NO VEG AT FRYER TUCK'S

Day 3  Wednesday 10 September 2014

In which we meet a couple from Essex on market day and investigate possible places to eat luncheon

I was up before eight.  The morning was grey and cold.  A heavy dew had settled on the grass.  I wet my haystack of early morning hair and combed it roughly into place.  I took the dog for her morning stroll, along the so-called ‘Dog Walk,’ a narrow track of churned-up mud, adjacent to the site.  I unlocked my bicycle and and cycled up the hill to Lartington, a mile from the site entrance.  I thought there might be a tiny shop that would sell me a quality newspaper. There wasn’t.  Lartington is a single ribbon of houses and nothing else.  I freewheeled downhill back to the site.  The sun burst through at 10:30 and the morning became baking hot.  I discovered that we were out of bread, so we drove to Barnard Castle.  It was market day and the place was absolutely packed. We bought a sandwich for lunch and sat in full sun, in the lee of the parish church, overlooking the ruins of the castle. Our little black spaniel played with an empty plastic juice bottle, tearing it into pieces. A couple from Essex sat on the next bench.  They were highly amused by the dog’s antics. They had taken a holiday flat in Tynemouth for the week and were in Barnard Castle for the day.  They lived in Hatfield Peverel, which sounds like a firm of chartered accountants, but is apparently a conurbation somewhere near Braintree.  The man worked in computer services and commuted daily to London.  “Hatfield Peverel’s got a station," he said. "45 minutes on a good day.  Mind you, there aren’t many good days." The woman worked in catering. “Schools mainly,” she said.  “Healthy eating, that sort of thing.  Don’t want the little blighters to get too fat, do we?”

I had to find somewhere to entertain my mother and my sister to lunch the next day.  The place had to offer vegetarian meals.  The nearest the Cricketer’s Arms got was chicken-burgers, Fryer Tuck’s was a fish shop, Bombay Mix was self-explanatory and Penny’s Tearoom had a variety of scones and cakes, but fell some way short of spinach and aubergine risotto.  I settled in the end for Valentine’s restaurant, which offered some sort of pasta bake in its special lunchtime menu and the girl promised more of the same on the morrow. 
Barnard Castle is very attractive, but its streets are not designed for huge volumes of people, no more are its roads designed for large flows of traffic.  Once a lorry wing-mirror almost fetched me a healthy clip on the shoulder as the vehicle roared past me within inches of the kerb.
The market was the usual gimcrack affair, offering a range of low-quality goods and chattels.  Whereas in a French market you get camembert cheese and a glorious selection of wines, here you get second-hand DVDs, polishing cloths, rusty handsaws and spanners. We sped through it with some alacrity.  
I had heard of Bowes, even if it was just in connection with the famous museum, so we drove there.  It comprised thirteen houses and a garage.  We didn’t stay. We went back to the site for dinner. Instead of waiting for the fish and chip van to show up at 7:30, my wife had bought a cooked chicken, some new potatoes and a tossed salad.  It was as fine as any meal in a restaurant, more so because it was eaten in the caravan, where food invariably seems to taste fresher and cleaner.  At almost six ‘o’ clock, the sun was still shining hazily, but the air was cooling.  I ended the daylight hours seated outside, but I had to don my sweater as I read P G Wodehouse.