HOLIDAYS are great; you read the queerest things. Some lapse languorously into Beano or to Bunty, others to novels long remaindered. We, in absence, have been reading the chess column of the Daily Telegraph.

Thus can we not only offer the second-hand disclosure that the new Lib Dem MP for Argyll and Bute has represented Scotland at chess and likely to be grand master of all he surveys, but that the outstanding chess player in parliamentary history was probably Marmaduke Wyvill, MP for Richmond in the late 19th century.

There was a Wyvill Arms at Constable Burton, almost on the way home. A visit, en passant, seemed in order.

Constable Burton is on the main road between Bedale and Leyburn, and still the Wyvills' bailiwick. About 20 years ago, someone in the North Yorkshire constabulary had a sense of humour and the local beat officer was called Constable Burton, too.

Those, of course, were the happy days when PC stood only for polliss. Now the P is for pusillanimous and the C, quite probably, for castration.

It's a splendid pub, a little quirky - all the better for that - with a lovely, fragrant beer garden. On the bar sit 32 rather elegant chess pieces and on the shelves the Encyclopaedia of Chess.

"Wyvill possessed a fine appreciation of the English opening and the Sicilian defence" it discloses, terms doubtless understood by pub landlord Nigel Stevens, who played chess for Durham County.

Funnily enough, however, he'd no idea of old Marmaduke's prowess - or his entry in the encyclopaedia - until the column told him.

The still greater surprise was that a table in the bar was covered with party linen and overflowing with old prints - including one of that unctuous American advertising slogan Desiderata which talks of going placidly and makes The Boss want to scream.

Another table was piled equally high with old books and back copies of PUBusiness, a magazine with an inordinate number of adverts for meretriciously frozen food.

At any moment we expected someone to emerge from the back and announce: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please welcome Father Christmas."

Prints remaining on the wall included much of a military or a motor cycling nature; near the gent's was a framed chef's jacket from La Gavroche, with the name K Wigglesworth embroidered beneath the left pocket.

La Gavroche, it should be explained, is vastly rated by the cognoscenti and readers of colour magazines - not the sort of establishment which allows staff to identify themselves in such a way if, in brackets, it would add "Washing up supervisor."

K Wigglesworth, at any rate, sounded more like one of the motor bikers.

There's a separate lunchtime menu and specials, too, from which The Boss chose the mussels - can ducks swim, or crustaceans pass their shell-by - and we an absolutely first rate chicken soup (£2.75) scattered with sweetcorn and swirled significantly.

It was the sort of soup that might comfortably have constituted a main meal, or fed the First Bedale Cubs. Other "lighter meals", almost all under a fiver, included Mediterranean risotto, scrambled egg and smoked salmon (£3.75) and poached egg and bacon salad.

We followed for £5.75 with duck leg - crisp skin, tender flesh - with a "pear and ginger sauce" but wondered incorrigibly if a crucial comma might not have been omitted.

Certainly the sauce was ginger. There was also a pear which, by virtue of a consummated relationship with the sauce, was gingery also. Whether the sauce was, strictly speaking, pear and ginger or whether the menu should have read "pear, and ginger sauce" we were unable to discern.

(It is for such critical cack-handedness that the column fails so consistently to win any of the food writing awards so generously distilled by Messrs Glenfiddich.)

Four vegetables in a huge bowl were ample, fresh and crisply cooked; the chips, though perfectly OK, may have begun life as a quarter page advert in PUBusiness. The Boss, reluctantly homeward, rated the mushroom and spinach lasagne ("clearly home made") highly.

There was quiet music, three real ales, service principally by a chirpy Spanish gentleman called Jose who talked a lot to the customers and, when unable to, talked to himself instead.

They're proud of their puddings, too, but reality for once ruled out afters thoughts. The bill for two courses with coffee was £20.20 - most definitely one to come home for.

l Wyvill Arms, Constable Burton, near Bedale (01677 450581.) Open seven days, bar and restaurant meals in the evening. OK for the disabled.

THE holiday, in truth, had got off to a flier as well - barely miles down the road and in for breakfast at Motel Leeming.

Carl Les, the ebullient owner, had enjoyed a landslide in the county council - conscientious Conservative candidate in William Hague's home patch - but, the night before we set off, suffered a flood as well.

Two inches of rain had dropped in under two hours. "Sorry for any inconveinence," said the hastily misprinted notices. It was the only flaw.

Carl, whose Polish dad opened Jock's Caf at Leeming Bar after the war, is particularly proud that almost everything he serves is freshly sourced locally.

A vast, 10-item breakfast offered the best early start in years, the bacon and the boisterous black pudding particularly admirable. Perfect for a long journey, it's called the Ten out of Ten Breakfast - and full marks, undoubtedly.

THE splendid folk at Tow Law Football Club hold their second beer festival - marquee on the sacred turf - this weekend. At least 11 real ales and two ciders were available at the last count plus folk music on Friday evening, jazz/blues on Saturday, children's five-a-side and pony rides during Saturday and adult five-a-side on Sunday afternoon.

Beers include Old Cocky, Blonde Bombshell and, from Bateman's, Miss Whiplash. Any resemblance to a young lady of that parish who featured recently in one of the more guttural tabloids is, of course, entirely coincidental.

LAST time out, as they say in equine circles, we'd reported Durham CAMRA's pub of the year award to the Daleside Arms, known formerly as the Nicky Nack, at Croxdale.

Former Vaux Brewery managing director Frank Nicholson now offers an explanation for the old name via a 51-year-old edition of the company magazine, prosaically entitled Things That Affect Us.

On a dark night in the dim past, it was reported, a farmer making his way across a field path to the pub was greatly alarmed to hear a strange "nicky-nack" noise close behind him.

No matter how quickly he ran, he was unable to gain so much as a yard upon his persistent, nick-nackying, tormentor.

Finally, bewildered beyond reason, he staggered into the bar and with his dying breath gasped out the story. As they laid him out, they discovered the sole of his battered boot was so loose that at every flapping step it seemed to say "nicky-nack."

An alternative explanation is that there's a Nicky-Nack bridge nearby - but I know," says Frank, "which one I prefer."

PUL Klein, who made such a success of the Blue Lion at East Witton, in Wensleydale - much favoured, they reckon, by the Prince of Wales - has now bought the White Swan in Middleham, a couple of miles along the road.

He plans to run them in tandem, both under the eye of head chef John Dalby - "a limited menu of good, simple food," says Paul, though one man's simple is another's compound equation. A report from fair to Middleham shortly.

....and finally, the brazzend bairns wondered if we knew what sort of pills help get you back into shape.

Fittermin pills, of course.

Published: Tuesday, July 3, 2001