Catherine Raine has shed an impressive 3st 7lb in the past 18 months, thanks to adhering heroically to an austere diet despite the temptations of Peat's tantalising bakery counter where she works.

But now, while feeling like a new woman, the 26-year-old from Middleton is anxious to tone up her body - and where better to do it than Jades, the high-tech fitness suite at the Teesdale Sports Centre?

It is a busy place where genial manager Gerry Hehir strives to ensure that the 573 members aged 14 to 80 and almost as many casual users can get as much benefit as possible from the 22,000 visits they clock up in a year. Catherine jogged steadily on a tread machine this week as she told me she felt well tuned by her exercise, carefully planned by Mr Hehir and his team, who I suppose could be called Gerry and the pace setters. Around her other men and women were rowing, pushing, lifting, bending and stretching on an array of gleaming equipment. Linda Clennel of Marwood pedalled gracefully as she reported she was talked into it by her two daughters in law, who are keen members. "I've a bad shoulder and they think exercise will help put it right," she said. Among the enthusiasts are some men and women referred by doctors to help them over ailments, including strokes and heart attacks, as well as finely-muscled types aiming to stay superfit. "We arrange a programme for everyone," said Mr Hehir. "And we make sure they have fun while getting into good shape."

Many families in Teesdale have not put up their Christmas trees yet, but Jill and Martyn Bacon are already announcing a new way to get rid of them when they come down. The couple. who run the Conservation Volunteers, will send their old milk float round Barnard Castle, Startforth and Bowes on January 6 to pick up festive firs left at the kerbside. It's a novel type of takeaway service. They will also collect trees left in the Galgate car park and skip site at Middleton, then turn them into garden mulch at their base beside Deerbolt. The couple and their squad, who are happy to be known as the dale's Rotters because they turn all sorts of waste into compost, do a lot of valuable recycling work all year round.

Does any family in the dale still create a weekend teatime snack called a sugar sop? A wiry grandfather has been telling me how it was a treat in his house in boyhood days. A thick slice of bread was toasted on a fork at the fire before being soaked in beer. It lay drying on the hearth before being sprinkled with sugar and nutmeg, then topped with a slice of farmhouse cheese. "It was ever so tasty," he recalled, licking his lips. "All the young 'uns in our house relished it."

This month's edition of the well-written Gainford Parish News has this item quoting a child's frantic last-minute letter to Father Christmas: "I wanna put in a new order quick, as I found all those things I asked for before under the spare room bed." How many people realise it was a Teesdale man who founded the St John of God Hospital at Scorton? He was Austin Collins, son of the Reverend Thomas Collins, rector of Barningham, and was born in that village in April 1827.

He went to Durham University and then became a curate in London. The source of this information? The late Merryne Watson's history of Barningham, As Time Went By, which as I've mentioned before is a mine of facts. Austin converted to become a Catholic priest in 1859. Later he was entrusted by an anonymous donor with a wad of money to launch a charity, and it led to him starting the hospital in 1880.

* I'll be glad to see anyone who calls with snippets of news at The Northern Echo office at 36 Horsemarket, Barnard Castle, on Mondays and Tuesdays, telephone (01833) 638628.