WHATEVER turns you on, and all that, the column has been continuing its hot and cold tour of brewery taps, firstly - on the night of the eclipse - to the Ship Inn at Middlestone, near Spennymoor. That it was dark, and not over-indulgence of any sort, must explain the facial scratches. We walked into a tree.

Middlestone's near Kirk Merrington, not to be confused - some hope - with Middlestone Moor, three miles to the west and rather easier to find. Bowburn, whence Durham Brewery's admirable ales flow, is nine miles north, but the Ship's the "tap", nonetheless. A bright burnished, warmly embracing, splendidly fired village pub, it's been steered these past four months by Graham and Liz Snaith, previously in the car hire business in Guisborough.

Food - Tuesday to Saturday evening, Saturday and Sunday lunchtime - is more daily rations than captain's table, though remarkably inexpensive. Almost everything's under £4, many menu items £6 for two. Puddings, lots of sponges, are mainly £1.50.

Three hand pumps gleamed like a bosun's buttons - Richmond from the Darwin Brewery, Crack Shot from Daleside in Harrogate and Season's Greetings, from Durham. Magus, the Durham staple, had sold out in a day and a half.

It was all very pleasant, eclipse overshadowed, and there it might have ended but for the unscripted arrival, binoculars round his neck, of John Moorley.

John worked for the Health Service in Bishop Auckland, got sick (as it were) and though he still lives in Westerton - a mile from Middlestone - is now side's company secretary. Thanks to the binoculars, he'd seen the eclipse perfectly. Nor had he walked into any trees.

There was a tale, he said, behind Crack Shot - another in real ale's oft-ingenious nomenclature. Sir Thomas Ingilby, he of Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire, recently uncovered on his library shelves a recipe book compiled by Elizabeth Eden, the castle's housekeeper in the 17th Century. Among the recipes was one for beer. Sir Thomas asked Daleside to re-create it - "minus the raw eggs and things," says John. It was named after one of Sir Thomas's more redoubtable ancestors - that's her on the pump clip. Resemblance to Annie Oakley is unintentional.

Jane Ingilby was Sir William Ingilby's sister, the youngest of seven. "What she lacked in seniority she more than made up for in character," says John.

William, inevitably, was a Royalist. When Civil War broke out, Trooper Jane - as she became known - dressed as a man, was slightly wounded at the Battle of Marston Moor and made her way back, painfully, to Ripley Castle.

Whilst applying the TCP, therefore, the lady was somewhat surprised to find Master Cromwell and his boys on the doorstep, intent on a roof for the night. Having allowed her brother time to hole up in the priest's hiding place, Jane allowed the old Puritan to stay, but strictly on her own terms. He slept in an armchair in the library, Trooper Jane standing guard over him all night so that he might not seek her brother or, said John, abuse her hospitality in any other way.

Hospitable themselves, Graham and Liz Snaith also had a competition to name two Daleside "house" beers. Suggestions like Yardarm, Crow's Nest, Wreckage and Brass Monkey were rejected because other breweries got there first; Homer's Perfect Pint lost out because 20th Century Fox would have got into a right copyright about it.

The winners, finally, were Nautical But Nice and Shipwrecked. The pub gets some very fetching pump clips, the two nominees get Old Legover T-shirts. Doubtless they will wear them with pride.

THE Magnesia Bank near North Shields fish quay, almost everyone's Pub of the Year at some time or other, isn't just Mordue's brewery tap but - it says so behind the bar - the "official" brewery tap.

Everything's official these days. England's football team even has an official chewing gum. Official. Mordue's, a couple of miles away at Shiremoor, won CAMRA's 1997 champion beer of Britain accolade with the 4.5 abv Workie Ticket, increasing the workforce so greatly on the back of it that there's now a five-a-side football team.

Food's served all day, a duck stir-fry (£6.95) too skimpy and too salty to be satisfactory, but the wide choice includes a range of ciabatta open sandwiches served with chips and salad for between £3-£4.

Beers also include Daleside (q.v.) and Black Sheep, which now flocks everywhere. Workie Ticket is £2 a pint.

At 5.30pm on Saturday evening it was already vibrant, a tap dripping clearly into the consciousness of North Tyneside.

NOT 100 yards up the hill from the Magnesia there's another pub called the Garricks Head - real ale from £1.25, maximum £1.50, simultaneously almost deserted. What, though, is a Garrick? A corruption of Greek - Turks Head, Greek's Head - seemed possible, but not even the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary includes the word.

The renowned Garrick Theatre in London is named after the actor Sir David Garrick and, presumably, is on different lines. So can any kind reader suggest who or what garrick might have been, and what his head's doing on a street corner boozer in North Shields?

FROM the York Brewery, prospering within the city walls since 1996, the tap in Colliergate is but a very short run. Called the Last Drop Inn, it's Dick Turpin themed. What would the old lad have made of Stonewall, 3.7abv and with minimal carriage costs, at £1.87 a pint?

Other York ales include the delicious Yorkshire Terrier, runner up in last year's CAMRA Champion Beer of Britain awards, and Brideshead, which doubtless has local connections, too.

Lunchtime food includes steak and ale pie, baked potatoes, sandwiches and paninis. Whatever on earth a panini is, we had hitherto believed it to be a football sticker album.

Starter and main course arrived simultaneously, thus providing the first recorded example of tomato, basil and chip soup. The "Yorker Burger" (£4.25) was perfectly decent but the cheese and bacon topping so tired it should have been brought off at half-time. All was compensated, however, by the aphorism - attributed to someone called Stuart Turner - on the toilet wall. "If you think women are the weaker sex, try pulling the blankets back to your own side," it said, and never were wiser words written in the gleeful history of graffiti.

WHILST within York's walls, we also looked for the first time since Vaux's demise into the gloriously arrayed Blue Bell in Fossgate.

"The city's only pub of truly national historic importance," says a newly updated CAMRA guide to historic pubs in York and the surrounding area. (£1.50 plus postage from Geoff Hemman, 15 Beagle Ridge Drive, York.)

The cherished interior remains happily and wholly untouched; even the customers seem not to have moved. Five real ales include Abbott, Pedigree and Strongarm; there are sandwiches at lunchtime.

That this mellifluous state of affairs continues is entirely down to the sensitivity and heritage concern of Pubmaster, the new owners. That the Blue Bell is one of very few Grade II* protected pubs in the country has nothing to do with it whatsoever.

*and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's yellow and trembles.

Cowardy, cowardy custard.