I HADN'T been out and about much so when a friend told me that the interesting County Durham painter and collector Nerys Johnson had died, and that her work and collection were going to be sold locally, we decided to hit the trail.

My friend, Sandra, found the saleroom in question - Anderson and Garland of Newcastle. The firm's press release told of "well-known mining artists". We ordered catalogues; they described 2,000 lots to be sold over four days. Our day out was planned.

I had fancied the train, convenient for the saleroom, but at the last minute Sandra wheeled out her black classic three-litre Alfa, poured oil into the engine, juggled the best out of the heater and soon we were rumbling over the Tyne Bridge, parked up, and tucking into a decent pizza in Marlborough Crescent, the saleroom less than a minute away.

Two thousand lots are very distracting, and Sandra soon was, by a Sunderland lustre jug portraying that town's cast iron bridge together with masonic symbols. She said the bridge had been made by a New Zealand friend's great-great-grandfather, who we discovered from a nearby frog mug on the subject was a Rowland Burdon Esq MP. The popularity of the 1796 bridge was soon confirmed by a print and a painted convex glass 3D-effect plaque.

It turned out that to have acquired these four lots of Wearside bridge memorabilia would not have been cheap, as they totalled more than £500, hammer price.

An antipodean Christmas deed contemplated, we left the ceramics, (thereby missing a Maling plaque that skimmed to £6,600 - a world record), and sought out the modern and local pictures.

First stop was a narrow but 4ft-long oil by Oliver Kilbourn, lengthily and technically called Coal-cutting on the Longwall Face in the 1930s: slackening off to shift jockey - scuffling - pulling cable ready for the next jockey. Thankfully, the story of Kilbourn and his celebrated contemporaries is back in print as the Mid-Northumberland arts group and Carcanet Press have reissued Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984 at a price of £12.95.

I thought Oliver Kilbourn's colours were murky, which Sandra said was unfair, it being underground, and the painting dug out £1,100 against an estimate of £400-600.

But we both liked a minute version of the tunnel theme, the size and shape of a letter slot, a black etching called Hand Putter, by Tom McGuinness.

Sandra liked Game Park, a colour etching by Julian Trevelyan, and its giraffes reached £100, despite being sold with a photo-lithograph and not deemed worthy of an estimate.

An old print (once part of a book) of Newcastle- upon-Tyne and Gateshead during the Conflagration sizzled to £110. A more cheerful, sunny and optimistic Newcastle Business Park with a view across the Tyne by Tom McDonald profited £38. A brave Running Nude by Beryl Rankin made five times her estimate, stretching to £420.

The top picture price was for an 1822 oil called News by Thomas Sword Good, a Berwick painter, and the story here was an as expected £7,800 for two old men intently reading the paper.

Some of the above were owned by Nerys Johnson and her own work was represented by five 1999 flower studies - small luminous creations that glowed, deeply set in white frames; tulips, rhododendrons, rosehips and gladioli, all rich and slightly orchid-sinister. My friend Sandra got her Two rosehips for a reasonable £120.