New heights

BLEAKLY and beautifully set, the Bowes Moor now promotes itself as England’s highest hotel. It may also have England’s lowest profile. It’s all a bit strange.

No less paradoxically, it’s also very impressive.

The familiar hotel, on the A66 near the Durham/Cumbria border, is – alas – no stranger to mystery. Early in 1983, Mark Johns – the then owner – suddenly vanished. His car was found near Hull docks. Mark, it was assumed, had set sail from his creditors.

I knew him well. He’d worked on the Daily Express in Fleet Street, claimed to have been Britain’s first full-time television critic, became campaign director of the Keep Britain Tidy movement, turned tail on the rat race and could talk for England. Bobby Moore’s England.

It was noticeable that there were only two-legged cuddies on Bowes Moor. He was thoroughly well-intentioned but reality, and traffic on the A66, both rather passed Mark by.

Six months after his disappearance, police arrested two young burglars in Darlington. “While we’re here,” they said, “we might as well tell you about the murder.”

They’d worked at the Bowes Moor, claimed to have grown tired of Mark’s ways, blasted him in the back of the head with his own shotgun.

His body was exhumed just hours after the confession, buried on the wild moor across the road. He was reinterred at Startforth, near Barnard Castle.

Initially claimed by Durham County Council and set against Mark’s debts, the hotel has had several subsequent owners but until recently had been closed for several years.

Then, last month, there was a Mother’s Day ad in the Teesdale Mercury.

The place had reopened. No editorial in the Echo, nothing – save for a website – on the Internet, nothing promotional to suggest ambitions that might themselves be more than 1,000ft above sea level. A visit impelled.

We went two Sundays ago, and also in unusual circumstances. We’d been walking up on the moors: I’d forgotten my wallet, she her purse.

Two lots of small change and the coppers in the car that are usually kept to chuck at the Tyne Tunnel amounted to just under £35. It was to be a close call.

We were greeted by Richard Laybourn, a cheery, grey-haired chap in a woolly cardigan who at first said that he was the owner and, next day, that he and his wife were agents for a company called Miasma Ltd, which was a bit peculiar, too.

Chambers Dictionary defines miasma as “an unwholesome exhalation”, the Bloomsbury – among other things – “an unwholesome or menacing atmosphere.”

Did no one look it up? It’s a rather odd name for a hospitality company.

Yet Richard, who has other business interests in Teesdale, couldn’t have been friendlier. The main restaurant was expecting a big Christening party up from Bowes, the bistro to which we were shown – smart, newly furnished, nice view, music-free – had just four other diners.

At the centre of another room is a huge, solid mahogany dining table from the Laybourns’ house. By a fireplace, idiosyncratically, are bound copies of the Eastern Daily Times.

The bar, stocked with a large range of whisky and gin, is from Cambridge University; the bedrooms are immaculate.

The last time we were there, a good ten years ago, some of the chairs were held together with duct tape.

The place is wholly, handsomely, transformed. Miasma another.

Three course Sunday lunch is £12.95, £15.95 with good strong coffee and mints. Perilously close to our credit limit, I had a single pint of Smooth – probably wouldn’t have wanted two, anyway – she a glass of tap water.

Even before he knew who we were, Richard said that we could have paid later if we’d asked.

Her starter of prawns, smoked salmon and crayfish was spot on, beautifully presented. The salmon which followed, with rice and what folk call a julienne of oriental vegetables, was equally enjoyable.

I’d begun with a manifestly fresh pea and mint soup that clearly tasted of both ingredients – a rarity – followed, rarer yet, by the vegetarian option of wild mushroom risotto with a warm goats’ cheese crisp.

This, in truth, was a good advert for carnivorousness – probably a perfectly good risotto but, you know, nothing to get your teeth into. Whey off, the goats’ cheese crisp didn’t materialise at all.

Puddings fine, service fine, coffee in the elegant lounge, 60p left between us, a chat with the gaffer and a little tour. They’ve had it six years, he said, finished the refurbishment 18 months ago, welcomed a couple of private parties but otherwise delayed the reopening until recently.

During the week, said Richard, they sometimes didn’t open at all.

When they do, breakfast is £6.95.

There’s a sensibly short lunch menu, more choice in the evening, but for the most part a light which (as the Bible has it) still appears squarely to be hidden under a bushel.

As they may say atop Bowes Moor, it is all highly unusual.

LONG anticipated hereabouts, Pete Fenwick’s micro-brewery at Aldbrough St John, between Darlington and Richmond, will be up and bubbling shortly.

Pete, a founder of the Darlington Traditional Brewing Group, is calling it Mithril, after a character in The Lord of the Rings. To the elves, apparently, it meant “as strong as steel” though not all the ale will be like that.

He hopes to be selling at the nearby Stanwick Arms, at the multiple award-winning Crown at Manfield, at the Quaker House in Darlington and elsewhere.

A bit of a dab hand at these things, Pete also produced the prototype recipe – in his kitchen – for Rivet Catcher, the Jarrow Brewery ale which twice in recent years has been in the top three for Champion Beer of Great Britain.

SPEAKING of award winners, Spring Triple Tipple – a 4.2 abv pale golden ale from the Yard of Ale brewery – was voted Beer of the Festival from the 56 on offer at Darlington CAMRA’s Spring Thing bash. “We’re over the moon, it’s a massive achievement,” says Alan Hogg, who set up the brewery two years ago at the back of his Surtees Arms pub in Ferryhill Station. It’s already their third award.

AS if enough weren’t expected of May 6 – Dana at Shildon Civic Hall, elections across the country – we have been invited to the reopening of the Honest Lawyer hotel in Croxdale.

Not so much stowed off as flooded out, uncomfortably close to the surging Wear, the hotel near Durham has had a hard time of late.

Eight months after the latest disaster, it comes up for a third time.

“The flood protection will work this time,” insists front of house manager Julie Naylor.

It’ll be open to the public from May 7, a report to follow soon after. On May 6, however, we shall be singing along with Dana.

ENTHUSIASTICALLY, we wrote two months ago about Chadwicks Inn, formerly the Pathfinders at Malby, near Thornaby. It was run by former Darlington and Middlesbrough footballer Gary Gill and his wife Helen and Dave Brownless, who’d been head chef at Chadwicks in nearby Yarm.

After just six months, Dave’s now gone – word is he’s again looking at Yarm – while the Gill pairing expand apace.

There’s to be an on-line wine shop – chadwicksinnmaltby.co.uk – and a coffee shop on Tuesday and Thursday from 9.30am. Gary has a professional wine qualification. “It’s my passion,” he says. The pub’s closed Mondays.