Darlington already had a North Park and a South Park when the West one opened recently. But according to one enthusiast, residents seem unaware of its existence... and they are missing out.

MONDAY was lovely. Tim Stahl climbed to the top of the little hill in West Park and could see the snow-topped Lake District in one direction, Roseberry Topping in another.

"You should come and see for yourself," he said enthusiastically - for Mr Stahl is a man of many enthusiasms - over a lunchtime beer.

Tuesday was horrible. Cloud hung low and lachrymose, the sun briefly poking its nose around the door before at once repenting of its temerity. The thermometer troubled, the rain redoubled.

Though the park has sculptures with something of Stonehenge about them, verse and literature and other works of what the Victorians called an improving nature, the arts centre had become a clarts centre overnight.

"Seeing for yourself" is in any case comparative, not to mention myopic. It was possible, nonetheless, to take the view that the 35-acre development - Darlington's first new public park for 100 years - is a remarkable achievement.

"I just looked in one day and was absolutely knocked out by it," said Tim, energetic cyclist and retired orthopaedic surgeon at the town's Memorial Hospital. "The problem is that most people simply don't know it's here."

Already there was a North Park and a South Park. This one's less formal, less passive, a park that walks the walk and then offers the chance to go through the gears.

At the gate of the South Park until quite recently, a veritable scriptorium of small print outlawed everything from beating carpets to playing the cornet on Christmas Day.

In West Park, nothing seems to be forbidden, though doubtless there are activities which are discouraged and others for which the participants should be thrown into the duck pond to reflect upon the error of their ways.

Surfaces are covered in anti-graffiti paint. One offender kindly sprayed his e-mail address even so.

Formally opened last June on the site of the former Darlington Chemical Company's works at Faverdale, it's already won a sustainable development award. In the adjoining area there'll be - in some cases already is - 700 homes, a psychiatric hospital, school, rugby club, shops, doctors' surgery and a pub to be called The White Heifer That Travelled.

"I know the story behind that name," said Tim, but unfortunately he'd forgotten it.

It's also intended that the park will become a nature reserve. There'll be a countryside centre, BMX track, "creative" playground, attendant "rangers". A couple of vehicles were there from the North-East Community Forest, planting ideas.

In front of one of the sculptures are engraved some words from The Wind in the Willows: "A dark hole just above the water's edge caught his eye..."

Chief credit for the park's robust and imaginative development is given to Tony Cooper, a director of Darlington-based builder Bussey and Armstrong, a man conscious of the town's industrial and environmental heritage.

Tony was away. "Most of the stuff we've done we did because we wanted to do it, not because we were obliged to do it. This is the people's park," he said in 2005.

Tim guided us past the pond, over the bridge, past poetry written by Bill Herbert. "Joseph Pease stood in a furrow/In the parish of Middlesbrough." It got better when rhyming "Ironopolis" with "populace."

Another piece of sculpture depicts Darlington as "Locomotive town, where the railways were born", as "Quaker town where sharing took root" and as the town with its heart within its name.

Tim, unashamedly, likes it best for the cycling opportunities - "It's wonderful for riding the bike up some very dodgy reverse camber curves" - others simply walk the dog. He's disappointed to have seen so few children, though the species may be nocturnal.

He's also joined a group called Friends of West Park, which aims to promote and develop the area (and to persuade new residents that an annual £50 levy towards its upkeep is a legal requirement).

Above, unseen, a high flying bird could be heard in joyous anticipation of the spring. "It'll be glorious around here in a couple of months," said Mr Stahl. Anyone for the skylark?

THENCE, half-perished, we took ourselves off to a country ice cream parlour for lunch. Archers' is roughly near Walworth, west of Darlington, realistically in the middle of nowhere.

This winter, cold comfort, they've been opening throughout. "We've been ticking over," said Sue Archer, stoically.

It's part of a working farm, devastated by foot-and-mouth in 2001 and restocked with Jerseys. Hens chuckle about the yard, calves have it cushy.

The menu offers ice cream and not much else, though there's chocolate cake, carrot cake and very good coffee. The carrot cake was succulent, though Mr Stahl seemed ambiguous about the alternative.

"It depends how you like your chocolate cake," he said with perhaps long practised ambiguity.

There was a lovely fire, which he hogged, the ice cream non-drip, notwithstanding. Messrs Dulux might wish to pay a visit.

Outside, the rain fell and the day put in yet colder. Inside, we had pistachio and amaretto and chocolate and honky-tonky, which is a bit like an ice cream Crunchie bar. They sell ice cream cakes from £14, too, and ice cream logs for £8.50.

None other came near, though the graph will doubtless rise with the mercury. Forty minutes ticked over very pleasantly.

BACK to town and into the Lions' Bookshop in Bondgate Mews, bibliophiles' bolthole and blessed bargain basement.

Three nights earlier I'd addressed Darlington Lions' Club's 44th charter dinner at the former Reynolds Arena. George would have liked to have been there, too, but had been unavoidably detained.

This year's club president is 70-year-old Ian Barnes, still working as a legal consultant, still active in the LibDems, still running six miles before breakfast and seeking in July to defend his British Over 70s mile title.

"He's just one of life's enthusiasts," said Margaret, his wife, and may have been understating it.

The bookshop was uncommonly crowded, a pride of Lions bent on an A-Z of reclassification but occasionally diverted by bodice ripping yarns.

More innocently, I bought Robert Louis Stevenson's wonderfully illustrated "A Child's Garden of Verses" - originally 15 shillings, resistant to inflation and offering a poem simply called The Cow.

The friendly cow, all red and white

I love with all my heart,

She gives me cream with all her might

To eat with apple tart.

Stivvie lived from 1850-94. They'd probably not invented foot and mouth back then.

STANHOPE Parish Council, geographically England's largest, is riven with acrimony. The clerk has won her case for unfair dismissal, two councillors face Standards Board investigation, meetings have been "fiery". The council, says the Weardale Gazette, has been rocked.

Happily, the town hall appears altogether more peaceable on the Sabbath. A stroll that way last weekend revealed the place overflowing, best of order, with Sunday lunchers.

We'd booked elsewhere in the dale, and will report - rapturously - in next week's Eating Owt column.

The Weardale parish magazine, meanwhile, reports that local churches have formed a non-denominational "Sunday Club" for youngsters. The Sunday Club will meet in Frosterley village hall - every Tuesday afternoon.

SO ends another circuitous column. Just a walk in the park, really, that's all.