IN Weardale, as in these columns, Easter Day customarily begins with what the churches formerly called a sunrise service, but which, experience having eclipsed expectation, is now a dawn service, instead.

For 26 of the previous 27 years, the service had been held atop Middlehope Moor, Easter rising towards 2,000ft. On the 27th it snowed even more than usual.

Two dawnings ago they again stayed down dale, the graveyard of All Saints church in Eastgate, a plain to Middlehope mountain, the moor road having been described as “interesting”. It was thought to be an ecclesiastical euphemism, meaning “treacherous”.

We leave home at 5.30am, the lady of the house speeding up the A1, but slowing on the A689 to avoid squashing an Easter bunny. It might have seemed inappropriate.

The April hills remain snowcapped, like some of the cars. It’s two degrees and damp. Dawn chorus, about 20 gather for a short and joyful service led by Deacon Sue Peat, Weardale’s Methodist minister these past eight years, but shortly off to Gloucestershire. They’ll miss her no end, they say.

Sermon sensibly succinct, Sue speaks of challenges and of perseverance. “Keep carrying on,” she says. “We may not be able to see the sun, but we still know it’s there.”

The hymns are Easter favourites, though Sue nearly forgets Thine Be The Glory, the greatest of them all. If the neighbours’ duty sleep has been disturbed, they’re much too polite to utter imprecations.

A sumptuous breakfast follows in the village hall. There are hot cross buns, pace eggs, simnel cake, hot toast, strong coffee. Following news of the likely autumn closure of High House chapel at Ireshopeburn, the world’s oldest Methodist church in continuous use, talk inevitably turns to changing times.

Retired teacher Judith Bainbridge, made MBE in 2012 for services to Frosterley, but whose good works extend far beyond, recalls that once there were 22 Methodist chapels in Weardale – even minuscule places like Lanehead supporting two. If High House goes, there’ll be two in total.

Much still stirs, much that still speaks of resurrection. You don’t need four walls to be a Church.

Amid it all, the column wins our table’s egg jarping contest. There’s talk of illicit use of sandpaper.

At 7.30am conversation also turns to the origins of simnel cake, that most extravagant of Easter treats, traditionally decorated with 11 marzipan balls to represent the 11 disciples. Judas was deemed unworthy.

Notions that the name had something to do with Lambert Simnel – with Perkin Warbeck third form history’s impostors in the Tower – may be abandoned.

Similarly, sadly, may the oft-quoted story that, centuries ago, a couple called Simon and Nelly mixed up the recipe, but disagreed over whether it should be boiled or baked, set about one another with sundry kitchen utensils before finally reaching a compromise.

The most likely, and least interesting, explanation is that it’s from simila, the Latin for ground white flour.

Though all breakfast heartily, so much remains that there’s a reprise of the feeding of the five thousand, save that the gospels have baskets not polybags.

As ever it’s a wonderful occasion, a very happy Easter.

IF not quite an annual tradition, Messiah remains an Easter treat, too. Several times over the years we’ve pitched up on Good Friday at Hetton-le-Hole Methodist chapel, the only downside the hobs-of-hell gallery pews.

“Hetton’s miners were well used to being between a rock and a hard place,” we once wrote. “Their chapels were built for commitment, not comfort.”

After 141 years, that great tradition ended in 2011, the year in which these columns gave up the word “coruscating” for Lent. Last Wednesday evening, a simultaneous miracle of technology, we attended a “live” performance at The Witham in Barnard Castle, instead.

Last time we’d been to The Witham was for something to do with Just William. Our tastes may be supposed eclectic.

George Frederik Handel wrote his masterwork in 1741, taking just 24 days, despite suffering from insomnia, depression and the rheumatizz. Being broke may have helped concentrate his mind.

For Barney read Bristol Old Vic. Their dramatised production was beamed to more than 300 venues nationwide, and with an interval commercial for Classic FM. They never had that at Hetton-le-Hole.

There were also a couple of brief breaks in transmission, the sort of thing for which the BBC formerly employed a little man to wave a card indicating that normal service would be resumed as soon as possible.

Brilliantly done, wonderfully sung, the performance raised questions, nonetheless. Would the Witham applaud the unhearing? Would they stand for the Hallelujah Chorus, as Messiah audiences have for nearly three centuries? Would the poor chap who for half the production was obliged to play dead be raised incorruptible?

The answers to the first two were “No” and, to the third, “Yes, of course.”

Barney responded apathetically, fewer than 40 present. They missed an uplifting occasion, coruscating in the extreme.

LIVE music closer to home, we looked the following lunchtime into the Champagne Bar, formerly Doggarts’ window, in Bishop Auckland market place. The Tees Valley Jazzmen were making their monthly appearance.

None seemed to be on the bubbly, unless Coke counts. The column had a bottle of something called Brewdog Steam Punk Ale, described on the label as “a post-modern classic”.

Then again, aren’t we all?

Founded by brothers Keith and Gavin Belton, Witton Park lads originally, the band’s played on for 50 years, all but two under its Tees Valley title.

“We asked the punters to come up with a name. It’s taken us all over the world,” said Keith, now 78, and making his first appearance for a year. “That cancer caper,” he added, dismissively.

They play Bishop on the last Thursday, an occasion on which it becomes very much a vintage champagne bar. Few of the audience may be under 70, most familiar faces.

“Have you had your hair done?” Keith asks one of the regulars. “How much did that cost you, then?”

Most tap happily to the tradition. One elderly couple sit quietly in a corner, obliviously dreaming of past glories. Maudlin Thursday.

ACROSS the market square, next to St Anne’s church, the newish Mining Art Gallery has an exhibition devoted to the Bevin Boys, wartime conscripts into His Majesty’s pits.

Among them was the late Tom McGuinness, Witton Park lad like the Belton boys, who toiled at Fishburn colliery.

Nearly 50,000 men were thus press-ganged, given a pair of boots and a compressed cardboard helmet and expected to buy the rest of the get-up from their clothing coupons.

It was 1998 before they were invited to Remembrance Day services, another decade before the government gave survivors a little badge of honour.

Many were killed down below, the remainder just glad to be able to come up for air. Risen indeed. Hallelujah.