Nose to the grindstone

LAST Wednesday marked the 145th anniversary of Blondin crossing the Niagara Falls on a tightrope, the 110th anniversary of the opening of Tower Bridge and the 68th of the publication of Gone With the Wind.

Lena Horne, sometime sultry singer, was 87, M J K Smith - bespectacled former England cricket captain and rugby international - was 71 and Ralf Schumacher, sibling motor racing driver, 29.

For reasons which can only be imagined, it also appeared to be a big night in the adjacent villages of Tursdale and Metal Bridge, marooned in mid-Durham.

Wednesday is usually the ghost shift, the night when the second chef gets first go and the landlord slopes off to the pictures. Here it was like all their birthdays had come at once.

Metal Bridge, imaginatively so named because the London to Edinburgh railway line spans the village street by means of a ferrous crossing, has a pub called the Poacher's Pocket (formerly the Metal Bridge Inn.) At 7.15pm, there must have been 30 cars outside.

Across the tracks in Tursdale, the Old Mill had at least as many and still they kept coming, so effortlessly subsumed into that large and elderly building that, like the Magic Porridge Pot, it seemed never to get any fuller. (The Magic Porridge Pot never seemed to get any emptier, memory suggests, but readers will doubtless understand the analogy.)

At weekends, apparently, it's different. "You sometimes see people queuing outside to get in," said the chap who suggested that the Old Mill might offer grist - grist again - to the ever turning column.

Flour power, or what?

Such popularity can mean one of just two things: either that the good folk of County Durham don't know caviar from a cow pat - a thought impossible to entertain - or that the place must be doing something right.

There were two or three fairly big parties, all dining. There were lads in best jeans, lasses in posh frocks and one young lady who seemed hardly be wearing a frock at all, a fashion statement to which her paramour paid earnestly scant attention.

Once it was a linen mill, for 70 years after that the Tursdale and Metal Bridge Workmen's Club, latterly run by a chap called Billy Swaddle who answered to Brown Ale Billy.

Now it's owned by Key Inns, who also have the Hamilton Russell Arms - equally busy, by all accounts - at Thorpe Thewles, near Stockton.

A central bar, Courage Directors and Theakston's bitter on hand pump, serves several areas, a balcony above and large side rooms. Staff criss-cross ceaselessly, a bit reminiscent of the old "change" pulleys at the Co-op.

The menu is on blackboards by the bar, specials including lamb ravioli with a three cheese sauce, pork fillet marinaded with creme fraiche, chives and orange and (bravely) supreme of chicken stuffed with venison.

We sat on the balcony, furnished with paintings and wall hangings and the sort of jars in which Ali Baba planned his thievery, resisting the temptation to do with prawn crackers - The Boss had the oriental seafood special - what we did with compressed bus tickets and rubber band catties in the one and threepennies at Shildon Hippodrome.

We began with haddock rarebit, a dish of smoked fish, bland cheese, a few slices of tomato but no toast. The Boss, who is Welsh and thus knows her rarebit, insisted that toast should be an integral part, a view with which Chambers Dictionary sensibly agrees.

Chambers, incidentally, also takes the view that the correct term is "rabbit", so named (says The Boss) because the poor Welsh peasantry didn't even have bunny money. "Rarebit", says Chambers, is used only by wiseacres.

She started with whitebait with an indeterminate but vaguely horseradishy dip, followed by the spicy seafood concoction in a syrup which threatened to overwhelm it at high tide.

The steak and kidney pudding was fine and grand, save for the fact that it came swimming in gravy, thus forcing the abandonment of Plan B, or rather Plan HP, without which no self-respecting steak and kidney pudding should ever be complete.

As with all similar dishes, vegetables are already plated and (in the event) carefully cooked. It was particularly good to have simply boiled potatoes, a welcome change from chips.

Unusually, we both had puddings and both regretted it - she (brandy snap basket) because of eye and belly syndrome, we (coconut ice cream) because it was pretty indifferent ice cream.

Run of the Old Mill? Well, the sailing would also be plainer if the place had better air conditioning, or ceiling fans. Pity the poor, perspiring waiting staff who did very well to stand the heat when out of the kitchen.

It would also benefit from greater attention to detail - from coasters, from finger bowls (and spoons) with digital dishes like the oriental seafood and (shreds of last week's column) from napkins that couldn't be blown apart by an out of puff hamster.

The bill, three courses each and one cup of "very weak" coffee, was around £35. We headed homewards to celebrate diversity.

l Tursdale and Metal Bridge are between the Bowburn junction of the A1(M) and the Thinford roundabout of the A167. The Old Mill serves food all day and also has eight hotel bedrooms.

LAST week's column was mistaken to suppose that the Spotted Dog at High Coniscliffe, near Darlington, is the region's first completely no-smoking pub/restaurant. That happy distinction, as we have reported before, probably belongs to the Lambton Arms at Eighton Banks, near Gateshead.

SELF-proclaimed as "the place for fun, fashion and flirting", Yates's have sent details of their new menu. It's being "rolled out" - among the English language's most grating phrases - at all 131 bars.

Delights include sesame chicken goujons with hoisin sauce, garlic ciabatta bites, "barbecue chicken melt stack" and tomato, mozarella and olive burger.

We went to Yates's in Darlington. Not only was there no flirting, no fashion and precious little fun but there were none of the new dishes, either. Taylor's perfect pie shop is happily just a few doors up the street. We rolled out that way instead.

PORT Mulgrave is dormant long, though once it had a buoyant ironstone trade. Ironmasters built homes in Long Row and Short Row, even Sunny Row, considered superior for the day and each with a pig sty en suite.

By 1930, however, the tide had turned irredeemably. The Royal Engineers blew up the breakwater during the war, lest Jerry suppose he might be landing on his feet.

It's between Saltburn and Whitby. We'd walked along the cliff top Cleveland Way from Staithes, a bold venture for the giddy headed, delighted as the rain grew heavier - any storm in a port - to find the Ship Inn not just open but offering all day food and a fire which blazed brightly. The fire seemed a bit over the top, in truth. It was a week back Saturday; flaming June.

It's a simple, unfussy, little changing pub with a comforting pint of draught Bass, a short bar menu topped by "Aunt Nell's home made soup" and lots of pubby aphorisms over the bar.

You know the sort of thing - "Free beer tomorrow", "No bloody swearing" and, slightly more subtle, "In God we trust, everyone else pays cash."

Aunt Nell is the landlady, the kitchen in the hands of a strapping young man with a pleasant manner and time on his hands. The soup, by whatever hand, was thick, generous, extremely tasty and £2.30 a bowl. The chips were first rate, the fish a little flat (if a cod may be said so to be), though the batter was OK.

With the Boss's entirely acceptable mushroom omelette, the bill for two failed to reach £15. Thence back to Staithes, where the Endeavour restaurant - evenings and bookings only - sails still on a tide of critical acclaim. Another try at the Endeavour ere long.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew how to stuff a parrot.

With polyfilla, of course.

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