Breathing fire back into the Dragon

Its effect is particularly spectacular because visitors are able to walk around the back - "the cataract is thrown forward in such a manner that a good carriage road might be made behind the Fall," claimed a promotional leaflet in 1886.

The Great Blondin crossed the Falls on a tightrope, stopping (it's said) only to knock up an omelette half way over; Turner painted them, Wordsworth visited them, Kevin Costner - or someone his spit double - swam beneath them in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

It's 100 feet, a fair drop as we say of the Strongarm in the Britannia.

On and off for over a century, there has also been an annual brass band contest in the natural arena there. That same 1886 poster promised "about £80" in prize money - £48 3s for bands, £31 10s for choral societies - and trains from all over the north to witness it.

"At the end of the contest an efficient band will play for dancing," added the poster, presumably without reflection on the remainder of the musicians.

Whether the Green Dragon always danced to Hardraw's tumultuous tune is debatable: after a dispute with the licensee in the 1980s, the contest was held in the less euphonic surroundings of Hawes auction mart car park. The last owner went out of business.

The bigger they come, the harder they falls.

Hardraw, sometimes spelt Hardrow, is a mile or two above Hawes, in upper Wensleydale. Since December, the pub has been run by Mark Thompson who for four years successfully and idiosyncratically operated the Kings Arms in Reeth. "There was too much of the 1970s about it. It needs to become a proper Yorkshire pub again," he says.

He had left Reeth in the summer, planned to spend a year travelling and painting in India, saw the 15 acre Hardraw site for sale and decided to splash out.

We looked in two Saturdays ago, just dark - three real ales, mind-your-head beams, handsome blaze in a vast black Yorkshire range but still a bit chilly around the extremities.

The old finger boards still indicate the Falls, another sign announces that much work is being undertaken and asks for constructive comments.

Live music was promised, which The Boss took to be the leather-clad bunch in the corner, one of whom sported a T-shirt with the legend "Into the shadow of the valley of death".

Happily, it proved not to be the case. The turn was Becky Mills, an attractive blonde who began with a Paul Simon song and thereafter could hardly go wrong.

Apart from a sound looking and inexpensive pub menu - Mark wants to make it still simpler - reading matter included the Spectator, the New Statesman, Private Eye and the dear old D&S Times.

The Boss had hoped for mussels in lemon and wine sauce and was so disappointed at their unavailability she passed on starters; the black pudding with "frizzy salad" was substantial and very tasty.

Chicken and ham pie was a bit burned around the edges but otherwise fine, The Boss's chilli welcome on a cold night. Good chips.

The wind howled out the front, the Falls inaudible somewhere out the back. The landlord tapped his feet to Becky Mills' music, breathing fire back into the Dragon.

l Hardraw Falls (admission £1) is open all daylight licensing hours. The revived brass band contest, sponsored by the Black Sheep Brewery, will take place on Sunday, September 8. A folk festival is planned for the last week of July.

WHIPPING up an omelette over Hardraw Falls was as naught to Jean Francois Gravelot, otherwise the Great Blondin. His speciality - 167ft high, 1060ft across - was Niagara.

Blondin first traversed the river on a three inch diameter tightrope in 1859, completing the crossing in 20 minutes.

When it all became a bit like falling off a - well, you know - he took to carrying his manager across piggy-back and, on another occasion, whilst pushing a wheelbarrow. (His manager was elsewhere.)

He died, aged 73, in 1893 - peacefully in his sleep.

WHILST we experienced a Hardraw night, the merry crew at the Ship Inn in Middlestone Village were auctioning their first lot of pub memorabilia - £560.50p for the Butterwick Hospice in Bishop Auckland.

It included the nozzle from a fireman's hose pipe, sold for £30. "People give you all sorts," says Liz Snaith, the landlady.

The Ship, runner-up in CAMRA's national Pub of the Year competition, has all hands on deck trying to visit all 5000 Good Beer Guide pubs in 2002. The total to date is just 516, another auction planned during the beer festival in May. "One chap came back from Portsmouth with a pub sign, a huge great thing. I don't know how he got it into his car," says Liz.

The column's own humble efforts have added the New Inn at Clitheroe - the Backtrack column has done the Clitheroe Kid stuff - in Lancashire. For trans-Pennine travellers, one of the homeliest and most pleasant pubs in Christendom.

A BIT beyond our usual compass, responses to last week's column on the Harbour Refuge - alias the Pot House - in Hartlepool old town included an e-mail from a 56-year-old former Hartlepool polliss now working in Iran.

Though he asks anonymity, he was PC 1545, known (for reasons which will not need explaining) as Quarter to Four.

Darlington lad originally, he recalls the York Caf and the Broadway Caf, the chap who sold roast chestnuts opposite the Market Tavern and the first hot drinks machine he ever saw - "prohibitively expensive" at 6d a cup when tea was just fourpence in the clippies' canteen round the corner.

He'd also worked at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where sundry Taliban are now uncomfortably relocated. Twelve Brits were on the job, three - none of whom had previously met - from Darlington.

As PC Quarter to Four observes, it is sometimes a very small world indeed.

THE Pot House piece also suggested that the pub's facade - though certainly not its interior - had been spoiled ("branded like a cow's backside") by Vaux Brewery.

Amiably, as ever, former Vaux managing director Frank Nicholson lodges an objection - "Shame on you, and particularly for speaking ill of the dead".

The pub, coincidentally, was one of the first Frank visited after joining Vaux - a particularly vivid memory because the licensee's dog went for him.

"Obviously," he adds, "the dog felt the same as you."

SINCE last week's column also mentioned Beamish, Frank also recalls the dear old Black Horse at Red Row - "as well as being our smallest pub, the last Vaux house to have outside loos" - and the Durham Ox with (he says) the longest bar in England.

Frank wonders what happened to it; we - shame, again - had never heard of it. Any memories?

MUCH garlanded already, the small but perfectly formed Clow Beck House Hotel at Croft-on-Tees, near Darlington, finds itself in the final three of the English Tourist Board's "Excellent in England" awards - to be announced, of course, on St George's Day.

Already they're Yorkshire champions in the residential category. The breakfasts would win gold stars, too. "We were absolutely amazed to win the regional title; to make the final three is unbelievable," says David Armstrong, the co-owner.

The awards do is at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, £80 a head. This England, the Armstrongs get one free ticket and must pay for the other.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a very old Smartie.

A Smartefact, of course.

Published: Tuesday, March 12, 2002