Missing the bait

FISHING is reckoned to be Britain’s biggest participant sport. I only tried it once, seeking sharks off Maryport with the lads from the Joiners Arms at Hunwick, couldn’t understand the lure. Someone may have been taking the piscatorial.

It was thus something of a surprise to wash up at the visitor centre at Grassholme Reservoir in upper Teesdale, still more surprising to find a sign advising: “All anglers must use a landing net and priest.”

The last rites, or what? It proved pretty close to the truth.

A priest, said the helpful Water Board chap, is a brass instrument – they sell them – for despatching a spent fish. “You hit them over the head,” he added.

The dictionary confirmed as much; mainly an Irish term, it said. A Roman Catholic priest, presumably.

Grassholme is one of six Northumbrian Water reservoirs in Teesdale, providing supplies for Darlington and Teesside. It’s a “multi-bait” lake which also has its own fish farm, mainly breeding trout, all the colours of the rainbow.

A jolly family had had a good morning, though dad had failed to read the rule about not putting them back.

“I thought it didn’t look very happy,” he said.

“Nor would you if you had a hook in your mouth,” said the Water Board chap, not unkindly.

There’s yachting, too, though none had put an elbow in the water. Probably they’d heard the weather forecast.

The visitor centre also has a natural history exhibition, lots of fishing kit, coffee menu, sweets and ice cream. Two coffees, £2. This is the column that believes in declaring its expenses.

It was the first walk of the non-football season, a 13-mile round trip from Romaldkirk past places with names like Botany, Nettlepot and Witch’s Hat, round the far end of the reservoir, up into Lunedale, down past Laithkirk, into Mickleton and back along the old railway line.

Laithkirk, known sometimes as the Holy Barn, has been consecrated ground since the 14th Century. The Queen Mother worshipped there when courting at nearby Holwick Hall in the 1920s.

A gravestone lugubriously records that a former vicar drowned in the Lune. We’d near as dammit drowned just walking down the road, so bleak and wet the May afternoon.

It was 5pm before we reached The Kirk at Romaldkirk, idiosyncratically run by Paul Jackson, a man with a head for hats and never seen without one. He sported what appeared to be a glorified baseball cap, back to front, of course.

The only real ale was One Foot in the Yard from the admirable Yard of Ale brewery at Ferryhill Station. The “organic sandwiches” were all gone.

Since the pub’s being renovated, nothing else was available.

The fish in Grassholme reservoir may, in truth, be better fed than we were two Saturdays ago, but at least we live to tell the tale. Cold and wet?

Certainly. Brassed off? Not just yet.

LAST week’s column made reference to one of Elizabeth Taylor’s many former husbands, nicknamed Bungalow Bill because he didn’t have anything upstairs. This was a mistake, as Carole Lynn kindly points out. He was one of Joan Collins’ many former husbands. Our apologies to Mr Bill.

LADY Caroline Lamb is famously thought to have considered the poet Byron “mad, bad and dangerous to know” following their first meeting, at a ball, in 1812. Seaham remains inexplicably fond of him, nonetheless.

The old romantic did his courting there, married Lady Ann Isabella Milbanke there, wrote to a friend of a dreary coast where they had nothing but county meetings and shipwrecks.

“I have this day dined upon fish which probably dined on the crews of several colliers lost in the late gales,”

he added, and regarded his wife little more kindly. To Byron, she later became Lady Millpond.

Byron Place, more prosaically, is a new shopping centre. Seaham also has a Shakespeare Centre, though links to the great playwright – mad, bard and dangerous to know? – may be rather more tenuous.

We’ve remarked before on the former colliery town’s impressive regeneration, particularly along the seafront. Just last June we again told of the tide turning, though there was an old chap in the Harbour View who still dunked his crisps in his half of bitter and was rebuked by his lady wife for his social disgraces.

Last November, a reader recommended Poppies, across the road from Byron Place and, she said, “definitely a class act”. We finally went – like Grassholme Reservoir, a bit of a fishing trip, too.

It’s next to the Sea Angling Club, a Thai restaurant above. On a blackboard someone’s written the quote that not to risk anything is to risk everything – probably not one of Byron’s – though the notice on the wall is altogether more memorable.

Slightly paraphrased, it says: “While we want customers to enjoy all of our facilities, it would be appreciated if they could be left behind for others equally to enjoy.”

That’s what might be called new Seaham, a sign of how far the place has come, or wants to go. In old Seaham it would have said “Thieves will be prosecuted.”

The little bistro’s smart: tiled floors, chandeliers, paintings for sale. Once they’d have been paintings, any road.

In 21st Century Seaham, they’re mixed media works.

Food’s mainly paninis and the like, a list of fairly exotic fillings on the blackboard. The Boss ordered a mozzarella, tomato and jalapeno sandwich, so convinced upon its arrival that the contents represented none of the advertised ingredients that she promptly returned it.

The waitress insisted, politely, that that was precisely what it was. It looked like Heinz sandwich spread (of fond memory). “Processed gloop,” said the Boss.

The pork and cranberry slice was substantial and succulent, the accompanying salad limp and lifeless.

“Glorified sausage roll,” said the Boss, by this time not happy. It’s fair to say, however, that she enjoyed the cakes which followed much more than I did.

The coffee was okay, the mortal remains of the mozzarella mush still uncleared when we left.

Afterwards we had a little blow, nowhere seeming to be doing much.

A place called the Featherbed Rock Café – in old Seaham, a rock café would have sold candy cockles, and things – boasted a local newspaper cutting headed “Haunted by a killer”.

It turned out to be Mary Ann Cotton, hitherto thought chiefly to have spread her poison around West Auckland but clearly transferred to Seaham as part of the tourism drive.

Hanged for mass murder, Mary Ann Cotton really was mad, bad and dangerous to know. Compared to that lass, Byron was a lord.

WRITING a couple of months back on the newish West Park Café in Darlington, the column damn-near drooled over the discovery of Worthington White Shield – a 5.6abv Indian Pale Ale “like the abominable snowman or Mr Jack Charlton’s fag packet, not seen for many years”. Last week we’d another sandwich there, the White Shield replaced by something altogether inferior called East Green Carbon Neutral beer from Adnams.

“It’s all gone. Too many people had read The Northern Echo.”

FOLLOWING transport minister Lord Adonis’s comments on station cafes – some “downright poor”, he said – The Guardian compiled a top ten of station eating places. None, to no surprise whatever, was in the North-East, the nearest Huddersfield.

The best locally may be at Thorpe Thewles, north of Stockton. If only it still had trains.

…and finally the bairns wondered if we knew what bee can never be understood.

A mumble bee, of course.