Not quite a roaring trade

CART before the horse trough, a flavour before getting the feet beneath the table - beneath the table, it should be said, of the nearest pub to Tony Blair's rural redoubt - of a walk as magnificent as it is improbable.

It is not a walk for those seeking to fly like the crow, too many of the Durham coast's nelly denes for that, but as the skylark soars it is pretty near unsurpassable.

We started at Crimdon, the beach area recently revitalised at a cost of £700,000, but still home to that great resting place for motionless mobile homes.

Once Crimdon was known as Hart, the beach where pitmen and their families pitched up in tents after being evicted during the perennial, piteous, strikes.

Hart appeared to move a couple of miles inland - a Hart transplant, as it were - while Crimdon Dene in the 1960s had paddling pool, caf, a pub called the Seagull (latterly much dropped upon) and an annual beauty competition which drew thousands of spectators.

A sign now points northwards along the Durham Coastal Path, 11 miles (and then some) to Seaham. Another records that, until nationalisation in 1947, the miners got just three days annual holiday each year. Little wonder they went on strike.

The forecast was dull, the afternoon confounding it, the whole coastline transformed. The only pity was that there wasn't an ice cream van. Easington Council, note well.

A route elliptical if not quite circular, we walked past the site of the former Blackhall Colliery to Horden, where three or four years ago the parish council won an award for England's best cemetery and where there's a canny little picnic park, an' all.

The picnic consisted of a pie and a bottle of pop from Sainsbury's at Bell's Stores, or possibly vice-versa. It was idyllic.

So wet it could have been a bank holiday weekend, Blackhall colliery was sunk in 1909 and abandoned in 1981, once employing 1,500 miners and sundry other submariners.

Local legend has it that two Blackhall pitmen - one army, one navy - were reunited on Dunkirk beach, the sailor pulling his mate safely onto a pontoon.

"Why yer bugger," said the soldier, "I'm working in watter yet again."

We also passed Blackhall Allotment Association's little wooden hut, the Association's motto "Excellence in service" and the hut open every morning, including bank holidays, as if to underline it.

Next to it, a blackboard was headed "Pigeon news". There was no news. We knew the feeling.

The walk back to Crimdon, beneath Horden's magnificent railway viaduct and out along the edge of a floribundant cliff top, was better and more glorious yet. Though largely inaccessible to the disabled, it is nonetheless a sensible path - not one of those which skirts precipitously and all the while whispers a lemming leap to oblivion.

We met an Echo reader called Alan, who played the organ at Castle Eden church and preferred reading Sharon's stuff. "I need to read yours two or three times before I can understand it," he said, and thus showed the great depth of his understanding.

What he also said, before striding off towards Horden with his dog, was that up there on the coastal path he often stopped, looked around and wondered if he was really still in County Durham.

He is, and most of us are. Not to walk the coastal path this summer, not to see the sun sparkling on the sea and to have the skylarks fly up from beneath the feet, would be the greatest dereliction of duty since Albert Coles was found with pipe and baccy at the bottom of Horden shaft. It is truly stupendous.

HAD a tramps' ball been in progress as we sauntered at 7pm into the Red Lion in Trimdon Village, the remaining contestants would have been sent home to smarten up their act.

Though we looked like a dirty weekend, the friendly staff not only allowed us to sink into the nearest sofa but brought across a couple of menus.

"It's also on the board," said the waitress, "but you look as if you mightn't get up again."

In the event, we'd to get up almost immediately, the pint of Theakston's Bitter having turned through about 180 degrees. It was replaced, cheerfully and without quibble, with a much better pint of XB.

Several books lay on the table in front of us, they and a flyer for September's Trimdon Festival and attendant gala concert. Almost everything's a "gala" these days, meaning a do with balloons. It can only be a matter of time before there's a gala colonic irrigation.

There was a slim volume called Interesting Inns of County Durham which contained a section on kidney transplants, a "Golden Jubilee Who's Who" of British pub licensees and a fascinating little book called Last Snippets of Trimdon.

Written in 2003 by a lady who was born in 1908, it recalled how 150 people applied for a 4/6d a week errand boy's job at the local Co-op, how the school had to become a soup kitchen as well and how Lord Haw-Haw had promised not to bomb Trimdon, so long as they behaved themselves.

It didn't much matter. On North-East experience, Jerry would have missed by about 20 miles, anyway.

The innkeepers' Who's Who, simultaneously the most vainglorious and the most incredibly boring book in British publishing history, was nothing more than a list of anodyne potted biographies of those who, presumably, had paid to be included.

Gordon Wright, owner of the Red Lion and of the Black Bull up the road - run by his son - insisted that he'd known nothing about it until it had dropped through the letter box.

Things fall off the back of lorries in much the same way.

Gordon was listed as "leader" of Trimdon Parish Council but has reverted to the back benches. "Too much chew," he said.

The pub is recently and attractively refurbished, an indication of their fresh thinking that it is apparently the first food pub in the Sedgefield borough to be completely non-smoking - notwithstanding that Gordon and five of his seven regular staff have been unable to kick it. They're going on a course, he said, puffing away at the front door.

It could also explain why, at 9.15pm on a Saturday, there were just two people in the bar end and not many more in the restaurant. That the pub doesn't appear to be in the phone book (01429) 880274 can't help much, either.

Tridmon Labour Club's just up the road. As sure as smokescreens, there won't be a cigarette ban there.

There was an extensive bar meal menu, vegetarian section clearly for the Quorn again, and more extensive restaurant selections with specials like beef stroganoff. Almost everything was under a tenner.

We began with strong flavoured Stilton and broccoli soup, followed a 36DD duck breast cooked with fresh ginger, juniper berries and a fancy sounding sauce. The duck was very tender, the ginger gently applied. The sauce was all right.

The Boss, all but on the point of collapse, began with melon and strawberries with redcurrants and other berries ("just right for a hot summer day") followed by haddock and smoked salmon grilled with, but rather light on, sauce Veronique. The vegetables were good, the chips very good.

We finished with a couple of nicely presented tortes mango and passion fruit, lemon and fresh cream - which were probably made elsewhere but were particularly refreshing. The bill, with a couple of drinks apiece, was £42.

The Prime Minister hasn't yet looked into his local, it's said, but may make an appearance quite soon. If he first walks the Durham Coastal Path, he'll have the healthiest of appetites.

* The Red Lion, Front Street, Trimdon Village (01429) 880274. Open seven lunchtimes and evenings. No smoking throughout; no problem for the disabled.

LAST week's column on the Green Dragon i n Exelby, North Yorkshire, recalled that John Exelby, The Northern Echo's industrial correspondent in the late 1960s, was married to television scientist Judith Hann, who by then worked in the features department.

John Briggs in Darlington not only recalls being taught physics by Judith at Southmoor Technical School in Sunderland - "the first woman teacher the school ever had, I think" - but that she arrived in a car with the registration XLB 1.

Judith, whose book How Science Works sold more than a million copies, will be 63 in September.

STILL breathing fire, Bob Harbron in Norton-on-Tees notes that dragons came in all sizes and colours.

The red dragon was a destructive devil, black a sign of pestilence and starvation, while silver was a sign of blossom on the trees and green a harbinger of spring - or of a nice pub near Bedale.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why birds (or dragons, perhaps) fly south in winter.

Because it's too far to walk.

Published: 05/07/2005