Catch of the day

REETH has much going for it, not least that it's in Swaledale - incomparably the finest of all the north's main dales, and that's by no means to decry the others.

A significant added attraction is the Reeth Bakery, perfect pasty purveyors, so it was particularly unsavoury to discover that the walkers we'd passed en route to the shop had snaffled the last of the day.

The unheard imprecations hurled at their disappearing figures were something horrific: stabbed in the backpack, as it were.

Reeth Memorial Hall, around the corner, is also getting quite a name musically.

Last year we saw Maddy Prior up there; on March 14 they have a duo called Quicksilver celebrating 100 years of comic songs.

The Boss wondered if they knew the one about Little Miss Bouncer who loved an announcer down at the BBC, recorded (it transpires) by Flotsam and Jetsam in 1927 and so probably nothing to do with Mr John Humphrys.

The year's highlight may be on May 9, however, when Peggy Seeger, Martin Cathy and the Watersons will be singing for their supper in the dales. The Boss thought that Peggy Seeger must be at least 193 but Google puts her at 72, which may still be among the older folk.

Whatever the merry month, the Watersons and their kindred Carthy may not exactly be spring chickens, either.

A shelter at the top of the village is known locally as the House of Commons, apparently because of the all the hot air balloons which are floated there. A longgone column suggested that some of the language might be a little unparliamentary and was rebuked by several speakers.

This was a squally Friday lunchtime, the House of Commons risen for the weekend, and we were up for a bite to eat at the Overton House Café, run these past couple of years by Adrian and Gill Barratt.

We've been following them for getting on two decades, from Barwick's in Richmond - when she was still Gill Stanwix - to the Hack and Spade at Whashton, a few miles away, to the Arden Arms at Atley Hill, near Scorton, and to running the catering operation at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, a lone foray north of the Tees.

Now the wandering stars - for stars is beyond argument what they are - have settled upon Reeth. The family caravan, says Adrian, stops here.

Overton House Café - "I don't want it to be a restaurant," he insists - offers a relatively simple bistro menu with food freshly sourced, expertly cooked and imaginatively presented.

There was lightly curried parsnip soup, spaghetti with prawns, mussels and spinach, Hartlepool kippers, scallops, monk fish with bacon, vanilla pod creme brulee with raspberry kirsch.

It's cosy, probably seating no more than 20, with a little waiting area and a stillsmaller private dining room out the back.

On a feisty February Friday there were 24 lunchtime bookings alone and those to whom time is precious may stop reading now. That says just about everything.

The atmosphere is convivial, contented, warmly welcoming. Service is by Gill alone, without even the help of a note pad. Little wonder there's barely a picking on the lass.

The groups were small. Most seemed to know one another and were perfectly happy to share a table, and their conversation, if they didn't.

In the middle of the most enjoyable lunch for a very long time, it was thus a bonus to bump into retired GP Kishor Velangi and his splendid wife Vivienne, who live in Bishop Auckland but have a cottage up in Reeth.

The Boss, as we have only recently observed, has a theory that whenever two or three are gathered together, there shall be a former Shildon footballer - usually a goalkeeper and quite often with a wooden leg.

Kishor proved the exception. He was Shildon's chairman, and club doctor, too.

He drank water, having given up alcohol for Lent, thus embarrassing those of us of altogether feebler fibre.

I'd begun with seafood chowder, overflowing with fish and with flavour, swimming in a creamy stock with what may have been corn but was probably spinach.

Catch of the day, anyway.

It was followed, quite simply, by mushrooms on toast (£5.50) which certainly did have spinach in the dressing and which would have served as a perfectly good square meal on its own.

Having forgone a starter, The Boss had a proper Caesar salad with a separate bowl of sumptuously succulent prawns.

She hadn't been feeling over clever, the old rheumatiz playing up a bit. This, and Reeth, was exactly what the doctor ordered.

The best, however, was yet to come. The apple and cinnamon crumble with homemade ice cream was the best crumble and one of the best puddings, in history. Simply terrific. The lemon cheesecake wasn't far behind.

The Barratts won a national "Dessert Pub of the Year" award while at Atley Hill. They could win many more. Gill, her husband chivalrously insists, has always been the pastry chef.

With two bottles of Black Sheep, two glasses of wine and some excellent coffee willingly refilled, the bill reached £46.

A visit, manifestly best to book, cannot be too highly recommend. This is the Great Barratt Reeth.

■ Overton House Café, Reeth, North Yorkshire, 01748-884332. Open Monday and Wednesday to Saturday lunch, Thursday to Saturday evening.

THE London Bus Syndrome strikes again. You wait ages for a meal about which unequivocally to enthuse and then two come along at once.

The second was early doors at the Masham in Hartburn, in Stockton's western suburbs, at 5.30pm the pub already pretty full of both drinkers and diners.

A notice advises that it's not a Wacky Warehouse or a Charlie Chalk's, that they accept that bairns will sometimes get a bit fidgety, but that if they persistently distract others they'll be fed to the lions out the back. (This, admittedly, is something of a paraphrase, but the point was well made.) We'd gone simply to meet a man about a Backtrack column, have a pint - the Masham has for many years been in the Good Beer Guide, especially known for its Bass - and maybe a bite to eat.

It was pub food of the highest order, so good that we vowed to book Sunday lunch and do the job properly. Sadly, the only telephone number we could find was met with a message that it didn't take incoming calls.

Somewhere along the line there are clearly crossed wires, but it shouldn't be a deterrent. The Masham may be even better for Hartburn than Rennies.

TERRY Laybourne, awarded an MBE for gastronomic bravery in the North-East, has added yet another restaurant to his expanding empire. Caffe Vivo, Italianthemed, opened yesterday at Live Theatre in Newcastle. The chef's Luca Mastromattei, who worked with Laybourne at Jesmond Dene House. "He used to make these fantastic pasta dishes for the other chefs," said Terry. "We decided to give him a stage to perform on." It's open Monday to Saturday, 10am-10pm.

AFTER recent references to Yorkshire pudding, Martin Snape in Durham recalls that in his Lancashire childhood, he'd never heard of Yorkshire pudding - the dish was known as batter pudding. "I suspect it well nigh universal but only got its county title because in Yorkshire it was a separate course." Proof of the pudding, anyone?

and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew the difference between a common thief and a church bell.

One steals from the people, the other peals from the steeple.