IF you don't remember last Wednesday, if you don't remember how blue the sky and how rich the promise, then it really has been too long a winter. It was the sort of morning upon which the Mole, who (it will be remembered) had been wallpapering, said "Blow" and "Oh bother" and probably one or two other things which the kindly Kenneth Grahame chose not to visit upon young ears and tunnelled onwards and upwards until, heliotropically, he reached the sun.

At that point, memory suggest, Mole simply said "Oh My", or possibly "Oh my great gaiters", and just rolled on his back in the meadow, little legs kicking the air, for the sheer joy of being alive.

Thus last Wednesday, morning broken like the first morning, the sun not just with its hat on but dressed as if about to collect an OBE at the Palace.

We caught the 11.07 to Saltburn, the train filled with bairns, balloons and a certain Billy-buck bravado, with pram pushers and luck pushers, the fluent and the truant.

At Saltburn, sunny Saltburn, the Edwina, the Katie Elizabeth and the Kaos Two - or possibly, Kaos, Too - were pulled onto the frolicking foreshore.

Really it wasn't their day. This was Anyone for the Skylark?

The dear old place is changing a bit, the first stage of restoration of the pier and surrounding areas almost complete. An information board talks of "Feature lighting" and of increasing the area's profile, the amusement arcade beeped and burped as it has done for seaside donkeys' years, now featuring something called Slotto.

Schools tripped, gyms slipped, walnuts whipped, though the shabby old candy floss, bucket and spade and associated emporia remained resolutely shuttered and may at leisure have been repenting of their pessimism.

Even the little engine, the eternal little engine, had become the little engine that couldn't.

Saltburn has also become something of a Surf City, sundry aquabats lying about the promenade in macho repose - surf and terff, as probably they say across the pond. Another chap looked pretty much the same colour as the newly creosoted bench upon which he sprawled. "I hope the council noticed he was there," said The Boss, who had pitched up independently.

We moored at the Ship Inn, familiarly so close to the sea that it could almost be a plodging house. The menu cover boasts not only that they are "passionate" about food but that they bring "true excitement" to eating out.

The Cleveland Way, the bridle way, the cycle way and the public right of way all hurtle down the hill at the back. Appetites to be earned the hard way; two courses around £18 for two.

Bad start, the single hand pump was dry. Truth to tell it may not have been wet for weeks, though the pump clip still winked slyly, as mischievous as it was meretricious.

The pub's nautical, nice enough, beamed ceilings and maritime memorabilia. The clientele was largely elderly, the calm before the summer storm.

The menu, produced by the Burton based Spirit Group and probably common to all its pubs - a shared passion, as it were - offers a wide range of food both inexpensive and abundant. Sandwiches start from £2.95; "melts", wraps, jacket potatoes and some fairly unusual main meals add to the line-up.

The Boss wanted whitebait. None of that, either. Plenty more fish in the sea, she launched out with a melon boat with black grapes and strawberries followed by a tuna nicoise - the barmaid pronounced it almost as in "knickers" - promised with olives, green beans, one or two others things and a "drizzle" of "classic" French dressing.

There were no green beans and no French dressing, drizzled or poured. Wrong kind of forecast, perhaps. The seared tuna steak was very good, she thought, though knickerless in Saltburn.

We'd begun with "crushed baby new potatoes" - The Boss wondered if someone had said something nasty to them - with bacon, cheese, bits of greenery and a salsa pot. Poor babies notwithstanding, it was fine. The potatoes hadn't been crushed, anyway, just gently reprimanded.

The chicken, mango and avocado with "tangy mustard dressing" was sub-titled "Chicken has never been more sensational", to which it was tempting to propose the further amendment "Then God help the poor, battery fed little pecker."

It was perfectly OK, understand, save that the mustard appeared to have been added to the missing list, but was about as sensational as a world exclusive in the tabloids. Thus to another part of the menu hype jump: "Big flavours and subtle tastes to seduce the most demanding of palates."

Seduction, of course, was laying it on much too strong - but as the canny old Mole might have supposed, a day to roll over, nonetheless.

THE presentation to the Britannia last Thursday of Darlington CAMRA's town pub of the year award was further enlivened by the presence of Mr Mark Tutin, a reformed lager drinker who betrays his former misspent ways by insisting on ice in his real ale - most famously in a pint of Titanic. Mark's familiar with the old one-liner: "Goes down well," he insists.

AN email has also arrived from Phil Atkinson, president of CAMRA BC - a Canadian cousin of CAMRA UK. He's over here in August, has been asked to write about "something beery" and fancies a tasting to "examine the relative attributes of northern brown ales". Ever cordial, and on Phil's assurance that it'll only take two hours, we have agreed to help. The North-East link is that he grew up in Witton Park. Truly those guys are everywhere.

HOOFING towards the Old Friend's ward at Darlington Memorial, the column is serendipitously intercepted by Mr Chris Willsden, who is carrying a small paper bag containing a pork pie from Hill's of Kirby Malzeard, near Ripon. "It's for you, the best pies in Britain," Chris insists, and thus the surreptitious smokers who gasp for air around the Memorial's main entrance are joined by a hugger-mugger pie snaffler, lest that may damage your health, an' all. It's just possible that one of us felt less guilty - and Chris was pretty close about the pie.

A YEAR ago we enthused greatly about the born again Feversham Arms in Helmsley, North Yorkshire. Now owner Simon Rhatigan, former managing director of the company behind the Seaham Hall Hotel, reports that turnover is up by 40 per cent - though doubtless there are other reasons, too. "A successful hotel means getting all the details right," says Simon. Rooms from £130.

...and finally before the column takes a week in the land of her father's, the bairns wondered if we knew what's big, purple and lies in the North Sea

Grape Britain, of course.

www.northeastfood.co.uk