Snape bite

FOOTBALL followers and, possibly, readers of The Broons will know that there are two Scottish League teams in Dundee. Close rivals, it might be said, because the grounds are in the same street, barely 100 yards apart.

It was a bit like that in Snape, North Yorkshire.

In the village institute the Local History Group met to hear a talk enticingly entitled “The Snape area from old maps and aerial photographs – 1772 to Google Earth”.

In the Sunday School room, 20 yards across the beck, the Methodist Guild gathered simultaneously to hear Mike Amos, wittering on.

While it said little for social coordination, it clearly presented historically-minded Methodists with a Friday evening dilemma. A Snape decision, as it were.

Snape’s near Bedale and the Thorp Perrow arboretum, its castle once home to Catherine Parr, the last of Good King Henry’s sextet, during one of her earlier affiances.

Catherine herself only had four marriages.

Among Tudor nobility that was Parr for the course. Her ghost, a happy spirit it’s said, is reckoned still to haunt the castle.

The At Your Service column had visited the chapel in 1999, the lady of the house mistaking it for the police station. “Well,” she protested, “it’s blue and official looking.”

Then as now, the chapel’s home to a dabble of Ducks. We wondered in vain what the proper collective noun might be.

Twelve years ago, at any rate, the preacher had been the Reverend Noel Proctor, a wonderful Irishman who’d been curate of Haughton-le-Skerne and vicar of Byers Green but who was chaplain of Strangeways jail in Manchester when Britain’s longest prison siege – 25 days – began at the end of one of his services.

Noel had been sympathetic – “If you treat men like animals, they’ll behave like animals” – and also recalled that at 7.30am every December 25 he’d greet the glad morn by standing on a Strangeways landing playing O Come All Ye Faithful on his trumpet.

It was the lads’ annual lie-in. The two-word greeting in response wasn’t always “Merry Christmas”, he added.

This time there was an audience of 22 – they thought that pretty good, if not necessarily historic – and if they didn’t get any inside stories, they did at least hear the slightly sanitised tale of how old Rubberbones became the first man over the wall at Durham jail. It’s probably what’s called lilying the Guild.

Unlike the folk across the babbling beck, we also started proceedings with a rousing rendition of And Can it Be and finished, at the speaker’s request, with O For a Thousand Tongues.

They’re both Charles Wesley’s, the greatest hymns on Google Earth.

The lady had gone to the pub. She’s heard it all before.

The Castle Arms is a couple of hundred yards down the village, reckoned “enjoyable and immaculately kept” by the 2011 Good Pub Guide.

She’d found a seat in a corner, would have been welcomed into the convivial fray but chose to put her nose into a book instead.

“Every time the door opened I thought it would be you, and everyone had gone to the history group instead,” she said, witheringly.

She’d also ordered for me, with the request that the starters be served at 8.30pm. “It’s just like at home, he likes to come back to find his tea on the table,” she said.

Sandra Haxby, the admirable landlady, was reported at this point to have raised a sympathetic eyebrow.

We’d lunched at the Castle in 2005, thought it “absolutely first rate” save for the intrusive presence of Radio 2 – Sandra had blamed the chef – and were no less impressed on the return.

The music was very much quieter, even the dominoes seemed to be soft-shoe shuffled out of consideration for other pub users. You could tell it has a bit of class, too – someone was telling a joke about a proctologist without need of the anally intrusive to wonder what one of those might be when he’s at home.

The fire blazed, good ale and conversation flowed. You long for pubs like this. It was 8.35pm. “You’re late,” chirped Sandra, well briefed.

For herself The Boss had ordered a Caesar salad and a “small” fish and chips that was to prove a very happy medium. I was presented with a duck and walnut salad with orange dressing and a cranberry compote – clever, collaborative, congenial – and a succulent turkey, ham and mushroom pie with a golden top and excellent chips.

Those of us who’d sung for our supper also essayed a pudding – a melting Belgian chocolate fondant with clotted cream and chocolate ice cream that said nothing about resisting temptation.

With three pints – not necessarily moderation in all things – a glass of wine and one or two other additions, the bill reached £49. We thought it admirable: a smashing, unspoiled village pub with a warm welcome for visitors.

A real talking point in Snape.

* The Castle Arms, Snape, Bedale, DL8 2TB, 01677-470270. Meals served in stone-flagged bar and restaurant. Open seven lunchtimes and evenings. No problem for the disabled.

ON a bleak, post-Christmas evening in 2007 we dined at the Bridge in Whorlton, a few miles downstream from Barnard Castle. It was January 9, and we’d not been hopeful.

“If there’s a single day in the calendar when a restaurateur might put nothing in the oven but his head, or when a food critic might wish he’d stuck to covering the municipal health and sanitation committee,” the column observed, “it must be the second Tuesday in January.”

Paul O’Hara and his wife, Naomi, had taken over a few months earlier. Paul, Ferryhill lad, had learned his craft under the celebrated Terry Laybourne. “Already the year’s best bargain,” we concluded.

They’ve tried heroically since, essayed all manner of initiatives, attempted to buck a fearful trend. Now, we hear, the Bridge has collapsed, too.

The telephone remains unanswered, a village website supposes the news “regrettable”, as well it might.

It has proved The Bridge too far. Nice people, they are to be wished a better span elsewhere.

VERY much better news, word is that a new brewery is bubbling under nicely in Northallerton. It’s to be run by David Walls – “positively nothing to do with ice cream and sausages” – with early ales like County Town (which may leave little to the imagination) and Gun Dog, which may also point in the right direction. A launch is said to be planned for the Peppermill restaurant, near Northallerton parish church. Grist to the Peppermill, we hope to be there.

AN atoll on Ocean Road, the much-garlanded Colman’s in South Shields has been named independent restaurant of the year in the National Fish and Chip awards. The Quayside in Whitby was also on a short shortlist. Colman’s citation talks about being low in trans fats, about environmentally friendly packaging and about sustainable fishing grounds. All are doubtless commendable. Best of all, the fish and chips really do taste great.

THE Bacchus on High Bridge in Newcastle is Tyneside and Northumberland CAMRA’s Tyneside pub of the year, 2011.

The John Bull in Alnwick, the Tap and Spile in Morpeth and the much-garlanded Boathouse at Wylam win the other sub-regional awards. All four now vie for the regional finals. Winner announced on March 15.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you feed an invisible cat.

Evaporated milk, of course.