Thai society

THE "Barnard Castle and Richmond" ordnance survey map, about the price of two pints of premium lager but altogether better for the constitution, is somewhat misleading for all that. Its arms-width spread is from Scotch Corner to the windy end of Weardale and from Crackpot to Crook and Willington, its microdot detail embracing places like Knotts Plantation and Burfoot Leazes, High Faggergill, God's Bridge and Morton Tinmouth.

Of Morton Tinmouth, more shortly.

We've been using the map quite a lot recently, and readers have taken these Spring in the step excursions happily in their stride.

The latest, with both an excellent pub meal and an unexpected meeting at its conclusion, began and ended in the village of Ingleton - eight or nine miles west of Darlington, or south of Bishop Auckland.

Maybe the walk was eight miles, mostly along vernal roads which tyres rarely traverse, firstly to the whitewashed hamlet of Hilton which The Boss inexplicably thought looked rather Roman.

Unspoiled little spot, it had a telephone box, post box and corrugated iron bus shelter but not so much as a bed and breakfast, which seemed a shame because they could have called it the Hilton Hotel.

From there eastwards towards Morton Tinmouth, up the public footpath to West Leaside Farm - friendly owners, garrulous geese - and around the oil-rich rape fields towards Hindberry Farm and Bolam, where the road heads south to Morton Tinmouth and the views - as a cartographer might say - invite mastery of all that's surveyed.

There should also have been a finger post but it had been broken off, probably stolen - a Morton Tinmouth, no less, a Rembrandt among road signs.

Just when it seemed that the place would comprise precisely two farms, Morton Tinmouth East and West, we walked past a third, called Jomatt Montbeliarde.

Was it an anagram, or an African chief, or what? How do they fit Jomatt Montbeliarde, Morton Tinmouth (and all the rest of it) onto an envelope and how the resultant envelope into the pillar box? What happens if Beliarde goes belly up?

From there, at any rate, through woods incomparably described by Mr Edward Lear as trulgy to the village of Killerby - where literally we had to wait for the cows to come home - and back by some one and a quarter inches to the mile miracle not only on the stroke of opening time to the Black Horse in Ingleton but at the moment that Mr Allan Barkas and his wife Anne were arriving from the opposite direction.

Allan runs a convenience store in St Helen's Auckland but is chairman of Easington Colliery FC, 30 miles away. Anne's also on the committee, shares the driving, makes the grub and, since she's a youth training professional, even gave some end of season team talks.

It didn't work, they finished seriously second bottom. For reasons which need not concern non-Northern League people, it should be stressed that the meeting was coincidental.

The Black Horse is small and friendly, Jennings Cumberland ale and Black Sheep bitter both well kept, food franchised to a 67-year-old, pint-quaffing Bangkok lass called Oie Shaw who's worked at several pubs in the Darlington area - Thai'd houses, as it were - and is renowned for both idiosyncrasy and authenticity.

A little poem on the wall notes in the first line that it's not Burger King and in the last - paraphrased, understand - that if they complain they don't get any damn thing.

It's signed by the chef; Oie's will be Oie's.

We ate in the informal little dining room beneath a picture of the Colosseum, or Penshaw Monument, or something, starting with something with a fancy name but which was Thai fried bread with spicy minced pork and a sweet chilli pouring sauce.

Fried bread's pretty irresistible at the worst of times, of course, but this was an exquisite combination, the only problem that the sauce was so potent it made the lips turn white. (Mussels have the same difficulty, only in green.)

The Boss was no less ecstatic about her starter, Thai vegetables in a light and buoyant tempura batter, a steal at less than £4.

Many of the main courses are stir fried - stir crazy, it might almost be said - though the ingredients are sourced daily, spiced expertly, served abundantly and usually come in at no more than £8 or so, including rice.

The duck having flown, we enjoyed a moreish chicken with garlic and black pepper, The Boss a dish of mixed sea food with ginger. "Brilliant," she said.

Allan had visibly cheered, too. "Just nine weeks to the pre-season friendlies," he said - a pub, whatever the scale, that deserves firmly to be on the map.

*The Black Horse, Ingleton, Co Durham (01325 730374). Thai meals from 7pm Wednesday to Saturday, plus traditional Sunday lunch.

LAST week's column eyed pie, and critically. That very afternoon at the Station in Bishop Auckland there was actually a pie with steak baked into it, like the four and twenty blackbirds, rather than with pastry added like a silly sun hat.

The size of half a cart wheel, had it not been up to the oxters in gravy before ever leaving the kitchen, it would have been better still.

On the next table, closely adjoining, they not only talked of illness - as people so love to do - but seemed between them to have experience of every ward, department and clinical procedure at Bishop General.

Finally, the conversation turned to evenings out. "Remember that Christmas do," said one of the group, "the one where the chap dropped dead at the table..."

If we are to have smoke free pubs and restaurants, which happily appear imminent, might not discussing illnesses be similarly proscribed? Sickness can damage your health.

MUCH rejoicing on Saturday night at the Wok Inn at Brandon, near Durham, where owner Nick Wool - aka the Wok Gooner - celebrated in style Arsenal's extraordinary, unbeaten season.

As the column reported on April 13, Nick and his wife Carrie - formerly Essex, nee Orient - have converted the former Black Diamond pub into a spanking good restaurant and takeaway.

Nick's just back from a trip to China and Hong Kong, watched the title- clinching game against Spurs from a massage parlour - "the proper type, where you got nothing but massages" - bought a complete Arsenal kit ("numbered and named shirt, shorts and socks") for around £3.50.

"It makes you think," he says, "doesn't it?"

REAL ales from Neptune to Knee Knocker and from Bank Top Flat Cap to Abbot's Winning Clock feature in the "mini" food and beer festival starting at the Daleside Arms in Croxdale - between Spennymoor and Durham - next week.

Landlord Michael Patterson plans at least 14 different ales over the five-day festival - starting on Wednesday May 26 - plus a daily changing dish of the day for £3.95.

The Saturday will be steak pie day. "I hope we can do it rather better than some of our neighbours," he says, another with a crusty eye on last week's column.

The festival will from 3-11pm Wednesday to Friday, 12-11pm on Saturday and 12-5pm on Sunday.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if knew how to catch a unique rabbit.

Unique up on it, of course.