dunces' caps necessary to underline their folly.

There was a coal fire with a full range, a few nick-nicks of the Aunt Trudy's Butter Mints variety, Black Bull and Black Sheep on hand pump and a lovely, laid-back, cared for feeling to the whole place.

"This is decadence," said a West Riding visitor, standing like Mr Pickwick in front of the fire.

"No it's not," said his Yorkshire wife. "It's you warming your arse."

From the unpretentious menu of genuinely home made food, The Boss began with something called an onion ring pole, which rather resembled the totem pole in Little Plum (Your Redskin Chum) before poor Plum was scalped by political correctness.

Plum's pole, it may be recalled, was topped with an image of Chiefy. This one looked more like ET, who may or may not have come home, with four little dishes containing the dips at its foot.

They were heart-shaped, as of warning of the danger to the arteries of half a stone of onion rings. The Boss devoured them ecstatically, nonetheless.

Both the chicken liver pate and the toast were good, too, the game pie which followed it topped by a wonderful, glazed short crust pastry and filled so solidly and so succulently that the game might well have gone into extra time.

She had the richly nautical fish pie, as far removed from the usual close to the bone pickings as is Scarborough from Stavanger. Veg included outstandingly good chips, roast potatoes, buttery peas, and red cabbage cooked in what The Boss guessed was apple juice.

There was also a single onion ring, as if it had fallen, forlorn, from atop the tower.

Other main courses, hardly anything over a tenner, might have been pheasant casserole, pork and tuna rissoles or from a good vegetarian section, broccoli pancakes or celeriac and blue cheese pie. Puddings are home made, too, but were simply out of the question.

Janet Frank and her staff, all women on the night, couldn't have been friendlier or more informally attentive. It was a great find, truly the Moors the merrier.

l The Moors Inn, Appleton-le-Moors near Pickering, North Yorkshire. (01751 417435.) Open seven evenings and Sunday lunchtime; no problem for the disabled. No smoking or credit cards, dogs allowed in the bar. Rooms from £25 per person.

IN Cropton, three pleasant miles north of Appleton-le-Moors, the New Inn has for 20 years had its own brewery out the back, up to a dozen ales ranging from the wonderfully refreshing Endeavour (3.8abv) to the strongest, Monkman's Slaughter, at 6.0. They do tasting notes, too.

A half term teacher talked us through them, addressing the Monkman's Slaughter as a priest might address the Prayer Book marriage service with its warnings about not being taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly but (as the Book of Common Prayer puts it) reverently, discreetly, advisedly and soberly.

There's a bit about brute beasts with no understanding, an' all, but it need not concern us now.

Food includes excellent sandwiches - rounds of beef and tuna, plenty of crisps, well dressed salad and a bowl of chips, £8.75 the lot - which we followed with a walk to Lastingham and its magnificent, crypted, 11th century parish church.

Deer dived for cover, pheasant crashed about the place, a herd of Shetland ponies - "little Thelwell 'osses," said the Yorkshire lady who'd stopped to feed them - gathered around a pond.

The cosy little Blacksmiths Arms offered a nice pint of Firecracker from the Phoenix Brewery in Greater Manchester, but nothing was as coruscating nor as breathtaking as that church.

* The New Inn holds a beer festival from November 26-28, with 50 ales from around the country and camping spaces available. The £3.50 admission (£3 for CAMRA members) includes a commemorative glass and the first pint. Details on (01751) 417330.

AROUND Pickering, of course, it is happily impossible to resist the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. Entrained to Grosmont, we walked back to Goathland - Aidensfield, for those whose heart beats faster - via the celebrated Birch Hall Inn at Beck Hole.

Without hint of alteration, the little pub was run from 1928-81 by Mrs Edie Schofield - a legend in her own licensing hours - who after "severe vetting" allowed it to be sold to Colin and Glenys Jackson, but with a ten year moratorium on change.

"It wasn't a deterrent, we bought it because we loved it as it was," say the Jacksons, and it was eight years before Colin even dared introduce real ale.

So still it's like a First World War film set, though with latter day prices. Pork pies are £1.40, butties £2. Beers included Black Velvet from Durham, Black Sheep from Masham and Sundown from the Captain Cook Brewery in Stokesley.

The staff are hugely friendly, the atmosphere warm, the surroundings unique. Heaven knows, mind, how they fit 'em all in in the summer.

WE stayed - and paid, no freebies here - for three nights at the White Swan, a 16th century coaching inn in the centre of Pickering.

It's not cheap and there are no extras like garden, gym or swimming pool, but it's a smartly, cheerfully and quirkily run l ittle place with absolutely first rate food.

Breakfast, £15.95 to non-residents, is served in front of a huge fire and might include eggs Benedict, kedgeree or kippers, freshly squeezed orange juice and good coffee, readily refilled.

Dinner on the night we ate there included main courses of "locally grown" beetroot fritters with caramelised onions, mustard sauce and thyme scented basmati rice - great idea, £10.95 - and, for her, a Whitby fish, leek and cider pie which she thought outstanding.

We'd begun with spiced mussel soup, dark and oily, with saffron and garlic crispbreads, she - get this - with "hand dived Scottish king scallops with Coverdale cheese, sweet cured bacon and parsley gratin (£8.95).

Days later, she remained rhapsodic not just about the dish but about the young lady who'd served it, a bright thing happy to ponder the merits of hand picking scallops. ("Sort of free range, I suppose.")

Clearly the White Swan isn't the sort of place where they simply give waiting staff a pinny, tell them to mind their peas and queues and let them get on with it.

Further diversion, if necessary, is provided by the house rules in the bedrooms...

Dogs: If your dog has a tendency to bite housekeepers, it may be polite to let us warn them first.

Dress: There is no longer a dress code here. However, anyone seen wearing a shell suit etc will be pushed near an open fire. We do not yet have a gymnasium. Please do not let it appear as if we do."

Smoking: £50 surcharge on anyone smoking in their room, but smoking allowed in bar and lounge. "If you are unhappy with this policy, please reserve a room at the Forest and Vale Hotel..."

It beat tatie picking week any day.

SO finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call high rise flats for pigs.

Sty scrapers, of course.

Published: 09/11/2004