Wheely good food

AMONG life's minor mysteries is that we had never previously eaten at the Fox and Hounds in West Witton - wet Witton for much of last week - save for the occasion of the Licensed Victuallers' Association's charity bike ride.

The ride's an annual extravaganza, a knees up of epic proportions, and has raised over £100,000 for local causes. Landlords and friends cycle between Leyburn and Hawes, usually in fancy dress, obliged to take refreshment at the dozen or so country pubs dotted thoughtfully along the route.

They include the Victoria at Worton, pronounced Wurton, over which the redoubtable Ralph Daykin has idiosyncratically presided these past 47 years and where a notice on the door advises that, despite his remarkable resemblance to the young Errol Flynn, visitors are requested not to stare.

Ralph's reckoned eighty - eighty-ish, any road. "I can't see the point in retiring," he says, "someone invented it and I can't think why. What's point of sitting about t'ouse all day looking miserable?"

Comfort breaks also include the Fox, built as a monastery around 1400 and thus on the go even longer than Ralph Daykin.

"Refreshment" is largely of the edible sort, each pub seemingly intent on laying on a yet more magnificent saddle bag than the one before. Had Reg Harris trained thus, the poor chap would never have got out of bottom gear.

The Fox was best of all, memory suggests, possibly tying with the Palmer Flatt in Aysgarth (which once had a splendidly indignant parrot, and so might have won the play-off).

The monastery, it's reckoned, was once called Cathedral Hall. The house next door is Catheral Hall, either a medieval variation or a misprint.

It's been a pub for three centuries, boasts many of a good pub's key qualities - friendly, unpretentious, generally good beer - and offers details of that other annual excitement in those parts, the Burning of Bartle.

Bartle was a local sheep stealer who rustled around getting folk vexed. Finally they formed a sort of West Witton watch committee and did for the poor chap, a demise recalled when half the village chants and totters down the front street, sets light to Bartle's mad eyed effigy and returns, hair of the doggerel, to the boozer.

This year it's on August 21, 9pm, part of West Witton Feast. Poor Bartle, a classic case of being hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb.

The Fox's guest beers included Young's celebrated bitter, pride of Wandsworth, and Potts' "Beck" bitter from Lytton, near Skipton, which was either most unusual ale or may (shall we say) have become a little stagnant. Bottles include beer from both Wensleydale and Daleside breweries.

The blackboard menu, more imaginative than usual, included West Burton sausage from up the dale and thus offered the chance to recall that in 1984 a coach load of striking miners sent to picket West Burton power station in Nottinghamshire found itself among the more scenic surroundings of Wensleydale.

Silly sausages? Possibly.

The Boss had deep fried camembert followed by wild rice, spinach and honey roast ("quite tasty, a bit different"), we began with salmon fishcake and good garlic bread and then cold ham and eggs, piled high and handsome - another Wensleydale feast. Two courses for two were about £19; good value.

Outside the rain continued; few others had ventured forth. Wheels within wheels, we'll probably be back.

LAST week marked the Great British Beer festival at Olympia. Leaving Darlington station late on Tuesday evening, we bumped into Nick Stafford - founder and inspiration behind the burgeoning Hambleton Brewery near Thirsk - clutching a bottle of British Rail red. With him was Ralph Wilkinson, owner of the celebrated No 22 in Darlington.

"I see you've been to Olympia," said the column.

"How did you know?" said Nick...

WONDROUSLY situated, Tunstall Reservoir in Weardale is 125 years old this year. Once the flagship - if reservoirs may be allowed flagships - of the Weardale and Shildon Water Company, it's now the province of Northumbrian Water.

Nothing seems planned to mark the anniversary; they really should push the boat out.

We took a walk up there on Saturday, having first breakfasted most agreeably at Cafe Poco in Wolsingham, the neighbouring Serendipity cafe losing out on the doubtless dubious grounds that they could neither spell "vegtable" nor "vegatarian".

On a previous Poco visit, December 2000, breakfast options embraced English, French, American or Mediterranean. Now there are only English and American, the latter comprising scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes and half a gallon of maple syrup, to which curious concoction The Boss added an equivalent amount of HP sauce.

The Americans may have weird and wonderful tastes, but it's naught compared to the Welsh.

The Anglo breakfast offered quite tremendous value, though it majored on French black pudding. The Lomas family used to make their own, mum wearing Daffodil gloves to do the bloody business, the unfortunate porkers named Bubble and Squeak.

The whole highly convivial experience, including good and readily refilled coffee, cost less than £10 for two.

The reservoir is 2.5 miles north, the Weardale Railway's welcome whistlewassailing down below. A walk past the nature reserve, and through the oak wood once owned by the Bishops of Durham adds another mile and a half or so.

The nature reserve is home to three spined stickleback, to lesser water boatman (which is an insect), to common sandpiper, amphibious bistort and viviparous lizard.

In the woods are common spotted orchid and Yorkshire fog - Durham fog too, no doubt, but not on so glorious a summer morning.

Poco's breakfast had set up a delightful excursion; serendipity, nonetheless.

ANOTHER day, a dozen miles further up Weardale, we looked into the reborn Rookhope Inn - a true example of a community pub.

Once empty and semi-derelict, it was re-opened by the St Aidan's Community Trust as a local initiative, runs as an "arms length" company wth 12 trustees, is staffed mostly by volunteers and puts profits back into the former lead mining village.

All sorts goes on there. The adult learners computer club has won a national award and got to meet the education secretary, a prize devoutly to be desired; the £5,000 they put into Rookhope in Bloom has added huge colour to its cheeks.

Chris Jones, the affable project manager, has even acquired a 1966 Morris Minor police car, blue light and all, in order to run homeward those who might otherwise be run in.

They're open from 9am. "Locals just wander in and usually wander out with a job", said Chris.

Three well-kept Jennings beers are on hand pump, including a distinctive

newcomer called Golden Host. Food looks honest and substantial, ham sandwiches were excellent, the atmosphere's hugely convivial.

Since it was August 1, a fire blazed in the hearth. As probably they say all the time in Rookhope, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

THOUGH wholly independent of one another, Ian Forsyth and Martin Snape - coincidentally both in Durham - make a habit of responding as if in stereophonic sound, appropriately in this case since we were pondering the origin of the word "wireless".

It's a short form, they agree, of wireless telegraphy or wireless telephony.

"Both the telegraph and the telephone relied upon the sender and the receiver being connected by wires.

"Marconi's invention allowed first telegraphy (Morse code) and then telephony (speech) without a wire connection, hence wireless."

...and finally the bairns wondered if we knew what weighs 2,000lbs and wears a flower in its hair.

A hippy potamus, of course.

Published: 10/08/2004