IT IS not easy to imagine how staff at Glaxo Pharmaceuticals managed without the Red Well Inn, so greatly has it seemed of late to be just what the doctor ordered. The two have long been on opposite sides of the road in Barnard Castle, the pub both a lunchtime haven and a place to snatch a desperate fag. Since smoking can damage both your health and your reputation, Glaxo prudently forbids the horrible habit throughout its huge factory.

Sometimes, however, it's reckoned you can see a purple haze hanging over the car park.

Not quite the prescription as before, the Red Well re-opened two weeks ago after a major facelift. Now it's owned by the burgeoning Kingslodge group, who have a place of that name in Durham plus the Uplands at Crook and the Victoria at Witton-le-Wear.

For the Glaxo folk - some of them, at any rate - it has proved so great a tonic that last Thursday lunchtime we were politely asked if we'd like to eat in the restaurant, so great the numbers in the bar.

The Artful Accountant was also in attendance: since it is fair to say that we may both have rather more time for lunch than the average factory worker, we were happy to make the feast moveable.

Early days, the new owners operate what they term a lunchtime "market menu", and are hoping to persuade their neighbours to phone their orders during the morning.

Daily changing starters might be onion, tomato and mozzarella tart (£3.50) or prawn and pasta salad (£3.75); main courses last Thursday included spiced chicken korma (£5.50), spinach and ricotta ravioli (£4.95) and beef, ale and mushroom stew with a black pudding dumpling (£5.50). Sandwiches with chips are about £4.50.

The restaurant menu is a little more ambitious, and a little too pretentious when it comes to a "collage of appetisers from today's markets, with complementary dressings" (£4.50).

No matter that the nice young waitress appeared to think it was a college and that the little dollop of pate might have had six GCSEs, no matter that the collage gained an A* for artistic impression, there simply wasn't enough. This is still Co Durham, even if it's Barnard Castle. Call it what you will, but let's have a bit meat on the bone. They can forget the stuff about "today's markets", an' all.

The Accountant, conversely, began with the melon with sorbet and a wild berry compote and thought it superb.

The furnishings are smart and traditional. The restaurant manager, seconded from Durham, turned out to be the Kingslodge waiter who greatly impressed us by discovering the latest Arsenal score. It is, readers may recall, the true litmus test of the craft.

Main courses are divided into grills, seafood, pasta, vegetarian options - mostly under a fiver - and one or two other things. Sandwiches are all over £3, omelettes £3.80. Just about top of the range, we ordered rack of lamb with black pudding, braised barley and a "caper piquant sauce". Capers are surprisingly rarely used; we leaped at the sight.

Provided by the butcher down in Barney, it was as nicely cooked a piece of lamb - served pink, as requested - as ever it has been our great good fortune to encounter. Slightly crisp on the outside, wonderfully tender within, absolutely first rate.

They wouldn't have bled many pigs for that scratty bit of black pudding, mind, but the chips were thick and hot and excellent, too. A large salad accompanied them.

The Accountant, becoming a little more adventurous after all these years, has progressed in the past decade from plain omelette to prawn omelette and now ordered an oven baked and herb-crusted fillet of cod with a lemon butter sauce (£6.50). He thought it very enjoyable.

Puddings included a chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce, infused (said the waitress) with chillies. It sounded incandescent, proved inoffensive, though by no means unpleasant. The bill, with a couple of beers either side, reached £39.50.

By this time, it was turned three o'clock, the workers over the road probably contemplating tea, or trolley. The Accountant suggested another beer; at the Red Well we kept on taking the medicine.

FIRST in a thoroughbred field, the Daleside Arms at Croxdale was named Durham CAMRA's Pub of the Year at a convivial do last Wednesday.

Long ago it was the Nicky-Nack guest house, the name only a little more obscure than the present one. Mike Patterson, owner with his wife Sandra, insists that it came to him after spotting Old Leg Over, a 4.2abv bitter from the Daleside Brewery in Harrogate.

Presumably, he could hardly have called the establishment the Old Leg Over Arms.

Real ales last Wednesday included a Mordue special called Pride of Croxdale, the summery Old Nip from Caledonian in Edinburgh, and Burglar Bill from Clark's in Wakefield - said to be named after the Rugby League player William Harrison who could sneak in just about anywhere.

Mike grew up in the pub trade - his parents had the Black Bull in Ferryhill - and in 30 years has run both the Bull and the Sportsman in Belmont. Evening meals cost £8 for two from 5-8pm Wednesday to Friday, with an interesting range of steak specials on Saturdays.

Last Wednesday's party, sustained by vast cauldrons of curry and of something oriental, were entertained by the Old Age Travellers. There was to have been a domino handicap as well, but it didn't happen. Something about a professional being in.

Cleveland CAMRA's pub of the year is the Captain Cook at Staithes, built in 1758 though probably under another name. The Cap'n, who didn't clap eyes on Australia until 1770, was still waiting to be discovered. It's largely unspoiled and popular with locals, injunctions on the walls warning that a 50p fine will be imposed for every undeleted expletive - proceeds to St Catherine's Hospice, Scarborough - except in the case of Mr Phil Gilbert, for whom the penalty is 25p.

"With me it's an uncontrollable habit," explains Mr Gilbert, "whereas with you lot it's lowering the tone of the establishment."

What may chiefly appeal to CAMRA is that Trevor Readman, the landlord, returns to his Midland roots to augment the more widely available cask ales - hence a very fair drop called Marquis, from Brewsters Brewery in Leicestershire. It was Sunday lunchtime, there was no food. Instead, we rolled down the hill to the sea, past Lisa Chapman's Good Food Guide-listed Endeavour restaurant - marinated Staithes octopus on the menu - past the all-seasons gift shop that offers welly boots, woolly socks and hot water bottles, and on to what properly is called the Sea Drift Sweet Shop, right by the bay.

They sell dolly mixtures, sherbet bonbons and Pontefract cakes, but lovely sandwiches, too. "Special baguettes" included roast chicken with a slightly curried sauce, apricots and toasted almonds and Cornish gammon with brie and redcurrant sauce.

We bought three sandwiches: prawn salad, banana, cream cheese and toasted almonds and crab - since Staithes is the crab sandwich capital of England - followed by a wonderfully moist piece of "coble cake" and a couple of Belgian ice creams.

It cost about £12 the lot, but no complaints: an honest crustacean, if ever.

And finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what would happen if you ate uranium.

You'd get atomic ache.

Published: Tuesday, June 12, 2001