Horn of plenty

IF heaven knows, then memory certainly doesn't record when first we were given the Guinness Book for Christmas. Even then, all that Yule's gold ago, it was the "locals" who stuck in the inbox.

There was the Shildon lad, Percival, who'd thrown a cricket ball from here to goodness gracious. There was the unfortunate chap in Sedgefield General Hospital who'd had removed from his innards enough coins and assorted ironmongery to furnish the DIY department at Woolworth's, there was the sugar bag baby from South Shields - though, bless her, she wasn't even that heavy - and, similarly diminutive, there was the River Bain.

The Bain is England's shortest river - 2.4 miles, the recall button suggests. There have been debates elsewhere about what constitutes a river and what a beck, but the Bain flows on regardless, water under the bridge.

In no time it pitches up at Bainbridge, an attractive village around a green. Still there are stocks, still a sober-sided Temperance Hall, still a tradition that from Holyrood to Shrovetide - when's Holyrood, anyway? - a horn is blown at 9pm to guide travellers down from the fells.

Once it was a bullock's horn, replaced in 1864 (so it's said) by a bit of buffalo brought back from South Africa by a feller from Bishop Auckland. Kept in the foyer of the Rose and Crown, a hostelry since 1445 - that might be 1454 - it has latterly fallen silent.

Blow that for a game of soldiers.

It was to the Rose and Crown that amicably we repaired for Sunday lunch after a pleasant gathering at the Friends Meeting House, in Countersett, a couple of miles up the road. It's a pleasant, many-roomed inn - "pubbily old-fashioned," says the Good Beer Guide - with accommodation, on that occasion fully booked.

The menu also offered the option of "sitting outside in the sunshine". It was about 45 degrees and falling. They had to be joking.

The bar's subtitled the Dust and Diesel, though it seemed a bit more upmarket than that, the corridor has a picture of a 3lb 9oz brown trout caught on the Bain in 1969. Big fish, small pool.

In the foyer, next to the hunting horn, there's a map which contrives to make Bainbridge the centre of the universe, which doubtless it is. Framed in another room is an 1895 auction poster for the pub - "the most favoured site in Bainbridge," it says, clearly on-messuage.

We sit in the snug, beneath a stuffed otter. The joke about chicken tarka clucks incorrigibly to mind. There's a case of mounted butterflies and what perhaps purports to be an old gramophone, Nipper still awaiting his master's voice.

The beer's Theakston's best, Old Peculier or Webster's Yorkshire Bitter. Dennis Cassidy, the owner, is an airline pilot and was up and away. In his absence, we're served by the cheery Mr William Featham, who's a Darlington lad and whose father (he's anxious to impart) drove for the corporation buses.

A main course - beef, lamb or half a chicken - is £5.95, much cheaper than some of the column's recent Sabbath excursions. Three courses are £9.50.

Starters were beef broth, melon couple or stuffed tomato. The tomato - stuffed to bursting, it might be said - came on a large plate with potato salad, rice salad and something else not as legible as probably it was enjoyable. She thought it all very good, anyway.

The beef broth was genuinely home made, properly bovine, topped with cream and with a large garlic crouton thing (as we gastronomes would have it).

She had the beef, I the lamb. It was fine. Horn of plenty veg, decent Yorkshire pudding, service by pleasantly shy young ladies from eastern Europe.

Three puddings, too. The princess pudding proved to be steamed fruit, a bit like Christmas, or there was apple pie or egg tart. It was homely, friendly, altogether pleasant; a proper pub lunch. No Bain, no gain.

A BIT like a public execution, readers still prefer the really cruel columns. "A classic" someone wrote from Hartlepool after last week's excoriation of the Three Tuns in Durham.

Michele Positano, the head chef, rings in remarkably cordial manner, nonetheless. "It was my night off but no excuses," he says. "Some of those things shouldn't have happened." He's even invited us back - name the day, name the dishes - by way of apology. We shall have to take him up on it.

THE beer festival at the Langdon Beck Hotel, top end of Teesdale, seemed to go better than ever. Glenn and Sue Matthews are much to be commended for keeping the home fires going in so parky a part of the region.

Outside, gently steaming, stood a 1915 traction engine called Albion - old Albion, really - which began life as a road roller and is now owned by a chap from Middleton-in-Teesdale.

While he enjoyed best bitter, Albion topped up with best coal and appeared to be enjoying it every bit as much.

On the other side of the great gulf which divides Teesdale from Weardale we'd enjoyed a bite of lunch at a little cafà called Meridian, open weekends only, in St John's Chapel.

It's also an interesting little second-hand bookshop, offering everything from Bertolt Brecht to the Beano Book.

Food's commendably inexpensive - £1.50 for a roll, good bread, with home- made filling. Carrot and coriander soup (there was also tomato and basil) was £2.50, huge wedges of home-made chocolate cake £1.

There are just three-and-a-half tables, plus one outside for the sort of days promised by the Rose and Crown at Bainbridge. Mean time, honest.

BACK in St John's Chapel a few days later, we had a swift Sunday lunch at the Golden Lion - beef, pork or lamb £5.50, huge quantities, smoking throughout. There won't be, happily, for very much longer.

A bench outside was decked with yellow ribbons, a couple of bouquets and posters calling for the safe return of the missing Madeleine. The lady of this house supposes it "mawkish sentimentality", but I really can't decide. There was enough bother last week, anyway.

PAUL Braithwaite, who brings order to The Shambles on Staindrop village green - we reviewed it, enthusiastically, last September - sends details of a New Orleans night on June 14.

Starters include roast peanut and sweet potato soup, served with coriander; a main course might be Louisiana duck gumbo with char-grilled polenta, potatoes, spinach and corn cakes and coriander sauce. Way down yonder, two course set meal: £14.95.

TOUGH work, but someone has to do it. Wear Valley CAMRA is seeking volunteers to help conduct research for a new pub guide to the area. Recently elected branch chairman David Fryer is busy promoting Bishop Auckland in all sorts of other ways, too. The next branch meeting's at the Dun Cow in Witton-le-Wear, 7.30pm on June 11. New members welcome.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a clever monster. Frank Einstein, of course.