THE lady who sang No Regrets - or Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, or whatever the French alternative - was probably telling fibs in any language.

We all have them. I regret never travelling on the Stainmore Railway over the North Pennines, never having been to a full house Amateur Cup final - or any other sort - never learning the bagpipes.

I regret 11 o'clock on a winning night, regret never having turned professional, regret that time in 1968.

Just now, however, the greatest regret of all is that until two Sundays ago I'd never crossed the threshold of the Bolton Arms in Redmire, a pub that's close to paradise.

Redmire is set gloriously in Wensleydale, and by no means foreign territory. I formally opened the village hall there in 1976, re-opened it earlier this year, once even journeyed there on the footplate of a cement train and - let it shamefully now be admitted - fell asleep standing up.

(It was long before telecommunications technology had entrained up the Wensleydale branch. Village signalmen would keep themselves occupied by playing chess down the telephone with the next box down, rearing pheasants or - once or twice a day - by pulling a little lever. Had Ivor the Engine puffed past on his way to Grumbly Gasworks it would not in the least have been surprising.)

There are many good pubs in that delightful dale - not least the Kings Arms in Redmire itself and especially the time-warped Victoria at Worton - and none, instinct suggested, had undarkened doors.

Then, on the way to an afternoon church service nearby, we fell upon the Bolton Arms and realised that the best was last.

It's a square, stone built, vastly welcoming pub, closed for three years in the 1990s and taken over two years ago by Geoff and Beryl Stoker. Probably it helped that we were recognised as the village hall vanguard, though Geoff also remembered an earlier meeting.

It was in 1975 in the Holly Hill Inn at Richmond, the town where he was a polliss. "The Holly Hill was our inner office," he said, and recalled many a night shift rattling pub snecks around the western villages. These days, of course, Wensleydale's drinking classes are much more conscious of the time.

There's a square bar to one side, a small dining room to the other. The immaculately kept bar has a log-burning stove, lots of bright burnished brass, old photographs on the wall, and a couple of Yorkshire guide books on the shelves.

One of them calls the pub "cherubic", as in small but perfectly formed.

We never got to the dining room, both sittings fully booked - "it's been all hell and high water," said Geoff - and still it hardly seemed to matter. Pint of Black Sheep - there's John Smith's on hand pump, too - bag of crisps, listen a bit to the locals.

They included Joan Farrar, ever-ebullient former village hall secretary, and Clive Malpass, Vicar of Askrigg since 1982 but recently retired down dale. He was particularly looking forward to Christmas Eve - "the first time in 40 years I'll have been able to have a drink."

We'd have been entirely content, but then Geoff offered a little corner table in the bar - for services to Redmire - and we were no longer content, but ecstatic.

There were four main courses - beef, pork, chicken kiev and cod something or other, all £5.75. The pork was richly flavoured, the crackling so uniquely excellent that they could have sold it by the stone and restored the dales economy overnight. The beef was better still.

It fell from the joint and melted, mesmerically, in the mouth. It was proper beef, English beef, in the pink beef and its living had not been in vain.

The Yorkshires - pork two, beef one, or possibly gentlemen two, ladies one - were golden brown and fresh from the oven, the vegetables carefully cooked, the gravy's stock never higher, the portions huge. We still had puddings, of course.

There was spotted dick, jam roly poly, climactic custard and one or two other things as well. Had Two Way Family Favourites been on the wireless, or the Brighouse and Rastrick band played Thine Be The Glory out the back, it could hardly have been a more perfect Sunday lunch.

There are other places to go and people to see, of course. It could be several weeks before we're back, and that is greatly to be regretted.

l The Bolton Arms (01969 624336) is closed all day Monday and on Thursday lunchtime. In the winter, food is only available on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday lunchtime. There's easy access for the disabled; it's a wonderful pub.

MORE than almost anything these days, Binns department store in Darlington is renowned for its off-licence - 430 different bottle conditioned beers and in John Taylor, a manager so knowledgeable he could probably tell most of them apart.

What's Brewing, CAMRA's national newspaper, presently carries a full- bodied feature - seized upon by the company chairman on a visit to Darlington earlier this month.

He'd have enjoyed the beer bit, probably been less ecstatic about the description of the store as "on the face of it, a bog standard House of Fraser outpost".

We looked in the following day, a tasting by Stephen and Christine Gibbs from the Durham Brewery at Bowburn of their ten per cent abv Imperial Russian Stout, a bible-black beer - touch of the Tsar brush, perhaps - said officially to have a "velvety rich malt texture" and unofficially to be falling down water.

Both were music teachers in Sunderland before becoming skilled and innovative brewers in 1994. "I was just as enthusiastic about teaching the cello," said Christine. Though competition is stiff, the brewery burgeons - its Benedictus (8.5abv) Binns present best-seller, its Magus (3.8) among the best session beers in Britain.

Also in attendance was Mr Eric Smallwood from Middlesbrough, clinking homewards, and Mr Richard Jones from Darlington, whose Imperial Stout will never be drunk. He has another 241 different pint bottles, all unopened. As if not eccentricity enough, Mr Jones supports Darlington as well.

COOPERS restaurant - curious how so many places are called Coopers - is round the corner from Binns, in Post House Wynd. Martin Elliott, formerly at the Hall Garth Hotel at Coatham Mundeville, now runs it.

We looked in early doors, 9.30am, a bit too early for the mushroom soup of the day. (Even we addicts like to wait until the sun is over the yardarm.)

Instead we drank good strong coffee, shared a cold egg mayonnaise sandwich and a very tasty hot turkey and cranberry sauce one, watched as the place filled rapidly towards ten o'clock time with ladies of a certain age.

It is refreshingly civilised, service from an extensive and reasonably priced menu by chatty waitresses - one of them also extremely fetching. A novel idea, sandwiches can be upgraded to a round and a half for an extra 50p.

The biggest plus of all, The Boss thought, was that milk is from little jugs and not impenetrable plastic cartons.

Like the Bolton Arms at Redmire, it's a place which inexplicably had escaped earlier attention. Like the Bolton Arms, we shall undoubtedly be back.

... and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what was wrong with the man with a sponge in one ear and a jelly in the other.

He was a trifle deaf.

Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2001