Getting people into the pub shouldn't be difficult, but Weardale has appointed an official mine host to reach the parts of the dale that others do not.

Len Alderson is a local government officer with a refreshing difference. Unique in the UK, his job is to get people into pubs. Though the agency funding is as multiple as the responsibilities - his business card could comfortably be written on a bit of 2x2 - officially he is Wear Valley District Council's "Mine host project co-ordinator".

We meet, predictably over a pie and a pint, at the Bay Horse in Wolsingham.

Len's pub trawl extends westwards from the Bay Horse to embrace the 15 other pubs alongside the A689 through Weardale, his brief to reach those parts of the licensed trade which other municipal initiatives can not.

"A survey two years ago showed that people were looking for good food and accommodation at reasonable prices. At the moment the pubs aren't really meeting the demand," he says with practised diplomacy.

"They can say they want to cater for the locals, but the evidence suggests that you need more than locals to keep a village pub viable."

Though Teesdale and Tynedale are enthusiastically served, the Good Pub Guide bypasses Weardale completely and almost contemptuously; that the Good Beer Guide warms to four Weardale pubs is chiefly due to the capacity for hard work (and other things) of CAMRA's North-East vice chairman Alastair Downie, who lives in those parts.

The best known may be the Cowshill Hotel, closest to Cumbria, its name partly made on the late Walton Siddle's legendary rudeness to his customers.

Many don't even bother to open at lunchtime; some of those which do consider a pub lunch to be a bag of salt and vinegar. Weardale, as they say in the trade, is wet, wet, wet.

Len, Witton Park lad originally, worked for the Sports Council in London and the North-East, took early retirement and from an office in the old Stanhope Co-op contemplates a whole new ball game - if not a havenly host then a canny feller, nonetheless.

The project will officially be launched on March 24 at the Horsley Hall Hotel in Eastgate; Liz Currie, its owner, is planning pub catering courses.

"I want to be a one stop shop," says Len. "It's about advising pubs how to get grants, promote themselves, access local sources and farmers' markets, generally benefit the whole dale economy.

"People suppose that the main east-west routes around here are the A66 or the A69, but the A689 is just as quick and more scenic than any of them. There's a lot of goodwill around, but now we need everyone to work together."

The other day he drove up Weardale behind a meat van, stopped at the pub where it delivered and ordered the sausages. "They weren't bad but they were a bit processed and they were from Cumberland.

"There are people on our doorstep making far better sausages than that. That's what the message is all about - Weardale can do better."

Len Alderson, driving, drinks Coke. Bay Horse owner Richard Chwieseni knocks back several of the eight pints of water deemed a daily part of the Atkins diet, having gained two stones on a month-long Christmas cruise.

Though his surname is Polish, he was born in Gateshead. "No-one at school could ever get their tongue around it," he says. "The best anyone could do was 'chicken sandwich'; I've been known as Chick ever since."

McKenna Inns, his company, owns four other Co Durham pubs. He himself lives in another, the former Centurion in Langley Park.

Guarded (however temporarily) by a steel stag at the Bay, the Wolsingham pub - top end of the village, high road to Tow Law - is his latest acquisition and will soon have six completely refurbished bedrooms.

"I've never had a country pub before and I'm trying to make this one a classic," says Chick.

The ales in the dales, he suspects, is an exercise overdue. "A lot of the pubs up here seem to be struggling. I support it 100 per cent."

Another initiative aimed at reinvigorating Weardale was, of course, last summer's reopening of the railway between Wolsingham and Stanhope. It says as much in a five page feature, gushing like Bolihope Beck, in the February issue of Railway Magazine.

"The Weardale Railway," it concludes, "is a fine example of what can be achieved with a combination of determination, foresight, goodwill and access to funding. As for the long term future, it looks very healthy indeed... the Weardale Railway may be the newest arrival in the world of preserved railways, but at this rate it won't be long before it outgrows the rest."

Accused of being nave, the Weardale Railway Company is now in administration and has laid off 28 of its 36 staff. It's the problem with early deadlines, of course.

LAST week's column curiously promoted Jonesey from Dads Army to "Lieutenant Corporal" - Tom Cockeram in Leeds the first to call attention. It was a gremlin in the works: don't panic.

....and finally, John Briggs in Darlington e-mails a third prize ticket from the 1897 Shildon Show, sponsored by Old Calabar dog biscuits and poultry food and probably won by one of the family. As John observes, it's amazing what turns up on e-bay.

Losing a good bloke

The Rev Canon John "Jumbo" Wilson, one of those priests whom journalists like to describe as a colourful clergyman, has died. He was 79.

For 20 years he'd been a soldier - mentioned in Despatches, rose to the rank of major, was master of beagles and carried a Burmese bullet in his bicep - before studying for the ministry and becoming curate of St Helen's Auckland in 1967.

We knew him even then, shared the occasional pint, followed his clerical career to South Hetton where, as Vicar, he spent many a shift underground, getting his hands dirty with the miners.

In 1975, however, we also revealed that he was leaving parish ministry. "I'm not bitter or twisted, I'm just bored and under-employed by the Church," he said.

None of them went into the ministry with eyes open, thus making it rather like marriage, he added.

He became a management lecturer at Sunderland Poly, remained as manpower adviser to the Stockton and Darlington Railway's 150th anniversary cavalcade, helped form Locomotion Enterprises which restored old steam engines.

Seven years later he was persuaded by John Habgood, then Bishop of Durham, to return full time to the Church. Nothing in the diocese of Durham deemed suitable for Jumbo's peculiar talents, he moved to Norfolk, and remained.

He was born in West Hartlepool, educated and nicknamed at King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland - whether for reasons of girth or thickness of skin we were never quite certain - met his wife Mavis, who survives him, on a troop ship returning from the Middle East.

"He became known as an outspoken preacher and a diligent, caring pastor and never ceased to be a plain speaking North countryman," said a lengthy obituary in the Telegraph. He was a very good bloke.