Calf measures

The story of the Colliery Inn at Cold Hesleden is among the most improbable in North-East gastronomy - dammit, it's the most improbable - and needs must be summarised before proceeding. Ernest Williamson and Janice Crocker were teachers in Berkshire - he woodwork, she music - before fleeing the blackboard jungle to look for a pub in the North-East.

Casing the joint, as a woodwork master might suppose.

How they tunnelled up to the Colliery Inn is impossible to recall, but the place was what euphemists call unpretentious. It was around 1970, the pits still in full vigour.

Two years later - at a time when most food critics not only believed that North-East folk still ate their young but did it, with salt and vinegar, from old copies of the Daily Mirror - the Golden Calf, as biblically they had renamed it, was being lauded in the Good Food Guide.

Two years after that it won a gold star, or diamante soup spoon, or whatever it was that the GFG awarded to places of rare distinction. They were still talking about a place in the black heart of the Durham coalfield.

The place name "Cold" generally means "abandoned". Hesleden was a hazel dene. The village is between the A19 and the Durham coast, Peterlee way. Folk flocked there from all over the region, the pub/restaurant proving both fatted calf and golden egg.

In 1977, Ernest and Janice bought Hallgarth Hall at Coatham Mundeville, near Darlington, turned it into a hotel, sold it at a vast profit and eventually pitched up at the Wild Boar in Metal Bridge, near Ferryhill, where Ernest - a wonderful, warm, Wurzel Gummidge of a man - had a seven and a half inch gauge railway in the garden.

Just about the last we heard of them, they were selling antiquarian books in the south, though Ernest was spotted on a Channel 4 house-swap programme - "still gloriously unkempt" - four years ago.

Meanwhile back in Cold Hesleden, the Golden Calf was becoming tainted. It was thus intriguing to receive a letter from a lady in nearby Castle Eden in praise of its re-opened restaurant.

She and her husband had dined there in the Williamson days, too. Once again, she said, the food was "superb", the service "excellent" and the menu "delightfully varied".

We went last Wednesday evening. From now on, it gets a bit difficult.

The pub remains. The restaurant has been renamed Eden Falls and taken over by 19-year-old Georgina Lee - whose parents run the pub - and Mark King, her boyfriend.

He'd cooked at his own restaurant in Blandford, Dorset, where for three years Georgina was a waitress, and had been told about the golden days.

"Apparently, so many famous footballers dined here, the kids would queue outside in the street for their autographs," said Mark.

The Calf restaurant, they reckon, had been closed for at least ten to 12 years. There's no easy way of saying this, and they've been told it has to be said, but you can tell at once. It is not, shall we say, very fragrant.

They've tried very hard: ripped up the carpets, exterminated what lived beneath, refurbished and redecorated. The restaurant, says the menu rubric, is a "unique structure", the atmosphere "exciting and welcoming".

It's welcoming, anyway. Though advised to book, we were the only diners, at once disappointed because there was no real ale. Georgina, front of house, apologised. There was no sparkling mineral water, either. Georgina apologised again. She has a lovely smile.

The menu's quite short, wrapped up (surprisingly) in one of those great bulky laminated binders. Starters included a nicely presented mushroom crostini which The Boss greatly enjoyed and a "home made" lobster bisque which appeared to be tomato soup with a few exceedingly anorexic prawns and some crab shell thrown in. Good and hot, though, and masses of it.

The rack of lamb was enormous, had probably won best in show. It was cooked - carefully cooked - with rosemary and garlic, crisp golden without and pink within. The wild berry sauce was bitter-sweet; there may be better accompaniments for lamb.

She had grilled trout with coriander and chilli and a prawn sauce - "simple but very tasty". The vegetables were fine, potatoes and chips - both flavoured with rosemary - particularly good.

With two bought-in puddings - coffee gateau, strawberry cheesecake - the food bill was still only about £36 for two. They're very nice people and were a bit mortified when the identity of their only customers was revealed.

There's work to be done, but we very much hope that they succeed. Stranger things have happened: remember the 1973 Good Food Guide, remember the woodwork master from Berkshire.

l The Golden Calf and Eden Falls restaurant, Cold Hesleden, Peterlee (01429) 837815. Food Tuesday-Saturday 12-4pm and 7-9.30pm; Sunday lunch 12-5pm.

First visit for a few years, a swift bite at the White Swan in Stokesley - good sandwiches, Friday and Saturday lunchtimes - reaffirms what a lovely, immaculately kept little pub it is.

Out the back, the Captain Cook Brewery - official opened in 1999 by a 79-year-old regular who just happened to be called James Cook - makes irresistibly quaffable ales like Slipway (4.2abv) and the refreshing Sunset (4.0). The Swan's graveful yet.

Lunch at the Priory Caf in Guisborough with ultra-runner Sharon Gayter, the first time she's eaten pudding since 2003. ("That was with you, as well," she said.)

She had lasagne, which is healthy; we had corned beef pie, which probably isn't quite as healthy but was perfectly pleasant. Both were £5.95. Two bits of chocolate fudge cake followed.

"Chocolate's my only weakness," said Sharon, who at the start of September hopes to run the 837 miles from Lands End to John o' Groats in just 12 days, knocking almost a day and a half off the women's world record.

With a Coke and a cup of tea, it should have come to £19.30. The till, and the till operator, said it was £25.25. We protested, the operator scowled. She checked, kicked the till's backside, did a few gozinters, scowled again.

Finally she handed over change from £20 without so much as a thank you, a sorry or even the other thing. There was a bowl for tips; if we'd offered one, it wouldn't have been financial.

An e-mail from Ferryhill lad and affectionately remembered former Middlesbrough footballer Bill Gates - now in the Cayman Islands - reveals that he and his wife Judith have sold the Whitworth Hall Hotel, and Shafto's pub, outside Spennymoor. It's been bought by a new company called US UK. More of them shortly.

Minnie Caldwell's moggy was called Bobby. Alf Hutchinson in Darlington and Judy Walton in Northallerton were first to recall the name of the Coronation Street mouser - last week's column - but it's Ross Brewster in Cumbria who really puts the cat among the pigeons.

Doubtless it is true, as Ross suggests, that, in failing health, Minnie left No 5 with Bobby to become housekeeper for her old flame Handel Gartside, in Whaley Bridge.

Was it really the case, however, that there were two cats called Bobby, the first having become disorientated in the vicinity of the viaduct? Ross also suggests that the second one was nicknamed Sunny Jim, but wasn't that Minnie's nickname for Jed Stone, her lodger - not to be confused with Joe, her other lodger, the one who murdered Steve Tanner.

Mr Brewster's Street cred is at stake.

... and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's green and goes "Boing, boing, boing".

A spring cabbage, of course.