WE receive recommendations for places to visit for the purposes of filling this column from all corners and classes.

For the last two years, at the Dales Festival of Food and Drink in Leyburn, VIP hostess extraordinaire Pip Bolton – Lady Bolton, no less – has suggested that we try the Three Horseshoes in her village of Wensley.

She’s been very persuasive, speaking of a new landlord who was doing good things – nothing spectacular but honest pub food and wellkept beer. And we discovered m’lady’s not wrong.

It always helps when heading down the hill into Wensleydale from Leyburn that the sun is shining. And the dale looked glorious as the village of Wensley hove into the view and we managed the tight left turn off the A684 into the Three Horseshoes car park.

We could see a party of walkers enjoying the sunshine on the terrace outside, which faces south with stupendous views across the dale, and we thought we would join them until realising that it wasn’t that tropical and we hadn’t enjoyed the benefit of a stiff walk to warm up.

So, inside we went and found a cosy spot by a sunny window, not far from the wood-burning stove, to take in our surroundings and the menu. Both were simple affairs. Pub standards on the menu and traditional dales pub interior – stone-flagged and whitewashed-walled with solid, no-nonsense furniture and a boot-rack at the back door for the walkers who we suspect make up a good percentage of the pub’s trade.

Facing the bar, it was evident that beer is taken very seriously here. There were four or five hand pumps with a range of local caskconditioned ales. I can’t remember them all but they did include ale from the Yorkshire Dales Brewery up the road at Askrigg and, my choice, a fine bitter from Walls County Town Brewery of Northallerton.

With Sylvia settling for a glass of lager, we placed our order of “Rachel’s locally famous fish, chips and mushy peas” (£10.95 – £6.25 for a smaller portion) and beef in red wine casserole with chips (£9.95).

Sylvia thought the fish and chips first rate. We didn’t know who Rachel was then (landlord David Hunt’s wife and chief cook it turned out) but she certainly knows how to make a light and crispy batter. The fish (haddock or cod, we couldn’t be sure, haddock probably) was firm-fleshed and overhanging the edge of what was a sizeable plate. Certainly, many people would be happy with the smaller £6.25 portion. The chips were chunky, crisp outside and fluffy inside. Perfect.

My casserole featured some beautiful beef, cooked long and slow, until meltingly tender, in the rich, red wine bath. Good beef, decent wine. Simple. Where I think the dish could have been improved was the option of having it served with creamed mashed potato rather than the excellent chips. This would have been so much better to soak up all that gorgeous sauce.

The casserole came with a small dish of vegetables – mange tout, cauliflower and carrots – that looked good but failed to deliver in every other respect. The mange tout were particularly disappointing – limp and watery.

Other dishes on the lunch menu included lasagne (£9.75), steak and ale pie (£9.95 – and 20 minutes’ wait) and, for vegetarians, button mushrooms in a tomato, onion and herb sauce topped with cheddar cheese (£9.75). There were also Yorkshire puddings with a variety of fillings.

We finished on a high note with a delicious lemon curd cheesecake (£3.95) which started out as mine but became a shared dessert once Sylvia (who, as you all know by now, doesn’t really ‘do’ puddings) got a taste of the thick biscuit base, the light, bitter-sweet topping and the creamy vanilla ice cream that came with it. But, as it was a hefty slice there was plenty to go round and no hard feelings.

The bill was £28 which included three drinks (Sylvia had a diet Coke after her lager). Sort those veg out and we would back the good lady’s recommendation.