Giddy ant

AN emett, or emmet as more recently it has been spelt, was the original name for an ant. In Yorkshire, and similarly sainted places, it may still be.

In Cornwall – and this may be supposed the New Year’s first digression - “emmet” has become the term for a visitor or tourist, a usage said by the Oxford English Dictionary to be “mildly disparaging”. In Devon they’re called grockels; that’s not exactly a term of endearment, either.

Were Charlie Emett thus to be categorised, he would undoubtedly be a worker ant – and quite possibly a walker ant, too.

Lovely little feller, Charlie lives in Darlington, must be turned 80, still prodigiously turns out illuminating little books usually on local history or rambles. He further endears himself in these parts by from time to time turning up at the Echo offices with a paper bag full of custard pies, to distribute among the needy.

One of his latest books, covering “pub walks” in Co Durham and Teesside, was tucked deep down in a capacious Christmas stocking. Five days after that glad event, acutely in need of the exercise if not of yet another visit to the pub, we set off on Walk No. 14 – a climb up Roseberry Topping.

Taken from the Old Danish “toppen”, meaning hill, Roseberry stalks 872ft above the sea, its ascent almost discursive. Sometimes, apparently, it’s called Cleveland’s Matterhorn.

Charlie reckons it once to have been 1,067ft above sea level, its standing diminished by mining. Presumably he knows. He also reckons it “Teesdale’s best known landmark”

and in that regard is clearly mistaken, neither global warming nor One North East having thus far succeeded in moving Teesdale 30 miles down river.

The easiest access is from the car park at Newton–under–Roseberry, between Guisborough and Great Ayton and home to a large and highly rated dining pub called the Kings Head – “like banqueting at a royal feast,” writes Charlie.

The public car park was full, the loos closed until Easter, the climb already wick with those similarly in need of invigoration.

Roseberry Topping, coincidentally, had also been subject of an animated pre–Christmas discussion in the Brit, Mr Tim Duncan vigorously denying the column’s claim that it could be climbed in 20 minutes.

Were the track not so muddy, were there not an incorrigible need to read every notice along the way and to make allowance for slippage, 20 minutes would be wholly possible for the upwardly mobile. Tim’s mistake may be in disorientation, moving the starting point elsewhere. Whitley Bay, probably.

Signed by the assistant director (legal and democratic services) of North Yorkshire County Council, the first notice concerns the diversion of a steep and rugged pathway to something less challenging. It’s dated January 2 2009 and since this is December 30 2008, an example of the county council first footing before the bells.

Another, higher, notice reckons the land around to be 182 million years old, thus even older than Charlie Emett. Dinosaurs roamed, it says; they still do.

It talks of the Middle Jurassic Delta and the Lower Jurassic Sea, of ammonites and belemnites – both of which sound like one of those American religious cults where they still drive round in horse and buggy and have their kids call them Sir – and of Redcar mudstone, of which there appears a great deal.

On a rock face near the summit, someone has carved a proposal of holy wedlock to a lady named Beth.

In view of such wanton vandalism, it’s to be hoped that Beth thought very carefully before accepting.

Up top, the trig point further defaced, there are picnic parties – Jurassic parking – excited dogs and four–year–olds barely out of breath.

The grey–day vista is much reduced.

As ever, it’s trickier and muddier coming down. There are visions of A over T, of broken ankles and of a summons to the Cleveland search and rescue team – good men once again coming to the aid of the clarty.

THE Kings Head car park’s even fuller. The Boss removes mucky shoes before entering, and pads around in stockinged feet.

One or two others appear to be wearing what the Scots call baffies – a term which someone may be able to explain.

It’s a big place, busy but efficiently run, the clear attraction the £9.95 three–course lunch. The Boss’s late mother liked visiting the Kings, too, partly because of the set lunch menu and partly because it was as far as her senior citizens’ bus pass would allow, before Cleveland ceded to North Yorkshire and the border guards jumped aboard.

Altogether less attractive is the price of a pint of Magnet and a slimline tonic, £4.75 the pair. If this were to be a royal banquet, as Charlie supposes, they may need to apply for an increase in the Civil List, in order to pay for the drinks.

Food’s ordered at the counter, served and cleared by young waiting staff. One carries a large tray; one or more load it.

From the set menu, The Boss orders the melon with blackcurrant sorbet – particularly taken with the flavour of the latter – and the grilled salmon “presented on a bed of courgettes”

with hollandaise and fresh vegetables.

The salmon’s shrimpy–skimpy but OK, the “bed of courgettes” proves to be three thin slivers on the side of the plate. The vegetables are fine.

Other main courses include steak pie, roast pork, lamb shank – for early birds only – and breaded Mediterranean vegetables.

I order the double–deck steak “bloomer”, with chips and onion rings (£8.95) preceded by the oxtail soup. Though it’s one of the special menu starters, the soup’s £4.65 separately – barely lukewarm and thus vapid, though with a very tasty roll.

The bloomer’s a mistake, too – what may still be called minute steak, or 20 minutes in the case of Roseberry Topping. It’s also lukewarm, chewy, near–tasteless. The chips are par–fried, par for, the two whacking great onion rings much better. The Boss has coffee instead of a pudding.

It’s only back in the foyer, as she replaces her shoes, that we notice framed on the wall a newspaper feature – from the Echo, it transpires – sub–titled “Days out on your doorstep” and headlined “Topping the lot.”

That much of the article seems almost word–for–word familiar is because it’s also the doing of that remarkable worker ant Emett – but the Kings still has some way to go to the summit.

The December 23 column on the first–rate Sunday carvery at the Toronto Lodge, near Bishop Auckland noted that Toronto was among several North–East places – Washington, New York, California, Philadelphia – to share their name with a larger American cousin.

Two days later, the excellent McKie’s Gazetteer, A Local History of Britain, offered illumination.

Though the chapter is officially on Quebec, six miles west of Durham – “rows of drab but serviceable cottages”

– David McKie also notes places like Inkerman (near Tow Law), Heights of Alma (Stanley Hill Top), Portobello (Birtley) and a whole Canada, somewhere near Chester–le–Street.

Most, says Mr McKie, record battles – usually those that we won.

Much more of that gentleman in tomorrow’s Gadfly column.

CHRISTMAS conviviality included a couple of hours at Darlington CAMRA’s festive knees up, held at Darlington Snooker Club where Peter Everett and his mum Rita provide an ever–engaging double act. They provided six real ales, too.

The building on the corner of Northgate and Corporation Road has been a billiards and snooker hall for 90–odd years. The Everetts took over nine years gone December 23, at first so hard up that they’d to raid one of the bairn’s piggy banks to provide a float.

More buoyant these days, they were also presented on the night with North–East CAMRA’s club of the year award for a remarkable fifth year in succession.

The club faces a tricky New Year, however, after the owner won an appeal to turn it into flats. Snookered?

“We fight on,” says Rita.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what has eight arms and tells the time.

A clocktopus, of course.