AS the weather, the Wensleydale Railway was wonderful - like seeing the dale from round the back. Perhaps the only disappointment was that the elderly diesel multiple unit was second hand from Scotrail, doubtless explaining the klaxon's pretty pathetic attempt upon Ilkley Moor Baht 'at, a tune at which Yorkshire DMUs are virtuosi.

Perhaps it was Scotrail the Brave.

The front coach was reserved, and not just reserved but reserved with scones and cream. Attempts to greed one signally having failed, thoughts turned instead to a little appetiser before lunch.

We travelled the line's present extremes, Leeming Bar to Redmire, £10 return. From Redmire, we walked a little way westward along the trackbed - it'll take some reinstating, but they said that about the King of Spain - and then across the fields to the delightful village of Castle Bolton.

There were views of Bolton Castle and of Pen Hill, incredibly narrow stone stiles, old barns of the sort in which William and the Outlaws held high council (though probably not Jumble sales).

Begun in 1379, the castle was an involuntary home to Mary Queen of Scots. Admission's £5, though the aromatic adjoining gardens and vineyard are free.

This being a litigious age, signs in the garden warn (for heaven's sake) that the surface may be uneven. Poor Mary probably had rather more of life's ups and downs about which to concern herself.

St Oswald's Church across the road may be much the same age as the castle, a delightful exhibition at the back detailing the 20th century history of the parish of Bolton-cum-Redmire.

There were pictures of the boys back from the Boer War in 1902, of quoits and wallops - a near relation - at Redmire Feast, of local heroes like Annie Scott who delivered the papers for 40 years and Fred Lawson whose paintings, says his memorial, were his songs of praise.

Down thereafter to the Bolton Arms in Redmire, where the brochure promises a "warm, homely welcome" and that they are "here to meet your needs". At weekends it opens all day.

It's been agreeably refurbished since last we were there, a handsome dining room added. The lunch menu seemed sensibly simple: half a dozen or so hot dishes - three of them suet puddings - plus baked potatoes, baguettes and sandwiches.

A large lamb and mint suet pudding was OK, though the chips weren't. The Boss's baked potato with coronation chicken was wholly unobjectionable. There were three hand pumps and, outside, a bowl of Adam's ale for the dog.

Between 1.15 and 2pm, just two other people dined. Shortly before 2pm, however, the blackboard menu had been removed from the wall with all the alacrity of Bob Cratchit shuttering the counting house on Christmas Eve.

In the ten minutes thereafter, nine others arrived in three groups, some of them walkers.

All sought food, all advised that - on a sunny summer Saturday in high season - "the kitchen closed at two o'clock".

No baguettes, no baked potatoes, no rudimentaries at the inn. Unwittingly, they hadn't been strolling the Yorkshire dales at all, they'd been playing Beat the Clock.

It is so utterly English, so lamentably inhospitable and, pardon me, so absolutely bloody ridiculous.

CONTRARY to the belief in last week's column that the Scarlet Pimpernel of North-East Gastronomy may have been seen in the York area, reports now suggest that Didier da Ville's latest move has simply been the four miles from the Helme Park Hotel near Tow Law to the recently refurbished Bay Horse at Wolsingham - where former Helme Park manager Trevor Johnson also holds court. Why French leave, anyway?

HIS counting house having closed for the night, the Stokesley Stockbroker looked up to Darlington for a little purse string loosening. We dined at Phutawan, a Thai restaurant in Parkgate, opposite the Civic Theatre.

(The estimable Mr Chris Lloyd could doubtless explain why Parkgate, which leads to nothing greener than the Stone Bridge roundabout, came by its name. Unfortunately, he's having a shift off as the column is written.)

Phutawan is on Blue Light Corner, around which the town's emergency services seem for ever to be tearing, and is one of many eating places within 100 yards of the theatre.

Last Wednesday evening the restaurant was almost empty, the waiter thus greeting us as might the prodigal son have been welcomed when popping home with a written apology and a bunch of daffs.

Nor did things get much busier, though the theatre turned out at 9.15pm - can't have been Ken Dodd, then - and the waitress pressed her nose against the window like the Little Girl That Santa Claus Forgot.

The conversation had turned to the recently deceased, to John Tyndale - who went to the same school as the Stockbroker - and to Edward Heath, for whom he had a certain admiration.

He also recalled one of Harold Wilson's visits to Carlisle, when Wilson was introduced to a keen young reporter from the local paper and promised him a good story. The cub moved closer, perhaps having read between too many lines. "I learned to smoke a pipe at the George in Penrith," said Wilson, whose father-in-law had been a congregational minister in those parts.

Phutawan has been open almost a year and has a long and colourful menu with the usual eastern promise prologue - "almost endless possibilities for relishing new tastes" - so favoured in such places.

The Stockbroker being accustomed to gracious living and the pair of us too idle to work through the menu, we chose a "Royal Thai banquet" at £23.95 a head, the most expensive of four banquet options. "Appetisers" generally failed in their purpose, the spicing heavy handed and a dim sum altogether peculiar. Sour and spicy mixed seafood soup with coconut milk worked rather better - better still had it been hot.

Four main courses offered much greater variety of fragrance and flavour, the roast duck red curry especially good and the stir fried king scallop with sweet chilli paste and vegetables the most indistinct. Nicely presented, there was also sweet and sour king prawn and "stir fried mixed seafood".

The "roasted banana" was quite dreadful, about a third of a banana cut in half and pulverised, served in a little pond of glutinous goo and with a couple of lumps of indifferent ice cream.

The Stockbroker having dashed off to catch his train, if not necessarily to Stokesley, the bill was presented with just a single mint.

That missing mint seemed to say quite a lot about an evening of mixed fortunes. Not one for the futures market, anyway.

IN the street we bump into the admirable Andreas Savino, whose Shildon restaurant is well up the North-East's top ten. In September, he says, they hope to expand into the premises next door. "It's going to be quite exciting," he promises.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you get when crossing a juicy fruit with a sad dog.

A melon collie, of course.

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