Save for the speed and the absence of a bloke with lugubrious hat and furled umbrella, our return journeys from holiday resemble nothing more greatly than a cortege, the more mournful as homeward bounds.

It's the Boss, principally - not so much that she dislikes home as the workload, the washing and the seven and a half day week which forever it carries on its back.

Worse, the boys had been left home alone. The house resembled the South American jungle, in that whilst it was clearly still standing, further exploration should only have been undertaken with extreme trepidation and, preferably, not before a good lunch.

For all those reasons we stopped first at the Shoulder of Mutton in Middleton Tyas - a Shoulder, as it were, to cry on.

Middleton Tyas is where we live, turn eastwards at Scotch Corner, though it was a little over two years since last we'd crossed the pub's threshold.

This is a reflection neither on the Shoulder nor of a visitation from the Rechabbites, rather of the fact that so many days and nights are spent in other hostelries throughout the North-East that - for one of us, at least - home is where heart and hearth rug are.

For similar reasons involving too much of a good thing, the column never imbibes at home either - or didn't until after a particularly dispiriting parents' night when Senior Son (as The Boss is given to calling him - finally drove his dad to drink.

They met us there, the big 'un reduced to orange juice and a cheese and tomato toastie after a big breakfast at Barton Lorry Park on his way home from "clubbing" - as apparently the pernicious pastime is called - in Middlesbrough.

The little 'un had used parental absence to have his hair cut, or rather surgically removed and with a Massey Ferguson scalpel. "It makes me look hard," he said.

They'd not been in the top house for a while, either. "Are these your sons or your minders?" asked Grace, the ever-present barmaid.

It may not be said that absence makes the heart grow fonder - since we've always liked the place - but the Shoulder remains a first class village pub.

Andy and Liz Kelsall took over four years ago, and sensibly changed very little. The "light lunch" board - light as in pretty fantastic, by no means lightweight - offers nothing over £6.95, an unchanging selection which includes the consistently best short crust steak and kidney pie in these combined counties.

The vegetable soup (£2.50) was hot, thick and clearly home made, the pie (£5.95) as good as ever, chips and vegetables well cooked and separately presented.

The big 'un, who has held the power of surprise ever since the time as a tot that he fed a £20 note to a passing cow, surpassed himself by announcing that he'd like Professor Hawking's Brief History of Time for his 21st birthday.

The Boss pointed out that some of the nation's finest minds still have no idea what the good professor is banging on about. "So they do a children's version?" the big 'un asked.

The Boss's generous salmon with prawns in a cream, and brandy sauce (£6.95; twice that in Dorset) was accompanied by several comforting glasses of red wine; well kept real ales embraced Courage Directors and both Tetley's bitter and Imperial, the second of which we'd not seen in cask version for years.

Home's at the bottom of the village, about 600 yards away. After the Shoulder, it was downhill all the way.

AT the much garlanded Ship Inn in Middlestone Village, near Spennymoor, it's still all hands on deck in the bid to visit all 5,000 Good Beer Guide pubs during 2002 - so naturally we weighed anchor whilst in Dorset.

Ports of call included the Bottle in Marshwood, a very pleasant place which sells organic food and beer - even organic cola - and which recently hosted the British nettle eating championship.

The winner consumed 76ft of them - though enough remain, goodness knows, in Dorset's higgledy-piggledy hedgerows - and may have been encouraged by a poem on the wall which points out that whilst stroking a nettle can hurt like hell, grasping it (death, where is thy sting) is painless.

In youthful parlance, it's even possible that stinging rhymed with minging.

All went well until the landlord and one of his customers, both of them former truckers, started slagging off Northallerton. Since the column is very fond of Northallerton, we nearly came to blows. There'll be no genetic modification here, either.

Back on the Great North Road again, we returned to the Little Bistro - alongside the southbound A1 beyond Leeming Bar.

Two weeks ago, it may be recalled, breakfast had been thwarted because the power had packed up. Now, metaphorically at any rate, they were cooking on gas.

(Goodness knows who talked the English language into accepting that unsolicited testimonial, but like the almost obscure Mr Therm he deserves a huge rebate from the Gas Board.)

Independently owned, the Little Bistro was originally a truckers' stop, and remains popular with those lights of the road. Thus are we able to report that whilst the real man's "Big breakfast" was a good value £4.95, the smaller breakfast (£4.25) was addressed within earshot as the "girlies' breakfast."

This must not be construed as sexism, merely journalism, though a proper journalist would have noted the difference between the two. Extra baked beans, probably.

The Boss - Atta-girlie - ordered a bacon sandwich and enjoyed it. The big breakfast was not only a model of its kind, but established some sort of all-comers record by arriving within 90 seconds.

The three connected rooms were all well filled. We had visions of a small army of early-shift elves hammering out all day breakfasts 15 to the dozen.

There's table service, unusually good coffee willingly refilled from the pot, other things like newspapers and wine gums for sale. Stop.

Previous visits to the Old Manor House in West Auckland have suggested much cause for enthusiasm; Sunday lunch - for which someone else paid - was therefore a particular disappointment.

Most of it was OK in a six days shalt thou labour sort of a way, though the Yorkshire puddings might have come from a well-used kindergarten soft play area, the crackling was clueless - despite being specially requested - and too much was simply not available.

Even the little shelf which formerly held copies of The Beano, merely offered mirthless editions of Sunday Times and Observer.

Two courses are £9.50, three courses £12.50. Sic transit gloria, as probably they say in West Auckland.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a dinosaur which wades around in the mud.

A brown-toe-saurus, of course.

Published: 16/07/2002