Treat and retreat

THERE’VE always been problems with the Fox and Hounds at Carthorpe: 20-odd years ago it was the bandit, an electronic cuckoo in an eminently cosy nest.

“Like a Dalek at Dr Who’s barmitzvah,” we wrote – a comment as curious as it was curmudgeonly – after a visit in 1989. Two years later, hands high, they took it out. Couldn’t stand me mithering any longer.

All these years later it might be possible to wish for a guest ale, for crisper vegetables – especially the cauli – for a little more attention to the apostrophe. “Selection of tea’s”, indeed.

In truth, however, you couldn’t wish for anything more. Better and more welcoming than ever, yet further ahead of the pack, the Fox is a truly great village pub.

Bandit country no longer, Carthorpe’s just off the A1 south of Leeming Bar, where presently a great deal of muck is being shifted in order to make a motorway.

Until 1983, when Howard and Bernadette Fitzgerald bought it, the pub was a one-room local where an old lady served a superlative pint of Strongarm from her kitchen somewhere out the back.

The Fitzgeralds transformed it, umpteen awards framed on a sort of wall of fame. There may even be a couple of cycling proficiency certificates in there.

Six years ago they stepped back – or, strictly, moved four doors up – to allow Helen and Vince Taylor, daughter and son-in-law, completely to run the place.

We went one Tuesday lunchtime, the first day that the blazing coal fire had been lit, but still warm enough for the handsome hanging baskets outside to need watering. “The seasons get a big confusing,” said Vince, not unreasonably.

A group of women, apparently parish councillors, sat directly in front of the fire. They were discussing money laundering. How local government changes.

It’s almost a winter pub – an all-embracing, warmly-enveloping, close-the-door-light-thelight sort of place that requires real willpower to leave again. There’s even a selection of wooden games – dominoes, solitaire, even noughts and crosses – with which to put the time in.

Though not a big place, a morning could be spent just looking round. The walls have framed posters of everywhere from Paignton to Perry Barr dogs – not hitherto seen as one of Britain’s great tourist attractions – some shelves are piled high with jars of home-made preserves (more jam than Hartley’s, as the old phrase used to go), others with old books.

Appropriately, given the roasting fire, the Boss pulled out a copy of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

All the school stories that ever have been written, including Harry Potter, are direct descendants of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, she said. It’s a theory she may not have explained to Ms Rowling.

Even the toilets merit a detour, the gent’s stacked not just with face towels, but with stuff like Right Guard 3D, Nivea Deodorant for Men and sundry other stuff not freely sprayed by Shildon lads.

The Air Wick’s from the “Winter collection”.

Mulled wine, it says on the can. The netties could no doubt smell of worse.

The lady emerged from the other end, emitting the fragrance of Cranberry Spice hand lotion (honest). It was time to eat.

Two-course table d’hote lunch is £14.95, three courses £16.95. As the wall of fame suggests, the place is particularly renowned for its puddings.

There was top-notch mushroom soup, not just a few crumby croutons, but a great, overflowing, moreish bowl of them. Good, warm, bread rolls, too. There was perfectly baked haddock with a breadcrumb top, lots of vegetables, bowls of new potatoes and real chips served with an earnest request simply to ask for more if required.

The Boss ate from the carte, loved the tangy freshness of the fish cakes, waded into the seafood platter like a Bondi surfer into a serious swell. On another occasion it might easily have fed three.

There was an oyster on a little bed of ice, langoustines, rollmop herring, provocatively dressed crab, salmon and smoked salmon, proper prawns. Plenty more fish in the sea? Not on the evidence of that plate.

The fish comes daily from Hodgson’s in Hartlepool, who cast their net awfully wide.

The meat’s from Bedale, the vegetables from Snape, even the flour from some old mill by a stream in Grewelthorpe.

The menu’s imaginative; blackboards embellish it. Starters might have been grilled black pudding with roasted apple and red onion marmalade, duck-filled filo parcels with plum sauce, warm chicken and bacon salad with a sweet and sour dressings.

Main courses included poached halibut with a light mustard sauce, chicken breast filled with Coverdale cheese, braised lamb shank.

It’s not just outstanding food, however, but the convivial atmosphere in which it’s served. Inescapably, there’s a feeling that the Taylors and their people don’t just stand and serve but endeavour, every visit, to make a special occasion – treat and retreat – of it.

After a brandy snap basket with a scintillating raspberry sorbet the bill, with two pints of Black Sheep and a glass of wine, was £54. It seemed worth every penny: the Great North Road unequivocally A1.

■ The Fox and Hounds, Carthorpe, Bedale, North Yorkshire (01845-567433). Food served 12-2pm and 7-9.30pm; closed Mondays. No problem for the disabled.

DALTON-on-Tees is about five miles south of Darlington, beyond Croft. The pub’s the Chequers. If not exactly a Chequers career, it’s seen a canny few landlords over the years.

The present incumbents offer both a 5.30pm to 7pm early-bird menu and, £9 the lot, two for the price of one. Backtracking, we ate with the estimable Mr Charlie Walker, 50 years a village cricketer and the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme.

Charlie had the lamb’s liver – or possibly the lambs’ livers – I the chicken and mushroom pie. Abundant vegetables and chips. Three hand pumps, proper puddings.

Howzat? “Wonderful,” said Charlie.

PETE Winstanley in Durham forwards an image taken by his daughter of a restaurant menu in Strasbourg. “Tarte flambee chevre frais,” says Pete, translates – no kidding – as “Tarte flambe goat expenses.” It shows the risk, he supposes, of relying solely on a dictionary for translations.

HIGH streets may now survive on a life-support machine of charity shops, hair and beauty places and cafes. They’ve sort of sandwich spread.

Bishop Auckland has four caffs within 200 yards, goodness knows how many more elsewhere. Saturday, 9.30am, we breakfasted in Taste.

There’s a small breakfast, a large breakfast and a Bishop’s Belly Buster. The “large”

is double most things, the belly buster all that and chips. No wonder the menu, advising of busy times, tries to emulate the NHS. “Thank you for your patients,” it says.

The “large” was £4.10, including piping hot coffee. It sufficed amply. Buster blood vessel some other time.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what’s big and grey and has four wheels.

An elephant on a skateboard, of course.