Cheap as Ships

TIMES tight and travel light, much of today’s Eating Owt column is consumed by the Ship Inn at Middlestone Village, though not so much as a morsel has passed the lips. Ship of dreams, it is hugely to be recommended, nonetheless.

It was two-thirds of the way through a sunny Sunday stroll. We’d begun at Spennymoor, headed down the old railway line towards Bishop Auckland, up to Binchester – why Binchester Blocks, anyway? – through the hilltop village of Westerton and on to Middlestone, which is near Kirk Merrington.

It was a glorious day, smells and sounds of childhood. Half way along, The Boss offered the view that the word “daisy” was a corruption of “day’s eye”, because the flowers shut up shop at night.

“It’s the same idea in Welsh,” she said, as if conclusively. Etymologists (or botanists) may have daisy chains of their own.

Middlestone’s a pleasant, half-hidden little place with no public facilities save for a children’s playground and the landlocked Ship. The Methodist chapel’s now a holiday cottage.

Long closed, the pub was reopened in the 1990s, won lots of awards – chiefly from the Campaign for Real Ale – and in March 2006 was taken over by Tony and Jane Langdale.

So here’s the first headline: in those three-and-a-bit years, Tony has never once put up his beer prices, not even to accommodate the churlish Chancellor.

There are six hand pumps, three offering beer at £2 a pint, three at £2.20.

“I don’t believe in ripping people off,” said Tony. “You can usually do a deal with the breweries if you try hard enough. There’s too much greed in the pub industry.”

A line from The Merchant of Venice sloped inexplicably to mind: “A Daniel come to justice, yea a Daniel.”

It’s unpretentious, comfortable, at once welcoming. A couple on the next table had a dog called Dylan, named not after the Welsh poet but the American singer. They also had a cat named Ringo, they explained, though Ringo had stopped at home.

Dylan couldn’t sing for toffee. (The dog, understand, not the Tambourine Man of affectionate memory.) Ringo couldn’t sing, either.

Another headline: three course Sunday lunch is £6.50, main course £4.50. Like the beer prices, and born of the same philosophy, it’s absurdly inexpensive.

Main meals are equally good value – many just £4.25, much of the produce locally sourced. There are those who by “local sourcing” mean local supermarket, or anywhere this side of the Bristol channel. Tony means this side of Bishop.

They’re charitable, too. The previous day he’d cycled 54 miles of the Coast-to-Coast and that was just the practice session. He walked like John Wayne come for his boy.

It was purely because of the heat of the day and the length of the walk that we didn’t eat. We shall undoubtedly be back though walking, of course, still works up a thirst.

Tony also plans a micro-brewery out the back, in partnership with John Constable of the once-esteemed Butterknowle Brewery in west Durham. It’s on hold because John’s not too clever – get well soon, old friend – though he still hopes to go ahead.

“That’s another thing,” said Tony, “people set up micro-breweries at their pubs and still charge full whack, though the middle man’s and the transport costs have gone.” He hopes to sell for as little as £1.50.

There was a pint of Nimmo’s XXXX, now brewed by Cameron’s in Hartlepool, a pint of Five Bridges from Mordue in Newcastle, a stronger pint of Premium Gold from Daleside, in Harrogate. The lady drank mineral water and coffee. Three rounds totalled £9.50.

Back in Westerton, we’d passed the hilly observatory built by Thomas Wright from Byers Green – Tony’s daughter’s just reopened the Royal Oak in Byers Green – an 18th Century astronomer and mathematician of high renown.

Subscribed by Durham University in 1950, a plaque marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of his Theory of the Universe.

Tom Wright – on no account, of course, to be confused with the present Bishop of Durham – was pretty far-sighted. “In this great celestial creation,”

he wrote, “the catastrophe of a world such as ours, or even the total dissolution of a system of worlds, may possibly be no more to the Great Author of Nature than the most common accident in life with us.

“In all probability, such final and general doomsdays may be as frequent there as birthdays or mortality with us upon this earth.”

Such notions, of course, are far above the heads of cost-conscious columnists – but on such a day, and in such a pub, it was still possible to believe that God was in his heaven, and all right with the world.

■ The Ship Inn, Middlestone Village – not to be confused with Middlestone Moor – County Durham. Open from 4pm Monday to Thursday, all day Friday to Sunday.

AS any crow will confirm, the most direct route from the top end of Weardale to the top end of Swaledale is over the top into Teesdale.

Thus we found ourselves in the vicinity of the Langdon Beck Hotel just as they were holding a bittersweet beer festival.

It was in memory of landlord Glen Matthews, who died last year. Sue, his widow, had just been handed Darlington CAMRA’s country pub of the year award.

Almost everything was from the North-East. The pies, too, are from Taylor’s of Darlington. “It’s gone really well,” said Sue, blessed with the weekend weather for it.

We asked for a receipt. The bar momentarily fell silent. “Are you an MP?” they then chorused, as one.

Those guys have much for which to answer.

PERCHANCE, a drink in the Red Lion at North Bitchburn a few days later with NW Durham MP Hilary Armstrong. The pub near Crook is impressively refurbished, landlord Keith Young about to increase the number of hand pumps from four to six – mainly local microbreweries.

Hilary drank mineral water. “Just about all an MP needs right now,” she said, “is to be stopped for drinking and driving.”

ABIT like the chap who liked the shaver company so much that he bought it, North Yorkshire businessman Ben West was so impressed by the conversion of Harrogate’s historic Royal Baths into a Chinese restaurant that he’s written a book about it.

Unoccupied for ten years, the former Grand Pump Room and Central Hall have become the Royal Baths Chinese Restaurant, owned by Hak and Monica Ng. The planning process took two years because of the building’s listed status. “It was only right that their enthusiasm and commitment should be recorded,” says Mr West.

The Royal Baths were opened in 1897 at a cost of £120,000. Mr and Mrs Ng have spent £1.5m in restoring their part of the building. The book was launched yesterday.

STARTING its second year, the Yard of Ale brewery at the Surtees Arms in Ferryhill Station has won another award. Their One Foot in the Hard has been named Wear Valley CAMRA’s “Beer of 2009”. Alan Hogg has now taken delivery of new equipment, in order to increase capacity.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why the orange went to the doctor. Because it wasn’t peeling very well.