The column samples seafood at Seaton Carew before visiting the fascinating industrial landscape of Cockfield Fell.

ONE of the proper restaurant critics was asked in a Sunday magazine questionnaire the other weekend how many times he'd suffered food poisoning in the selfless line of duty.

Three or four, he supposed, and clearly must have had a pretty unfortunate shift.

The only occasion on which the column has been seriously ill used - proper poorly, as my dear old dad used to say - was after eating woof in a restaurant in Scarborough, thus giving new meaning to the phrase about woof with the smooth.

Woof, despite its canine connotations, is a Yorkshire term for the cat fish. It's possibly because of that bad-in-bed experience that I've not been keen on fish - or cats, for that matter - ever since.

There are times when a man has to do what a man has to do, however, and last Thursday night we not only ate in a fish restaurant but a fish restaurant in what the king's new clothiers meretriciously insist we now call the Tees Valley.

It should have been Wednesday, but the five o'clock from Kings Cross was 95 minutes late into Darlington - telecommunications difficulties, they said, another term for signal failure.

The Ocean in Hartlepool - Seaton Carew sea front, strictly - graciously accepted the very late cancellation. The following evening's progress along A19 and A689 was little more electric; Britain may be coming to a standstill.

Hartlepool has been in the news for other reasons, too, of course. Just that afternoon the local Conservative leader had been asked if they'd any chance of winning the by-election - "No," he said, and won marks for honesty instead - while another report claimed that Hartlepool folk slept better than any others in the country. (In your dreams...)

Launched by the local lifeboat last back end, the Ocean is part of the Staincliffe Hotel, owned by the amiable Mark Jones. We were guests at the opening, promised some time to return. Mark wasn't about, probably gone fishing.

Though the night was grey and wet, The Boss (as she is prone to do) suggested that there was enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers. It must have been the cabin boy.

A succession of joggers pounded down the pluvial promenade - running for election, perhaps - a stretch limo slipped into the dusk. Perhaps it contained the Hartlepool Conservative party, with a couple of spare seats for floating voters.

Huntcliff at Saltburn could just be discerned to the south, the hanging Headland to the north.

That's the background, anyway, though regulars will long have realised that she's the fish wife and I the meat loaf around here, opposites attracting.

As opposed to the great shoals of freeloaders at the opening, the place was almost deserted and remained so. It would be nice to think that this was a protest at the piped music. Irritating at best, asinine at worst, it included something consisting almost entirely of whoops, the sort of noise we emitted when playing cowboys and Indians, short trousered in Shildon.

Old tune, maybe even a stuck record, but this was music to slit your wrists by. What's wrong with the Marske Fishermen's Choir?

The menu, including a seven seas specials board, is almost entirely piscine. Black pudding makes a special guest appearance to complement a scallops starter, a chicken is off scratch somewhere, a saltmarsh lamb dish, a risotto.

The food seemed pretty good, a place with the sensible belief in doing simple things well, though the experience may not be said to have been crest of the wave, not (as it were) swell.

The soup offered mussels, a couple of scallops and salmon in a stock that was, well, fishy. Likewise the silver hake. They liked their hake in Wales, said The Boss.

It came nicely presented with savoy cabbage and smoky bacon. We fell upon the smoky bacon joyously, like the prodigal son all forgiven. How much more rapturous the reception had a winged messenger arrived bearing a Morrell's pork pie from the town.

She'd started with steamed Shetland mussels in a celery and cider sauce, followed by red snapper (does a red snapper snap?) with black olives, cherry tomatoes and roasted lemon - "interesting flavours, nice combinations." The vegetables were carefully cooked, the service satisfactory.

From a list of five home made puddings, the sticky toffee was particularly good. The coffee was too expensive. With a bottle of water and a couple of pints of Roughwith, the bill almost reached £60.

Fish merchanting concluded, we left Hartlepool to its uniquely blessed rest.

* Ocean seafood restaurant, The Cliff, Seaton Carew, Hartlepool (01429 264301.) Open seven lunchtimes and evenings, adapted for the disabled.

A SULTRY afternoon quickie at the George and Dragon in Heighington reveals that among all the B beers - Black Sheep, Bombardier, Boddington's Bitter - is a predictably lively pint called Love Muscle, made by the North Yorkshire Brewing Company at Pinchinthorpe, near Guisborough. As might also be expected, it's organic.

COCKFIELD Fell is fascinating, under-explored and just now rather clarty. Built in 1830, part of the Haggerleases branch viaduct extraordinarily still stands. Raspberries offer sustenance; rabbits, too, to those with a shotgun licence.

Officially an Ancient Monument, No 111 memory suggests, it's crossed by paths, indicated at the road end by the sort of carved stiles and way markers of which Durham County Council has become extraordinarily and intricately fond.

There may even be a whole chisel of wood carvers - is that the collective noun? - chipping away in one of the subterranean squints of County Hall.

One such stile is covered with musical notes, and with a hand holding an open hymn book. Perhaps it is in recognition of Cockfield Band, legendarily just buggering about, more likely a tribute to Cockfield Male Voice Choir, led for more than 50 years by the valiant Mr Edwin Coates.

We spent a couple of evening hours up there - "one of the most important early industrial landscapes in Britain," says the information board - then headed down a couple of miles to the Brown Jug at Evenwood Gate, on the road from Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle.

It was a first visit for 30 years, when the Jug was a little two roomed pub with a deserved reputation for good food but an owner who endangered it by emerging from the heat of the kitchen in his vest.

Now it's impressively modernised, set according to one of the CAMRA newsletters to become a "real ale haven" and with the possibility of a microbrewery out the back.

On this occasion just one hand pump was working and four tables occupied, on two of which diners were smoking. We headed instead for the village chippy at Gainford, arrived at a minute past nine and discovered yet again that it has a *!!!****!!* nine o'clock watershed.

As they say in other circumstances, fell wrong.

ALAN Cooper in Darlington rings to recommend the Blue Lion at East Witton, much lauded elsewhere and said to be a favourite haunt of the heir to the throne when sneaking about Wensleydale. HRH was absent. "We had to make do instead," says Alan, "with the dulcet tones of Mr William Hague".

LAST week's column on the Spotted Dog at High Conisclffe, near Darlington, described something called "escabache of sardines." Bill Taylor, Bishop lad originally, points out that the correct word is "escabeche" - "a Provencal and south western preparation of small fish" - and even has accents on his keyboard, acutely to place one over the second "e".

... and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's big and hairy and used to fly at twice the speed of sound.

King Kongcord, of course.