Punch lines

The Column goes first footing.

IT was New Year’s Day, the most sobering news in that morning’s Telegraph that 2,400 pubs had closed in the previous 12 months. We resolved to head for the Punch Bowl at Satley, one of precious few that had opened.

Satley’s a small village three miles north-east of Tow Law, off the A68, fifth wind turbine on the left. If there’s snow down below, there’s a blizzard at Tow Law, So, precisely, it proved.

Closed these past five years, the Punch Bowl once overflowed, its reputation made as a food pub.

Probably we’d last been there in 1994, Mr Nobby Stiles speaking at Tow Law Town FC’s centenary dinner.

Old Nobby was 52 at the time.

“He looks no more like a two-legged tank trap,” the Backtrack column had observed, “than he did against Rattin and Co in the 1966 World Cup.”

There was also a night club out the back, apparently called Porkies because the road on which it stood had been called Pig Street. Porkies notwithstanding, the locals swear it’s true.

Had it not been the Punch Bowl all these years, they might even have changed its name to the Buck – as in “trend”, of course, if not necessarily as in “fast”. Times remain hard.

First footing proved no less perilous – the moor road treacherous, the lady driver warmly to be commended, the snow again cascading.

One or two of the morning-after lads at the bar looked as if their consumption the night previously might alone have balanced the books for 2009, the hair of the dog bristling vengefully.

The Boss sat with her back to the restaurant window. “I don’t want to see the snow, it gives me palpitations,”

she said, but kept turning round, and palpitating, nonetheless.

The place is smartly and massively refurbished, though a January 1 impression of hand pumps turned to the wall proved disappointing.

The restaurant – wooden-floored, sturdily furnished – had a positively Mephistopholean log fire, regularly and unsparingly replenished. “If the weather gans on like this,” said one of the locals, “there’ll be nee more trees left in Kielder.”

The Northern Echo and Another Paper were also available for those lunching alone, though there had been recent occasions, of course, when the two seemed barely distinguishable.

That we two ate alone was the Punch Bowl’s problem but by no means their fault. A party of 17 from Lanchester, a few miles east, had cancelled because of the snow. Another group, wing and a prayer, was still trying to make it from Newcastle Airport.

The two-course table d’hote includes a glass of wine and coffee for £8.95. The Boss thought the wine “modest”, and may have been circumspect in honour of the day.

Still, at that price it’s quite hard to go wrong. A peppery vegetable soup was exactly what the day demanded, the salmon and champagne roulade proved equally and immodestly enjoyable.

Four main course options embraced fish and chips, steak and ale pie, chicken in a pepper sauce and something vegetarian. The fish was fine, the chips excellent, the chicken and the veg so-so and the salad nicely dressed.

Alder Bradford, the manager, is also licensee of the Old Mill at Knitsley, near Consett, happened to be at Satley and was anxious to add to the long list – a gritany, perhaps – of those unhappy about untreated roads.

Christmas week takings at the Mill, he said, had been £10,000 down on the same week in 2008. It’s at the bottom of a bank, the council’s reputation on the skids.

Alder – “my mother had so many kids, I think she ran out of names” – seemed a bit reluctant to talk about why they’d been prompted to resurrect a pub in 2009 but reckoned it was going well. Satley, Satley catchee monkey, perhaps.

They plan further development, we planned to head across country to Waterhouses to toast a friend who’d been honoured in the New Year list. Every route proved impassable – palpably so, it might be supposed.

The Punch Bowl, and all other licensed premises worth the name above the door, are to be wished an altogether happier new year than the one upon which without regret they’d turned their backs.

■ The Punch Bowl, Satley, near Tow Law (01388-730301). Open all day, every day, meals from 12-9pm.

Two course table d’hote including wine and coffee £8.95. Carte also available.

ENTHUSIASTICALLY, we wrote on December 8 about the “wholly transformed” Raby Hunt at Summerhouse – between Darlington and Staindrop. A pub since at least 1856, it’s now billed as “restaurant with rooms”, to the evident concern of the Darlington branch of the Campaign for Real Ale.

CAMRA claims that the Raby’s most recent planning amendment, in December 2003, stipulated that the building mustn’t be used “otherwise than as a public house.”

They’ve asked the council what they’re going to do about it.

SHUNTING around Battersby Junction, on the Middlesbrough to Whitby railway line, last week’s column flippantly supposed that the name lent itself to a limerick.

“A porter from Battersby Junction…” Carrying on regardless, as might be said of porters everywhere.

Harry Cadman needs no second bidding:

A Battersby porter’s packed luncheon

Proved that cheese every day caused malfunction

If he tried eating out

Like Mike Amos, no doubt

He could still carry on up the Junction.

Splendid stuff. Others, same lines, much welcomed.

STILL on the railways, we headed to London for the first time since East Coast took over the main line, a valiant run in blizzard conditions.

These days the buffet offers two hot dishes, Great British breakfast before 11am and “classic” sausage and mash thereafter.

It was 11.15am. Demarcation notwithstanding, I ordered the breakfast. “It’ll be a few minutes, it’s cooked from fresh,” said the attendant, absurdly.

In truth, it took so long to arrive that he might have alighted at Retford in order to catch the hen.

Eventually it arrived on a plastic tray to which plastic cutlery had been affixed – sausage, Retford fried egg, crisp smoky bacon, tomatoes, tasty black puddings and one of those vague, waffly things.

Coast price £6.95, it really wasn’t bad at all.

WHILE in London, someone suggested we try the Bree Louise – named after a rose apparently – just behind Euston station.

It’s North London CAMRA’s pub of the year 2009, unusually offering nine or ten ales on gravity and another five on hand pump.

The prices are reasonable for London.

The “award winning” pies would be better with a short-crust pastry, the chips were poor, the decor basic. At least one of the beers was as flat as a florin, another as old as a penny farthing.

It was yet another good reason for taking the ten minute walk to Kings Cross, and catching the next train home.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we’d heard about the cross-eyed school teacher.

She couldn’t control her pupils.