Easy as pie as Middleton-in-Teesdale chip shop cooks up award for second year running

A POPULAR chippy has won a fistful of medals for the second year running with their handcrafted meat pies.
All four pastry creations entered by Middleton-in-Teesdale Fish and Chip Shop achieved podium places at the 2017 National Pie Awards.
Brother and sister team David Amsden and Lydia Sunter were thrilled with the haul. Mr Amsden said: “To get a prize out of every one we sent is great and we’ve done better than last year.
“Everything we are doing is to keep that standard level up there. It’s nice to get a bit of feedback to tell you you’re doing okay – the customers are pretty quick to tell you if you’re not anyway.”
Two bronze medals were dished out for the shop's minted lamb and potato pie and its steak and potato pie.
A classic steak and kidney and their new chicken curry creation both claimed silver.
Ms Sunter, 28, paid tribute to the shop’s team and said the wait for news was no less nerve wracking than last year.
“Because I knew how it works this year, if anything, I was a bit more on edge,” she added.
“The chicken curry one is new and seems to be proving quite popular. We thought we would send it on and just try it.”
The sibling owners have slowly built a loyal following since moving into the upper dale in 2012.
Their fish and chips were hailed among the top 50 in the country in 2015 and they took the eye at last year’s pie award ceremony with a double award win.
“Even throughout the dale we get regulars from Evenwood and Cockfield,” added Mr Amsden. 
“Over the summer we get a man from Kirkby Stephen come over the tops once or twice a week for his dinner.
“He drives past three fish and chip shops in Kirkby Stephen and one in Brough to get here.”
Farm produce from their Wensleydale roots, hand-rolled pastry and slow cooked meat have all played their part in a winning formula for the shop.  Recipes remain trade secrets for now but new flavours are on the horizon.
Ms Sunter added: “We’ve thought about doing another beef one and calling it the Middleton miners’ pie – I think we’ll do it later this year.
“It’s good having a bit of competition – it keeps you on your toes and you don’t become complacent but it’s nice being the only ones in the village for the moment.”

£1.5m Lottery cash for Durham dales arts and landscape project

THE Durham Dales have been chosen for a £1.5million pilot scheme combining arts and the landscape.
Northern Heartlands has been chosen as one of 16 projects across the country under an Arts Council and the government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport project, dubbed the Great Place Scheme.
Among the Northern Heartlands highlights will be a two-year project in conjunction with Opera North to create a community opera.
Northern Heartlands, which was developed on the back of the Heart of Teesdale Landscape Partnership, also aims to use the arts to influence landscape policy.
It will be funded by £1.5million from the National Lottery.
The Northern Heartlands team – which includes some who were involved in the Heart of Teesdale Landscape Partnership –  aim to work with some 30 other  organisations including arts groups, museums, wildlife and river trusts, and the universities.
Graham Young, chairman of Northern Heartlands, said: “This is great news. Northern Heartlands is very pleased to have been chosen as the trial initiative for the Great Place Scheme in the Durham Dales.
“We have lots of ideas to put arts, culture, heritage and landscape at the heart of our communities and we can’t wait to get going.”
He added: “We are one of 16 trials throughout the country and one of three in the North East.
“We have been awarded our full bid amount of £1.5million less a tiny percentage which they have knocked off all grants and which in our case amounts to about £10,000.
“This, with other promises of grants or gifts in kind, gives us a budget of about £1.8million to support our work in encouraging an understanding and experience of the dynamic of landscape culture, the arts and our amazing heritage.”
Five people will be employed to run the scheme ahead of its start date on April 1, next year.

Teesdale entrepreneur in running for VisitEngland award

A Teesdale entrepreneur’s company which provides Mandarin-speaking guides for Chinese visitors to Britain has been shortlisted for a top tourism award.
Beiwei 55, founded two years ago by 26-year-old former Teesdale School pupil Jay Smith, of Barningham, has beaten hundreds of applicants to reach the finals of this year’s VisitEngland Awards for Excellence.
The company will be competing against three other finalists – Blenheim Palace, the Lake District China Forum and the Lowry Hotel, in Manchester – for the Great Chinese Welcome of the Year title at VisitEngland’s awards ceremony at London’s Hilton Waldorf Hotel on April 24.
Beiwei 55, based in Newcastle and London, was voted the best new business idea in the North-East when NatWest launched its Entrepreneurial Spark scheme on Tyneside last autumn.
Mr Smith set up the company with former classmate Eve Baker after leaving Leeds University with a first-class degree in Chinese and working for a tourist organisation in China.
It now employs seven Mandarin-speaking guides offering tours all across Britain and also provides professional translation, recruitment and corporate event services for companies hosting Chinese visitors.
Mr Smith said: “We’re delighted to have been nominated for the company’s work in welcoming Chinese tourists to the UK.
“Our native British Mandarin-speaking guides are unique and we hope the award nomination will help us grow so that Chinese visitors coming to the UK can have a local, authentic experience with a Mandarin-speaking Brit when visiting all parts of the UK.”
More than 300,000 Chinese tourists visited Britain in 2016 and VisitEngland – formerly known as the English Tourist Board – believes the total could pass the half-million mark this year.
VisitEngland chief executive Sally Balcombe said: “The awards raise raising the profile of England as a world-class destination and driving the economic benefits of tourism across the regions.
 “Awards for Excellence finalists exemplify outstanding tourism talent and distinguished businesses throughout England. We received over 600 truly impressive applications this year and the finalists represent the very best in the industry.”

Middleton in Bloom looks to the future with perennial planting

MIDDLETON-IN-TEESDALE is taking a more permanent approach to its annual entry into an environmental competition this year.
The village won gold in last year’s Northumberland in Bloom competition after impressing the judges with a colourful display of flowers and woollen ornaments.
But now the team behind the village entry want to go one better by planting greenery that does not have to be replaced with new seedlings each year. Perennials being put into planters around the village include crocosmia, heuchera and vinca.
Competition team member Pam Phillips said: “We are going more for permanent plants. The Royal Horticultural Society are going for that sort of thing and it is cheaper in the long run.”
The new plants were made possible through a £300 contribution from the neighbourhood budgets of county councillors Richard Bell and Ted Henderson.
A further gift of rhododendrons from a family who moved house in the village has been put to good use to beautify the area around the public toilets.
Ms Phillips said work was ongoing to dig up some of the plants, divide them and plant them on. She added that the group is desperately in need of the use of a heated greenhouse and urged anyone in the village with one to contact her on 01833 640631.
People can also support Middleton-in-Bloom by joining in a coffee morning at the Masonic Hall, on April 22, from 10am to noon. Book and plants stalls will form part of the event.