THE night before the great snows were forecast, ahead of the plough and not following it, we headed hesitantly into the hills and to the Strathmore Arms at Holwick.

The hamlet is three miles above Middleton-in-Teesdale, at the end of a road to nowhere save the vast darkness of Cronkley Fell. The Strathmore estate has family links with the late Queen Mother and is where Willie Whitelaw once shot someone in the hind quarters, perhaps mistaking them for a pheasant.

The pub has had more tenants than some folk have had hot dinners, and the phrase will return like Jacob Marley.

We recall Pat and Basil Bagnall, who somewhat surprisingly banned walking boots from the bar, and ten years later, bright eyed children's story writer Mary Clarke - a star on Twinkle - who believed that at Holwick she could live happily ever after.

The cuttings library, somewhere between Hole of Horcum and Holy Island, adds Ken and Barbara Hope, around 1980, Rob and Lynne Bottomley in 1984, former lorry driver Keith Robertshaw in 1988, Hartlepool pair Mike and Breffni Twist in the early 1990s and Lynn and Olly Rawdon thereafter.

Doubtless there were others on the rocky road to Holwick. As befits a pub several tightly drawn contours up the North Pennines, they had high hopes in common - and there's never been a shortage of applicants.

Once it was the most northerly village in North Yorkshire, with pub, school, chapel - "an ugly building with an iron roof," said a 1947 guide - and sundry well scattered souls. Now it clings perilously to Co Durham, school and chapel gone, pub hanging on in.

The latest incumbents, since August 2001, are Joe Cogdon and Helen Osborne, he with a degree in history and politics, she a former regeneration worker with Wear Valley council.

They'd already had a week of snow after Christmas. "It was gorgeous," said Joe, subsequently (as a Sunderland lad might) amending "gorgeous" to "canny."

A glance skyward confirmed that nothing had yet materialized. A meteorologist might give it four hours, a pessimist three.

The car thermometer indicating two degrees below, the wind whistling like him on Family Favourites, we had discussed on the way up the priorities for a remote pub on a raw night.

The first, beyond argument, was an infernal coal fire; the second, more contentiously, a good pint of ale with which in its embrace to warm the withers. There'd always be the fish shop in Middleton.

Thus it proved: a blaze so heroic it might have won the VC, three real ales - Tomintoul from Scotland, Jennings' Cumberland from over the hill and Palmer's agreeably copper coloured IPA which last we'd drunk in its native Dorset.

There wasn't any food or, to be precise, there were Snickers bars. You know what they say to Snickers.

Usually Helen offers a good blackboard menu - duck in ginger sauce, perhaps, garlic and salmon bites, wild mushroom tortellini. Last Wednesday, however, a chalked note courteously regretted its unavailability.

There were two days to the end of the tax year. Helen was upstairs with the books; Joe down below in hiking boots and tracky bottoms - no catwalks at Holwick - drinking draught Guinness.

He prefers real ale. "It's not been pulled through for a few days," he explained, sacrificially.

That the food cupboard was bare should neither be seen as a fault nor a criticism. After last year's New Year revellers had finally gone - about January 4 - the business turned over £250 in four weeks; the previous Wednesday there'd been no one in at all.

With the snow gates about to close on the A66 and the Revenue men pondering if huskies might be tax deductible, there were other fish to fry.

We talked instead of their plans, the need to develop the building before developing the trade - there are now four letting rooms, including one with a four poster - and how they'd had far more time to walk and explore the fells before moving to Holwick than ever they had afterwards.

Assorted artefacts sat on the mantlepiece, including a vast football rattle that looked like it might have been twirled by a committee and one of those notices warning off rogues, vagabonds, fakirs and skulking loafers. We stayed two hours, anyway.

Since it is a long time since Mr Michael Fish forecast zephyrs and found a force ten gales at his back, the snow arrived on cue the following morning.

When things improve the congenial Strathmore will be well worth a visit. Dead end, maybe, but sometimes you need look no further.

* The Strathmore Arms, Holwick, Middleton-in-Teesdale. Closed Monday and Tuesday in winter, open Friday and Saturday lunchtime, Wednesday-Saturday evening and all day Sunday.

STILL there was need of a bite to eat. The fish shop at Middleton was closed, owners in warmer climes, the one on The Bank in Barnard Castle gone for the night, too.

Once it was owned by the column's old friend Percy Davis, retired Barney police sergeant, and known locally as Percy's Piscatorial Palace. Perhaps, come to think, it was Percy's Piscatorial Polliss.

Desperate times needing improbable measures, we pulled into the Burger King drive-through at Scotch Corner. "Speak here," said the sign, but only silence returned.

Barely ten o'clock and they'd shut up, too. In every life a little snow must fall, as probably they say in Holwick.

LEST the column be renamed Eating Nowt and its author waste physically and journalistically away, we lunched on Friday at the ever-friendly Ochis in Bondgate, Darlington.

Officially its "Caribbean and Mediterranean" - seas for the spellcheck - but originally and still principally Caribbean. Oche Rios is a region of Jamaica.

Compliments to the chef, many of the local West Indian community eat there. Mr Briggs, also in attendance, lives next door to a Jamaican who begins making his Christmas cake on January 1 and steeps the ingredients in rum for 50 weeks.

"It's the first time I've been drunk on Christmas cake," he said.

Evening meals are strong on chicken, coconut, saltfish and spicy marinades. Lunch, main courses around £5 but now Friday and Saturday only, offer a simpler menu, often with chips.

Two of us had had spicy jerk tortillas, the third jerk chicken (which he thought should have had a salad accompaniment.)

The disappointment was the chips, the skinnymalink and largely tasteless sort favoured by burger joints. We didn't come all this way for those.

...and finally, bairns wondered if we knew what you get by crossing a nun and a chicken.

A pecking order, of course.

Published: 04/02/2003