THOUGH more than three months must be surmounted before our ruby wedding – and perhaps in anticipation that she might yet dispense with my services before November 1 – we’ve received the first anniversary present.

It was a Sunday afternoon cream tea trip on the delightful Tanfield Railway, north of Stanley, chuffering aromatically and atmospherically across the border between County Durham into Gateshead.

“Well, they don’t do cream teas in November,” argued the benefactor, not unreasonably.

We’re becoming expert on railway cream teas, having recently supped on the Wensleydale and on the Ravenglass and Eskdale in west Cumbria, the latter scenically without equal, but disappointing at tea time. The Weardale awaits.

Proclaimed the world’s oldest railway, opened in 1725 as a wagonway, the Tanfield has been restored since the 1970s, great arms'-lengths of track lifted from the former Paton and Baldwin’s factory sidings in Darlington.

Tea’s served in a swish former directors’ saloon, built in 1875, but for several decades ingloriously employed as an allotment gardeners’ hut at Poppleton, near York.

It leaves Andrew House station at 2.40pm, the timing a bit tricky. This being North-East England, will passengers first have had their Sunday dinner, possibly a bit of treacle sponge to follow, at noon? You wouldn’t bet against it; the railway, providently, provides goody bags.

It’s all greatly jolly, the guard chap offering instruction on the way to wave – regal to Railway Children – an activity considered mandatory from steam trains.

He also tells us that the previous evening they’d had a particularly bibulous murder mystery trip on the line – “great wheelie cases of wine”. It was the vicar what done it, it almost always is.

We’re hauled by former National Coal Board loco No 49, apple green and up for it, fresh from the workshops that morning.

The spread includes dainty little cucumber sandwiches of the sort made by Private Godfrey’s sister Dolly, fresh scones, cream cakes, other baking and endless tea or coffee served in china cups.

“It’s the first time I’ve had tea from a china cup since our Meggie’s funeral,” someone says.

The six-mile round trip takes just over an hour. Service is delightful, atmosphere amiable, food very good indeed. Purely in tea terms, however, the run from Leeming Bar to Redmire just edges it. The Wensleydale is the crème de la crèam.

n The afternoon tea trains run every Saturday and Sunday until the end of August. Adults £25, codgers £22, kids £20; booking essential. Details on tanfield-railway.co.uk

STILL on track, we hear of poor Percy – after Skimbleshanks, one of a great train of railway cats in literature.

Percy frequented the miniature North Bay Railway at Scarborough, familiar both there and in the nation’s newspapers, died on August 23 last year on a day that great storms swept the sea.

Already he’d been the subject of the fifth of children’s author Joe Coates’s stories based around the North Bay Railway. Now there’s a plaque in Percy’s memory on Scalby Mills station and the book’s been reprinted with the memorial on the cover.

Joe – Shildon lad originally, canny footballer – is now finishing the ninth of the series. They’re available from him or the ticket office at Peasholm Park station.

WE in turn headed back to Shildon to ensure that Flying Scotsman was settling in at Locomotion. Clearly 60103 is the main attraction, but as always – there’s a little crowd around the loop-video screen next to the giant Percy Main snowplough. On yet another sunny summer afternoon, 70 years after the event, Snow Drift at Bleath Gill remains all-year round irresistible.

THREE weeks ago the column was on the buses, firstly up top on the scenic route from York to Whitby and then recording – though not travelling – the eight-hour stopping service between Uig and Glasgow.

Uig’s on the west coast of Skye. Phil Chinery had last year made the journey between Fort William and Portree, the island capital, though his main memory isn’t so much of numb bum as the painful price of refreshment.

A pedestrian pint was £4, he recalls, a nip of Talisker a fiver. “No wonder the locals get a carry-out from the Co-op.”

Brian Dixon in Darlington recalls that, in the 1980s, he and his wife Sheila got it into their heads to travel from Newcastle to Orkney by public transport, with an overnight stop in Inverness.

“The National Express service from Newcastle to Inverness was interrupted at Otterburn by an inspector hailing the coach and demanding to see everyone’s tickets.”

GREAT corrections of our time (No 463). The Queen’s guard of honour at the Ceremony of the Keys in Edinburgh was provided by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and not the Argyll and Sunderland Highlanders as the paper last week mistakenly suggested. They have ceremonially apologised.

BACK in March, we reported pictorially on triangular road signs at Barningham, near Barnard Castle, which urged caution because of hedgehogs. Near Romaldkirk, on the other side of the A66, something similar sought to forego flattened frogs.

Hoofing the high road last week between Redmire in Wensleydale and Grinton, in Swaledale, we come across signs urging drivers to watch out for birds.

These are ground nesting birds, of course, perhaps the unwritten sub-text that motorists shouldn’t kill them because there are guns who pay good money for the same end.

Oddly, there’ve never been any signs urging heed of rabbits – and those poor little bugsers seem squashed every 50 yards.

LIKE last week’s column, my blog – mikeamosblog.wordpress.com – invited well known song titles to mark the NHS’s 70th birthday. Blog readers were more responsive.

Several thought anything by Dr Feelgood, others I Feel Fine by the Beatles, another I Can See Clearly Now – a nod to the glorious efficacy of the cataract jobs also mentioned in last week’s column.

Keith Stoker was old enough to propose Sisters – there were never such devoted sisters – by the Beverleys. “Ward managers” would never quite sound the same.

Perhaps the most ingenious, and the most excruciating, came from Steve Wolstencroft: Don’t Stand Colostomy.

Another blog reader reported that at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where his daughter works, they’re taught to perform CPR to the highly appropriate tune of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.

In Durham Constabulary, adds retired former Ferryhill polliss Steve Moralee, they’re advised to carry out resuscitation to the beat of Nellie the Elephant.

Presumably while working on the trunk.

ALL that stemmed from the NHS 70th birthday bash at Coundon workmen’s club, near Bishop Auckland. We were remiss in omitting that it raised funds for the County Durham and Darlington NHS Charity Trust’s £1m scanner appeal. It stands at around £700,000, hopes to hit the target by December 20, presumably in the hope of something nice in the corporate stocking. Coundon added around £600.