Love story

FOR more years than some may care to remember, these columns have earned a meretricious reputation for using long words. “Spurious” is quite a short one.

Spurious, for the avoidance of doubt, means lacking in authenticity, specious, not quite kosher. It’s spurious, for example, to suppose that Carlsberg is probably the best lager in the world, or that seven out of ten cats prefer Whiskas or – spuriouser and spuriouser, as Alice in Wonderland might almost have observed – that menthol tabs are as fresh as a mountain stream.

For slightly different reasons, it seems to me also to be spurious for the Yorebridge Hotel to promote the claim that it has been voted the UK’s most romantic by users of the Trip Advisor website. Whilst the bald statement is doubtless true, its authenticity depends upon a) those who voted for the Yorebridge having also stayed at every other hotel in the land, b) having the faintest idea of what they’re talking about and c) more than three people having voted.

It may be, as Trip advises, the most romantic place on earth. There are those of us, on the other hand, who find the immediately evident canned music about as romantic as a prolonged colonic irrigation.

Far better to boast that, in its short life, it’s already had three years in one or other of the Michelin guides, and in several others, too, gained five AA stars and two rosettes for its cooking. It might also rate pretty highly on a swish list.

Yorebridge House is next to the river at Bainbridge, in Wensleydale. Once it was a school, more recently the headquarters of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The Boss, whilst wet behind the journalistic ears, used to cover interminable meetings there.

“It’s undoubtedly more romantic than sitting listening to that lot,” she supposed.

Bainbridge, as might be imagined, is a very pleasant village, the two- and-a-half mile Bain said to be England’s shortest river. Once a horn blower nightly called sheep down from the fells; more recently ingenious locals have developed a hydro-electric plant powered by an Archimedes’ screw.

We went, four of us, for Sunday lunch – a meal which, in the traditional sense, the hotel doesn’t do.

Three-course dinner is £44.50. The bar menu, available on the Sabbath, is cheaper, but still unlikely to leave much change for a threecourse meal – before drinks – from £30 a head.

Don’t you just love it already?

The elder bairn and Stacey, his nice young lady, came with us. He was approaching his 30th birthday, much of the party planning seeming to centre around Jager Bombs, which sound pretty incendiary whatever they are.

Having already obtained a telephone app of the departure screen at Leeds railway station there seemed no other present he could possibly want. His dad’s lad, that one.

Each menu section had five choices – perhaps celeriac soup or plum tomato and mozzarella salad with which to start, smoked haddock or sirloin steak as a main course, vanilla pannacotta with roast English strawberries and wild strawberry sorbet to finish.

A starter of Whitby crab and brown shrimps with basil emulsion (£8.95) came in a fluted glass – fresh, simple, perfectly okay. The mussels rated similarly, the chicken liver parfait with red onion marmalade much more highly.

Both the young uns had cod and chips – the “Catch of the day” – with tartar sauce (£13.95).

In every respect the dish was brilliant, wonderfully fresh and fleshy fish with hot, perfect, nicely-flavoured chips. Probably the tartar was fine, too.

The bairn did rather spoil the moment, and flummox the kitchen, by asking for salt and vinegar, however. It could have been worse, he could have asked for HP sauce and a copy of the previous day’s Mirror from which to eat his lunch.

The Boss thought a wild mushroom risotto “wonderful” – “so many different kinds of mushroom.” It came with a parmesan and thyme crisp and a herb salad.

My very substantial, enviably succulent pork loin chop sat with so-so mash and an impressive mushroom veloute. It could have done with a few vegetables. Stacey, bless her, handed over half her chips. She may not eat enough to feed a decent-sized spuggie, but she’s going to make someone a good daughter-in-law.

It was accompanied by a pint of Yorebridge Ale (£3.30) from the Yorkshire Dales Brewery up the road.

Puddings also included a very jolly summer pudding with Pimms jelly and clotted cream ice cream, a production from the Picture Book School of Kitchen Craft. The jelly – nice idea, lots of fruit – came in a kilner jar. We wondered when we’d see one of those.

The place was bought by David and Charlotte Reilly, from Yarm, in 2006 and opened at the start of 2008. Its public rooms are luxurious, flower-decked, attentively overseen and no matter that there were precious few others to look after. Business is said to be booming.

So all that’s really quite affectionate. The bedrooms look no-less sybaritic. All that lies uncomfortably is this notion of a web poll having much worth. So far as these curmudgeonly old columns are concerned, you know what they say about the age of romance, anyway.

􀁧 Yorebridge House, Bainbridge, North Yorks DL8 3EE. 01969 652060. Rooms from £180.

THE weekend after we were there, The Times devoted half a page to Yorebridge House in its Cool Hotel Guide. The room – “a real bargain for its size at £250” – had probably been provided free.

They’d also talked to Adam Dyke, the general manager. “We get a lot of footballers here.

It’s very P&C,” he said.

P&C? “Private and confidential. Often they’re not with their wives, I’m sorry to say,” added Mr Dyke. Whether this is what the younger generation means by “romantic”, the column is wholly unqualified to say.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what jumps up and down in your custard, to which the answer is kangarhubarb. Another long word, the penultimate Eating Owt column appears next week.