Toon with a view

There were 12 choices, from which surgically may be removed all those said to appeal to young professionals and media types and also the Centurion Bar on the Central Station - nowhere near as impressive as its magnificently restored surroundings deserve.

Since the column is much too old for a night on the town, or Toon as Newcastle now seeks to re-brand itself, we had a convivial afternoon out instead, beginning at the Free Trade Inn on St Lawrence Road.

"A dump but a superbly situated dump, nonetheless," concludes The Observer. "Deliciously basic," says the Good Beer Guide.

THE Free Trade is all but in Byker, a couple of miles downstream from the city centre above the ever-developing quayside and with views towards the blinking, heart sinking Millennium Bridge.

Though the paint peels and the toilet appals, the lunchtime clientele are suited, suntanned and conspicuously reading The Guardian.

Quay workers? The best bet is that they were teachers playing nick.

The pub also boasts a free juke box, though the best sort of juke box is the one that's free to a good scrap yard.

The views are OK, though the taxi driver reckoned that they were planning to build apartments in front, as they have all along the river bank.

There are excellent beers from Mordues ("only £2.10" it said), from Hadrian and from the Wylam Brewery. Sandwiches are from the Denes Deli in Jesmond, said by The Observer to be "Newcastle's best sandwich emporium".

Barbecued chicken (£2) was strong on adornment, weak on chicken and may have been barbecued over a couple of Swan Vestas.

Doubtless it is true that man shall not live by bread alone but make the most of it. After a couple of pints, westwards to the Cluny.

THE Cluny bar is still wet behind the ears, but the area is fascinating. "Just up by that crane," directed the taxi driver, though the Quayside has more cranes than the entire continent of South America.

Beneath Byker Bridge, next to the celebrated City Farm, the area is now promoted as Ouseburn. England has a Great Ouse and a Little Ouse and probably quite a few assistant Ouses; this one's the Clarty Ouse.

Several long beached boats sit stranded by the mud flats, a walkway ambles amiably alongside, once bonded warehouses rise resurgent above. There's also a former railway tunnel chimney, like Shildon's only bigger, and a flight of fanciful pigeon crees.

We once knew someone quite famous who flew pigeons thereabouts, but memory denies his identity.

The Cluny, ground floor of a former whisky warehouse that has been converted to working studios, is said by The Observer to be a "peaceful riverside (!) retreat". Though only a handful were present it still took eight minutes to be served.

It is arty, youthful, uppishly well heeled. Musical evenings are called Cluny Tunes. The only problem with that is that anyone over 30 is presumed to be selling beer mats, or beach balls, and is therefore artlessly ignored.

There are four hand pumps, including the lordly Prince Bishop from the Durham Brewery. Partly because there wasn't time to wait, we decided against a second. It was time to go up the City Road.

THE Egypt Cottage was once next door to Tyne Tees Television; now it is all but subsumed by it. If not above its station, Tyne Tees is certainly tarted up.

The Rose and Crown, the broadcast boys' alternative televisual aid - it was the pub over the road - has been bulldozed in the name of progress but would probably have fallen into the river, anyway. A health club vaults in its place.

The Egypt Cottage, so called because the Eastern spice traders used to tie up at nearby moorings, is said by the Observer guide still to attract "the odd celebrity".

It is no way to describe Mr Paul Frost, fondly remembered, who was chatting at the bar with Ron Olsen, whom last we'd seen when Dennis Waterman made a film about West Auckland winning the World Cup.

Ron's now contemplating a series about the North-East's great unsolved crimes in which West's World Cup - someone pinched it - may again feature.

(The polliss know who did it, of course, they just can't prove it, nor unturn the precise stone beneath which the dear old pot is buried.)

Like the television studios, the pub has changed. It was impossible to identify the old photographs on the wall but nice to suppose that if they weren't of Wacky Jacky Haig and of Ug and Og and them, then they certainly should have been.

A notice regretted that the kitchen was closed; cask ales included Workie Ticket and Charles Wells' Bombardier.

It's also the bar, says The Observer, where Paula Yates met Michael Hutchence and where Bono played pool with Iggy Pop (or possibly pop with Iggy Pool.)

"You sup at the scene of musical history," it adds, but we didn't sup for long. These days there's no such a thing as a liquid lunch.

OTHER Observer recommendations in Newcastle include the Trent House near St James Park ("a soulful sanctuary with an overt multicultural policy"), Barluga in Grey Street ("a bar/restaurant with the feel of a gentlemen's club, serving high quality food") and Bob Trollops beneath the Tyne Bridge, a recent winner of the "Best Vegetarian Food" award - vegan sausage sandwiches particularly recommended.

IF not a dump, the John Bull in Alnwick is externally unprepossessing, too. It's in the Good Beer Guide, though - "small, cosy local in a row of terraced houses" - and deservedly so.

There are three or four weekly changing guests, piles of books with titles like "Build a better life by stealing office supplies" and "Cat's revenge: more than 101 uses for dead humans" and the Northumberland Gazette, too.

The column claimed it for the ever-growing bill of lading at the Ship in Middlestone Village. "Someone's been here already," they said. The things we do....

A LONG story, as recent columns have made clear, we have still been unable to discover if the Durham Ox in Beamish really did have the longest bar in England. (There is talk of the Beamish WMC chairman whose much in demand party piece was "Dan, Dan the sanitary man", but that's in tomorrow's Gadfly.)

Former Vaux Brewery managing director Frank Nicholson, who started stretching the Durham Ox's credibility, still insists that it was so.

The pub closed - road widening, he thinks - in the sixties. "My father, who delighted in the story, arranged that Beamish Museum should have the bar, but before it could be taken there the bar just vanished, never to be seen again."

Frank's theory is that it was sawed in twain, and that two pubs now have half a beast. The Ox tale may wag again next week.

and finally...

more observations next week - the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a cat which ate an unripe gooseberry.

A sourpuss, of course.

Published: 26/03/2002