Leader of the pack

TOP of the head, it's possible to think of at least three North- East villages - Heighington, Allendale and, two weeks ago, Cotherstone - that in the past year have been named the best in Britain, or words to that effect, in doubtless scientific surveys.

They may now call themselves award winners, thus joining four-fifths of the nation's chefs, nine-tenths of proprietary beauty treatments and a canny few jobbing journalists, an' all. Cotherstone's very pleasant, for all that.

It's in Teesdale, between Barnard Castle and Middleton, a largely stone-built village of 552 people who include Dr David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham, and Miss Hannah Hauxwell, for whom it was too long a winter.

There's a church, chapel and amiable Friends' Meeting House, a school, village hall, shop and unthreatened post office, play park, bus service and - a post-prandial sortie suggested - not a house for sale anywhere.

The Methodist Church needs two notice boards just to embrace all that's going on in the community, from Easter services to a coffee morning for the Teesdale Chernobyl Society.

Last, but not necessarily least, are two pubs, each admirable in its own way. We headed for one and ended up at t'other.

Plan A was to take Sunday lunch in the Red Lion, perhaps one of the precious few village pubs in England where a coal fire still burns at both ends of the bar.

It may also be uniquely domino-centric, boards on the tables and news bulletins on the blackboards. Captain Fantastic, it is glumly reported, went out in the quarterfinals.

There are three hand pumps - including something from Mordues' Brewery on Tyneside called Footballers' Haircuts - CAMRA commendations, convivial company.

What there's not is food.

Thus to the Fox and Hounds, where on a previous visit several years ago we'd encountered Dr Jenkins volubly discussing the finer points of St Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians with his lunch guest.

We'd discovered the place 20 years ago, though it was a first visit during the tenure of Ian and Nichola Swinburn, owners these past six years. They'd spent the previous six at the Chatterbox restaurant in Middleton-in-Teesdale.

Once seen, Ian had clocked us for all that. Since Nichola was unwell, he'd asked the usual stand-in if she could cook.

"When you walked in, I went out to the kitchen and told her I had some bad news,"

he recalls later.

Little seems to have changed, right down to the little rhyme above the fireplace about not hogging the flames. I forget what it was, but fire probably rhymes with ire.

The other great constant is, or appears to be, the melancholy parrot in a big cage out the back. Ian insists that it's a different parrot, that the others dropped off the perch - sick, probably - and that any resemblance is coincidental.

He's also adamant that this one is so talkative it could almost be mistaken for Dr David Jenkins, though it's impossible to recall a Fox and Hounds parrot which ever had anything to say for itself at all.

"Alan Shearer," says Ian, by way of provocation. The bird remains stumm, a parrot not a Magpie.

"Merry Christmas," says Ian. The parrot still says nowt, probably remembering that it's Palm Sunday.

"Show us your boobs," says Ian. The parrot turns indignantly away, clearly preferring to oversee theological debate on the Epistle to the Thessalonians.

Unbooked, we are agreeably seated in the bar, with dining areas either side. The blackboard offers five or six Sunday lunch choices from each section, priced separately.

The tomato and basil soup is rich, dense and aromatic. The lamb is exceptionally succulent, well cooked and - by no means usual - is perfectly accompanied by mint sauce.

The Yorkshire puddings are the best in the past 12 months, not least because they're fresh out of the oven; abundant roast potatoes are crisp without and feathery within; the vegetables, especially the red cabbage, are carefully cooked and admirable.

So often on Sundays, particularly with carveries, there are lunches for which the greatest thanks should be given when proceedings are mercifully at an end. With this one, the conclusion is greatly to be regretted.

The Boss had begun with a salad of warm bacon, Cotherstone cheese, apple and grapes, which she thought delightful.

She followed with a monster fishcake - the size of Keir Hardie's cap, she said, though that gentleman's hat size may not be a matter of public record - and with the communal veg.

With a bottle of water, two pints of Daleside beer and a single pudding of apple and cinnamon ice cream, meringue and stuff, the bill reached a wholly reasonable £33.

The greatest reason that the Fox and Hounds leads the pack, however, is - and after last week's little homily, this may be considered part two of the Pub Survival course - that, like Mr Bruce Forsyth, Ian is very clearly in charge.

He is charming, chatty, rarely strays far from the bar, knows everything that's going on, misses nothing, exudes assurance.

So many places these days seem to have no one in charge at all - or if there is, it's the person closest to the age of 18 and to an IQ of 100.

For all those reasons, the Fox may warmly be recommended. Perhaps it should have an award.

■ The Fox and Hounds, Cotherstone, Teesdale, 01833-650241. Food served seven days, 12-2pm and 7-9pm. Children welcome so long as they're eating.

APART from the unfortunate incident involving the branch chairman, the Holy Island causeway and an air/sea rescue helicopter, topics at Darlington CAMRA's Spring Thing beer festival included head brewer Ian Jackson's departure from the Wear Valley Brewery in Bishop Auckland to the Captain Cook at Stokesley and the opening of a brewery at the back of the excellent Ship Inn at Low Newton, on the Northumberland coast.

Ales included Orang-a-Tang, from Durham, Locomotion No 1 - appropriately from Wylam, George Stephenson's birthplace - and something from the Idle Brewery, in Nottinghamshire.

A pint of Idle Sod seemed perfect.

ITS glories else, Shildon's a real ale desert. A pleasure, therefore, to report on the town's first beer festival on April 12-13 - organised by the Fox and Hounds community pub and staged at the Vintage Vehicle museum on the Dabble Duck industrial estate. Music, stalls, food and, of course, real ale - "12-6pm or until sold out," it says. Make that quarter past one, then.

CLOSED since January for refurbishment, the restaurant at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough reopens on Friday as 1936 - the year in which the building was opened as an Odeon cinema.

The theme's black and white art deco, lot of old photographs of Odeons across the land, the food's said to be strictly contemporary.

More after the next trip to the seaside.

LAST week's note on a windswept walk along the Redcar coast prompted an email from Dick Fawcett, delighted that someone else should find the Seven Red Plaice sculpture a distinctly queer kettle of fish and also taken by the "I kiss better than I cook"

sign on the counter of the Stray Café.

Dick has asked the assistants which of them it referred to, the answer perhaps well rehearsed. "He's not in today," they said.

A HOMEWARD pint at the Glittering Star in Darlington reveals that the budget has even hit Sam Smith's pubs. A pint of perfectly good ale is now £1.38 - little more than half the price of most other places.

How come Sam's places aren't chocker - or, for that matter, marketed more?

and finally, the bairns wondered at Easter time if we knew what sort of hens lay electric eggs. Battery hens, of course.