A walk fron Warrenby, via Paddy's Hole and Noah's Ark, ends with a pub meal and some time to rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.

MUCH of the three mile walk from Warrenby to the sea end of the South Gare may be considered neither the scenic route nor the fragrant route.

It's richly rewarding, for all that, and with the prospect upon returning of lunch in a pub said in the Good Beer Guide to have an "excellent reputation" for food and spectacular views to the hills.

Warrenby's just this side of Redcar, so called because there was once rabbit farming in the area. There was a little wooden railway halt, too, gas lit to the end until British Rail ran out of shillings for the meter.

The Gare is a huge breakwater, leading to a lovely and wholly unexpected little harbour and to 99 commensurately sized fishermen's huts, painted any colour so long as it's Brunswick green - a leftover ICI job lot, perhaps - and with rules which still forbid women from sleeping there overnight.

Though there are bits of patio paving, the occasional door number, none of the £15 a year huts seems either customised or especially comfortable. If a young lady were to be found in breach of the bye laws, it might be for reasons of lassitude rather (shall we say) than of longing.

The Gare - and here we are indebted to the remarkable Vera Robinson, Redcar's 90-year-old historian - took 24 years to build, cost £219,074 12s 7d, used 3,900,000 tons of ironworks slag, 18,000 tons of cement and an awful lot of Irish navvies, billeted where the harbour now bobs.

For that reason, locals still know the harbour as Paddy's Hole.

Four special trains were laid on for the opening in 1888 by W H Smith - the First Lord of the Treasury, not (presumably) of the paper shop - in front of 2,000 guests and a procession of paddle steamers.

Afterwards, lest Eating Owt readers be getting hungry, 400 sat down to a banquet at the Royal Exchange in Middlesbrough.

The walk on one side is past Corus - nee British Steel, former Dorman Long - an overgrown chemistry set smelling like Redcar used to do in the days of the club trip. The shabbiest works engine that ever shunted slag maunders

mournfully behind the security fence, as if yearning for the Bluebell Line, instead.

On the other side of the road are Redcar golf club - The Boss swears there used to be a second clubhouse, for "artisans" - and, further on, marshland identified as a "Sensitive Environment Area".

Sensitive? It must be as tough as old roots to grow anything at all, so close to the industrial convolution.

It's splendid for all that - Seaton Carew barely a couple of miles over the estuary, lighthouse and lifeboat station still standing sentry, a sandy beach beneath the promontory and, atop it, a sad little floral tribute, simply spelling "Dad". The Boss was particularly taken by a hut on a coble. They'd named it Noah's Ark.

Vera records bird watchers, anglers, people watching the seals and, "on a fine day", that it is a wonderful place for a picnic.

Since it was looking black over Bill's mother's (and elsewhere), we hurried back to the car instead and headed three miles inland to the Half Moon at Lazenby, the CAMRA men's pub.

Lazenby's almost literally in the shadows of what were ICI Wilton's chimneys, though it's a pleasant little place and you'd never guess the neighbours.

The pub sign promises "traditional ales and fantastic staff", though the ales are £2.25 a pint and - worse yet - a glass of mineral water is £1.45.

The staff? Courteous, but a bit light on the fantastic.

The pub itself is internally very attractive - if a refurb then a very good one - save for the persistent attentions of a pesky fly. (Desperate Dan always seemed to be bothered by flies; without exception they were pesky.)

The menu was standard, the specials board undistinguished, the plentiful fisherman's pie (£7.95) perfectly OK in a catch-all sort of a way. The Boss had the chilli (£6.95) and was warm enough about that, too.

By then it was pouring, but it no longer mattered. Spring still in the step, Gare and back again.